The Imagineers of War

by Sharon Weinberger

  Soon, Ryan Paterson: Gorman, interview with author.

  “We were referred to”: More Eyes regional coordinator, interview with author.

  Afghan participants, often drawn: Ibid.

  “Generally speaking, U.S. forces”: Jeffrey E. Marshall, “All Source Intelligence and Operational Fusion: Fusing Crowd Sourcing and Operations to Strengthen Stability and Security Operations” (unpublished report for Thermopylae Sciences and Technology, n.d.).

  “Afghanistan Atmospherics”: Ryan Paterson et al., “Getting ‘More Eyes’ in Afghanistan: Experiments in Promoting Indigenous Self-Reporting of Local Conditions and Sentiment,” May 11, 2011 (unpublished DARPA white paper provided to the author by an anonymous source).

  “to catalyze the local population”: Ibid.

  The members of the Synergy Strike Force: One person working on the More Eyes contract explained that it was difficult to “get ahead” in the world of aid and development if his or her name was associated with military contracting. Anonymous, interview with author.

  “Afghanistan’s DIY Internet”: Sebastian Anthony, Extreme Tech, June 22, 2011.

  “Was the More Eyes program”: Anonymous More Eyes scientist, interview with author.

  “The More Eyes Team quickly learned”: Paterson et al., “Getting ‘More Eyes’ in Afghanistan.”

  On August 11, 2012: Peretz Partensky, “Basketball Diaries, Afghanistan,” N+1, Dec. 5, 2012. It is unclear why Saraj was killed, but the Taliban often target anyone who works for foreigners, and the subtleties of U.S. government contracting, whether civilian or military, likely would not matter.

  “There are no models”: Shachtman, “Inside DARPA’s Secret Afghan Spy Machine.”

  “It’s the ultimate correlation tool”: Gorman, Entous, and Dowell, “Technology Emboldened the NSA.” Without public data or published results, this statement should be viewed with caution.

  One thing was clear: A Freedom of Information Act request filed with the Defense Department by the author in 2012 for Nexus 7 documents has so far not been completed. In a 2013 interview with the author, Arati Prabhakar declined to talk about the program in detail, citing security issues.

  The inspector general’s report: Because Dugan had already left government, the inspector general recommended that no action be taken based on the report’s conclusions.

  EPILOGUE: GLORIOUS FAILURE, INGLORIOUS SUCCESS

  “The intelligence aspects”: Buhl, An Eye at the Keyhole.

  That came to a halt in the 1980s: Larry Lynn, interview with author.

  “I think it is unchanged”: Prabhakar, interview with author.

  “Facing that kind of existential threat”: Ibid.

  “gem of the Pentagon”: William Perry, interview with author.

  When asked about the episode: It was a sensitive subject, because her job just prior to entering DARPA was at U.S. Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley firm whose portfolio included Solyndra, a solar power start-up that went bankrupt, after taking half a billion dollars in government-backed loans.

  In 2003, when the American military: Gates, Duty, 147.

  “By the time you get”: Reis, interview with author. Parkinson wrote that “perfection of planned layout is achieved only by institutions on the point of collapse.” His argument was that “during a period of exciting discovery or progress there is no time to plan the perfect headquarters. The time for that comes later, when all the important work is done. Perfection, we know, is finality; and finality is death.” Cyril Northcote Parkinson, Parkinson’s Law, and Other Studies in Administration (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), 60–61.

  The attempts to replicate DARPA: In 2013, Regina Dugan described her work to create a DARPA-like organization at Google. Her “DARPA model” was distilled to just three elements: “ambitious goals”; “temporary project teams”; and “independence.” She omitted, however, a fundamental part of the DARPA model: having a “customer” willing to adopt and field a technology with no immediate commercial prospects. Without that key ingredient, the examples she cites, like stealth aircraft and satellite navigation, would never have made it beyond the prototype stage. Even Google, with its deep pockets, is unlikely to invest in a technology whose commercial application is decades away. Regina Dugan, “ ‘Special Forces’ Innovation: How DARPA Attacks Problems,” Harvard Business Review, Oct. 2013.

  “140 program managers”: This statement has been cited by DARPA officials dating back at least to the 1980s. More recently, it was used by Tony Tether during a 2002 interview. William New, “Defense Research Agency Seeks Return to ‘Swashbuckling’ Days,” Government Executive, May 13, 2002.

  “Long Range Research Development Plan”: Amaani Lyle, “DoD Seeks Future Technology via Development Plan,” DoD News, Defense Media Activity (U.S. Department of Defense), Feb. 3, 2014.

  “This may be more like an entropy process”: Lukasik, interview with author.

  “transformed into intrusive government policies”: Lukasik, “Advanced Research Projects Agency.”

  “on restoring the injured”: Sanchez, interview with author.

  Sources

  A NOTE ON SOURCES

  When I first embarked on this project in 2011, several people associated with DARPA questioned how I would write a history of the agency without access to materials on its classified projects, which form a substantial part of its legacy. My stock answer was that histories have been written based on declassified records and interviews of other, far more secretive agencies, including the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, and the same could and would be done for DARPA. My bigger concern at the time was that DARPA officials would choose not to participate in a history that was not commissioned by the agency. Both concerns turned out to be wrong.

  In the end, this book proves a history can be done without full access to classified records, and even without cooperation from the agency. Though no history is ever complete, the research for this book encompasses extensive archival materials in addition to more than three hundred hours of interviews, primarily with former DARPA officials. Those interviews spanned from those who worked in the agency during its first days in 1958 all the way up to its current director. Almost all of the former DARPA and Pentagon officials I contacted agreed to be interviewed, often at length.

  As it turned out, while the concern about access to classified materials was not baseless, neither was it insurmountable. Much of the material in this book for the period prior to 1973 is drawn from the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Maryland, particularly Record Group 330, which covers the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The archivists warned me at the outset that a large portion of Record Group 330, including many of DARPA’s records, is still classified. They were correct, but dozens of boxes of agency records have been declassified in recent years and are now finally accessible to researchers. The National Archives’ collection of DARPA records provided a detailed portrait of the agency’s first fifteen years and allowed me to cross-reference and fact-check interviews with those former DARPA officials who did their best to recall events from forty and, in some cases, fifty years prior.

  It is, however, somewhat disconcerting that a number of documents previously made available have been withdrawn under the National Archives’ post-9/11 review of “records of concern.” The frequent withdrawals, usually of specific documents that are part of larger files, were rarely of any great historical concern. For example, an unclassified 1965 report to DARPA titled “State of the Art Study of Anti-metabolites” was typical of the many documents withdrawn in 2002. The study in question was part of DARPA’s investigation into incapacitating chemicals that might be used in Vietnam. Presumably, the report was withdrawn in case potential terrorists might use the information to do harm (it is worth noting that the accompanying notes in the file indicate that antimetabolites would not make for useful weapons). The absurdity of believing that terrorists might delve into a half-century-old unclass
ified report in order to build weapons is itself a testament to the way secrecy has obscured common sense. It would be comical, were it not for the enormous effort required to process archival materials to make them available to the public. I cannot speak for all records, but in the case of DARPA’s files the withdrawals appear to be a shameful waste of resources, while offering little protection of national security.

  In addition to the records at College Park, this book draws on other National Archives facilities, including the Kennedy Presidential Library, the Eisenhower Presidential Library, and the Nixon Presidential Library. I also relied on the Godel trial and accompanying records, held by the National Archives (the trial records are normally held in Philadelphia but because of renovations were temporarily moved to Atlanta when I accessed them). These records, which included the trial transcript and an incomplete set of associated material, provided the best insight into some of Godel’s Vietnam activities. In particular, depositions with two South Vietnamese officials shed light on Godel’s mission in the country, providing a rare Vietnamese perspective on DARPA’s efforts there.

  Other archives I used included the Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C.; the U.S. Army Center of Military History, Fort McNair, Washington, D.C.; the U.S. Army Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania; the MIT Institute Archives & Special Collections; and the Mandeville Special Collections Library at the University of California, San Diego.

  Materials from this book covering the mid-1970s and after, where official records are not yet available through the National Archives, are based largely on interviews I conducted with former and current officials, as well as unclassified materials that were made available to me, either by individuals or through other archives. I also relied on interviews with former DARPA officials conducted by historians, including those held at the Charles Babbage Institute and the American Institute of Physics. Several scholars and writers generously shared their source materials with me. Ann Finkbeiner provided me with transcripts of DARPA interviews she conducted in conjunction with her book on the JASONs. Alex Roland of Duke University shared interviews he conducted for his book on DARPA’s Strategic Computing Initiative. And L. Douglas Keeney, who wrote an insightful history of Strategic Air Command, shared the command histories he obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. All three are a reminder that scholarship is about sharing information, and I am grateful to them for their intellectual generosity.

  A significant set of materials was obtained from the Defense Department using the Freedom of Information Act, which yielded, among other treasures, an unpublished interview with William H. Godel on DARPA’s early history. After three years, and finally litigation under the Freedom of Information Act, the Defense Department also released to me a full, unredacted set of interviews conducted with former DARPA directors as part of the agency’s forty-fifth and fiftieth anniversary celebrations. (DARPA declined to release two interviews, with Herbert York and John S. Foster Jr., which were part of this set, claiming that they were outside the scope of my request. Stephen Lukasik graciously provided me with a copy of those two missing transcripts from his personal collection.)

  While I had already interviewed most of the former living directors, these additional interviews sometimes reflected a more candid viewpoint, because they were conducted at the behest of DARPA. For those two former directors who declined to speak with me for this book—Tony Tether and Craig Fields—their interviews provided me with a window into their views of DARPA.

  I also benefited greatly from private materials provided by a number of individuals, including sections of William H. Godel’s unpublished memoir, shared by his daughter, Dr. Kathleen Godel-Gengenbach. At her request, the citation for this memoir uses H. A. H. Buhl Jr., her father’s birth name. I do not cite page numbers for this manuscript, because it is in the process of being edited, and thus the page numbers will likely not correspond to any published or archival version made available in the future.

  Richard Dunn, DARPA’s former chief counsel, also provided me with a copy of his own unpublished history of the agency, and Stephen Lukasik graciously sent me a personal memoir of his time at DARPA, written for his family, and provided other materials from his private collection.

  Because this book is part journalism and part history, I have elected to use a citation convention that blends aspects of both professions. Given the complexity of integrating material obtained from multiple archives, my interviews, interviews conducted by other writers and scholars, private archival collections, and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and occasionally from unnamed sources, I’ve tried to provide the reader a precise understanding of where the material came from and enough information to find the original source documents, where publicly available. However, because the location of many archival documents changes over time, I do not always provide box numbers and file names. I also have not, in most cases, and at the recommendation of the publisher, included URLs for online sources. There are a few cases where I have noted web addresses, simply because there is no other way of indicating where the information came from.

  The greatest challenge to documenting DARPA’s history is DARPA itself, which has failed to record its past in any meaningful way since 1975. Unlike other national security agencies, which have compiled and declassified many volumes dealing with different chapters of their histories, DARPA’s only institutional history is the Barber Associates study, written by Lee Huff and Richard Sharp and referenced extensively in this book. Their insightful and candid writing was an invaluable reference. Institutional histories, even well-done ones like the Barber Associates history, have limits. That history was written as an unclassified study, and this book, by having access to newly declassified documents on the Vietnam War period, fills in additional blanks. And while the Barber Associates history was appropriately critical of many aspects of DARPA’s activities, it avoided some of the darker aspects of Project AGILE, particularly the agency’s role in chemical defoliation. I have attempted to rectify that omission here.

  The Institute for Defense Analyses has also done several excellent studies led by Richard Van Atta detailing DARPA’s programmatic work, including the 1991 report DARPA Technical Accomplishments. The reports, while valuable, focus on programs and not on DARPA as an institution. Sadly, other efforts by DARPA to document its own history have resulted in nothing more than glossy PR materials.

  DARPA’s history, in the meantime, is literally dying off. Robert Cooper passed away in 2007. Seymour Deitchman, who tried to solve counterinsurgency through social science, died in 2013, at the age of ninety. George Heilmeier passed away in 2014. A number of other former directors and key officials interviewed in this book have either died since I began writing or slipped away into a haze of dementia.

  Finally, whatever the limitations on source materials, an outside history of government agencies benefits greatly from the ability to be independent. What I lacked in access to classified materials I gained in the ability to write freely about DARPA’s projects. There are classified projects from DARPA’s more recent history that will likely come to light and provide additional insights into the agency’s contributions. For example, the exact mission of Copper Canyon, the hypersonic space plane, might someday be confirmed, as might the various secret unmanned aircraft sponsored under Teal Rain. There, again, I doubt those revelations will change the portrait of the agency I have painted here. The truth is that classified projects that fail in development tend to remain classified, because there is usually no reason to reveal them, while successful projects, like Have Blue and Tacit Blue, eventually become public when they are used in military operations and can no longer be kept hidden. Nor is there necessarily a connection between classification and historical importance. It is slightly amusing to note, for example, that almost an entire box of materials on DARPA’s sponsorship in the 1960s of a jet belt remains classified. Certainly not because the jet belt was successful. It was not,
at least not as a military technology that would allow soldiers to fly around the battlefield.

  Declassification and release of records would, however, clear up lingering questions related to William Godel’s role at DARPA during the Vietnam War. Several people familiar with Godel believe his work at DARPA was part of a highly classified intelligence operation, for which Project AGILE was in part a cover. If that was the case, then it was so covert that apparently even Harold Brown, who oversaw DARPA and later went on to become secretary of defense, was ignorant of its true purpose. More than likely, the covert element of Godel’s work, as described in this book, was his role as an envoy for Edward Lansdale and other highly placed American counterinsurgents who sought to influence and assist President Diem. The one mystery that could be solved by the full declassification and release of government documents relates to the events leading up to the investigation and trial of Godel, as well as rumors that circulated after his death.

  Shortly after Godel’s death in 2000, Joseph Trento, an independent journalist, contacted the Godel family with allegations that Godel had been a Soviet mole. Trento and his wife in 1989 had published a controversial book on Soviet moles in the CIA. Their co-author on that book was William Corson, the marine officer assigned to DARPA, who later testified against Godel in the 1965 fraud trial. According to Trento, Corson was secretly working on behalf of the CIA to investigate Godel. Proof for the allegation, other than the purported words of Corson, who died the same year as Godel, was nonexistent. Nonetheless, Trento in 2001 published the account in his book The Secret History of the CIA.

  Did the CIA believe Godel was a Soviet mole? That is impossible to say based on the available documents, though Corson was allegedly a confidant of James Angleton, the CIA’s famous Soviet mole hunter. The historical record does show that Godel had enemies in the CIA, and the investigation and his subsequent trial came amid a slew of Angleton’s obsessive counterintelligence investigations—a few deserved, and some driven by paranoia and political revenge. Likewise, Corson’s connections to the CIA are well established, though his exact assignments for the spy agency remain unclear.