The Imagineers of War
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U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences. Authorization for FY70. Part 2. 91st Cong., 1st sess., May 1, 6, 9, 1969.
U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Department of Defense Appropriations. Department of Defense Appropriations for 1970. Part 6. 91st Cong., 1st sess., April 30, June 9, 16–19, 23, 24, 1969.
U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Appropriations. Department of Defense Appropriations for FY70. 91st Cong., 1st sess., June 10, 12, 13, 16, Sept. 15–17, 25, 1969.
U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Appropriations. Department of Defense Appropriations for FY70. Part 2. 91st Cong., 1st sess., June 17–20, 1969.
U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Department of Defense Appropriations. Department of Defense Appropriations for 1970. Part 5: Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation. 91st Cong., 1st sess., July 1, 2, 7–11, 14, 17, 1969.
U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Armed Services. Subcommittee on Air Defense of Southeastern U.S. Hearings on Air Defense of Southeastern U.S. 91st Cong., 1st sess., Nov. 5–7, 12–14, 28, Dec. 5, 1969.
U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Department of Defense Appropriations. Department of Defense Appropriations for 1971. Part 5. 91st Cong., 2nd sess., Feb. 10, March 19, April 6–8, 13, 15–16, 20–22, 1970.
U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Department of Defense Appropriations. Department of Defense Appropriations for FY71. Part 1. 91st Cong., 2nd sess., April 13, 14, 15, May 11–13, 15, 20, 1970.
U.S. Congress, Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights. Surveillance Technology: Joint Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary and the Special Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Commerce of the Committee on Commerce, 94th Cong., 1st Sess., June 23, Sept. 9, 10, 1975.
U.S. Congress. Senate. Radiation Health and Safety: Hearings Before the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. 95th Cong., 1st sess., June 16, 17, 27, 28, 29, 1977.
U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Armed Services. Department of Defense Authorization of Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1986 and Oversight of Previously Authorized Programs, Part 4 of 7. Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation-Title II. 99th Cong., 1st sess., March 6, 7, 19, 20, 21, 26, 27, 28, 29, April 2, 3, 4, 16, 1985.
U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Science, The Future of Computer Science Research in the U.S. 109th Cong., 1st sess., May 12, 2005.
GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS AND REPORTS
Note: DARPA over its history has supported thousands of reports, and countless more publications relate to its projects. I have elected to list below only those government publications that have the most relevance to the subjects covered in this book or that provide unique information about the agency.
Battelle Memorial Institute. Advanced Research Projects Project Agile Quarterly Report. April 1–30 June 1963. Alexandria, Va.: Defense Technical Information Service, 1963.
———. Advanced Research Projects Project Agile Semiannual Report. July 1–Dec. 31, 1963. Alexandria, Va.: Defense Technical Information Service, 1963.
Betts, R. R., and Frank H. Denton. An Evaluation of Chemical Crop Destruction in Vietnam. Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand, 1967.
Buckingham, William A. Operation Ranch Hand: The Air Force and Herbicides in Southeast Asia. Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, U.S. Air Force, 1981.
Byron, E. V. Operational Procedure for the Project Pandora Microwave Test Facility. Silver Spring, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Oct. 1966.
Chandler, Craig C., and Jay R. Bentley. Forest Fire as a Military Weapon. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, 1970.
CIRADS III Proceedings. Washington, D.C.: Advanced Research Projects Agency, 1968.
Combat Development and Test Center Viet Nam, Monthly Report. June 1963.
Cosby, L. Neale. SIMNET: An Insider’s Perspective. Alexandria, Va.: Institute for Defense Analyses, 1995.
Darrow, Robert Arthur, George B. Truchelut, and Charles M. Bartlett. Oconus Defoliation Test Program. Frederick, Md.: U.S. Army Biological Center, 1966.
Davison, W. Phillips. User’s Guide to the Rand Interviews in Vietnam. Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand, 1972.
Delmore, Fred J. Review and Evaluation of ARPA/OSD “Defoliation” Program in South Vietnam. Research Phase: 15 July 1961–12 January 1962. Alexandria, Va.: Defense Technical Information Center, 1962.
Donnell, John C., and Gerald Cannon Hickey. The Vietnamese “Strategic Hamlets”: A Preliminary Report. Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand, 1962.
Donnell, John C., Guy J. Pauker, and Joseph Jermiah Zasloff. Viet Cong Motivation and Morale in 1964: A Preliminary Report. Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand, 1965.
Elliott, Duong Van Mai. RAND in Southeast Asia: A History of the Vietnam War Era. Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand, 2010.
Godel, William H. Report on R&E Far East Survey, October–December, 1960. Washington, D.C.: Advanced Research Projects Agency, 1960.
Gorman, Paul. SuperTroop via I-Port: Distributed Simulation Technology for Combat Development and Training Development. Alexandria, Va.: Institute for Defense Analyses, 1990.
Hickey, Gerald Cannon. Accommodation in South Vietnam: The Key to Sociopolitical Solidarity. Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand, 1967.
Huff, Lee W., and Richard G. Sharp. The Advanced Research Projects Agency, 1958–1974. Washington, D.C.: Richard J. Barber Associates, 1975.
Institute for Defense Analyses. JASON Division. Air-Supported Anti-infiltration Barrier. Study S-255, Aug. 1966.
———. Project: Seesaw. Study S-307, 1968.
Joint Thai-U.S. Military Research Development Center. Thailand Quarterly Report, Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, 1963. Advanced Research Projects Agency, 1963.
Jones, Norman H. Support Capabilities for Limited War in Iran. Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand, 1963.
Nierenberg, William A. “DCPG—the Genesis of the Concept.” IDA Journal of Defense Research, Series B, Tactical Warfare (Fall 1969).
The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States: Official Government Edition. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2004.
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. Report of the Ad Hoc Advisory Group on Psychology and the Social Sciences, Dec. 19, 1957.
Orlansky, Jesse, and Jack Thorpe. 73 Easting: Lessons Learned from Desert Storm via Advanced Distributed Simulation Technology. Alexandria, Va.: Institute for Defense Analyses, 1992.
OSD/ARPA. Research Development Field Unit. Report of Task No. 13A Test of Armalite Rifle. AR-15. By William P. Brooks Jr. Alexandria, Va.: Defense Documentation Center for Scientific and Technical Information, July 31, 1962.
Perry, Robert L. History of Satellite Reconnaissance: The Perry Gambit & Hexagon Histories. Vol. 1. Chantilly, Va: Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance, 2012.
Project Agile. ARPA, Quarterly report: April 1–June 30 1963. Battelle Memorial Institute, 1963.
Rand Vietnam Interview Series H: Villager’s Impressions of Herbicide Operations. Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand, 1972.
Rand Vietnam Interview Series XN: Effects of Bombing of North Vietnam. Alexandria, Va.: Defense and Documentation Center for Scientific and Technical Information, 1972.
Reed, Sidney G., Richard H. Van Atta, and Seymour J. Deitchman. DARPA Technical Accomplishments: An Historical Review of Selected DARPA Projects. 3 vols. Alexandria, Va.: Institute for Defense Analyses, 1990.
Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on the Investment Strategy for DARPA. Washington, D.C.: Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology, 1999.
Ruffner, Kevin Conley. Corona: America’s First Satellite Program. Washington, D.C.: History Staff, Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 1995.
SIMNET:
Advanced Technology for the Mastery of Warfighting. Cambridge, Mass.: BBN Laboratories, 1985.
Tietzel, F. A., M. R. VanderLind, and J. H. Brown Jr. Summary of ARPA-ASO, TTO Aerial Platform Programs, Vol. II: Remotely Piloted Helicopters. Battelle Report. Alexandria, Va.: Defense Technical Information Center, July 1975.
U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service. Operation Pink Rose: Final Report. Advanced Research Projects Agency, May 1967.
U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States, Vietnam, 1961–1963. Vol. 1. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1988.
Van Atta, Richard H., and Michael J. Lippitz. Transformation and Transition: DARPA’s Role in Fostering an Emerging Revolution in Military Affairs. 2 vols. Alexandria, Va.: Institute for Defense Analyses, 2003.
Warren, William F. A Review of the Herbicide Program in South Vietnam. FPO San Francisco: Commander in Chief, Scientific Advisory Group, 1968.
Watson, Robert J. Into the Missile Age. Washington, D.C.: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1997.
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
1 National Archives and Records Administration, St. Louis.
2 Getty Images
3 Getty Images
4 Getty Images
5 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
6 National Archives and Records Administration, College Park
7 and 8 National Archives and Records Administration, College Park
9 Karen Tweedy-Holmes
10 Seymour Deitchman Family
11 Stephen J. Lukasik
12 and 13 George H. Lawrence Family
14 and 15 National Archives and Records Administration, College Park
16 Charles Bates
17 and 18 National Archives and Records Administration, College Park
19 DARPA
20 Seymour Deitchman Family
21 Seymour Deitchman Family
22 National Archives and Records Administration, College Park
23 DARPA
24 and 25 National Archives and Records Administration, College Park
26 National Archives and Records Administration, College Park
27 National Archives and Records Administration, College Park
28 Allen Atkins
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sharon Weinberger is the national security editor at The Intercept and the author of Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon’s Scientific Underworld. She was a 2015–2016 fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. She has also held fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, MIT’s Knight Science Journalism program, the International Reporting Program at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. She has written on military science and technology for Nature, BBC, Discover, Slate, Wired, and The Washington Post, among others.
Before joining ARPA in 1958, William H. Godel built his reputation as a legendary intelligence operative. He started his career as a marine in World War II, and was later sent to Europe undercover—posing as a German veteran—to recruit foreign scientists to work with the Pentagon. Godel became one of ARPA’s most influential early employees, pushing the agency into an ambitious counterinsurgency program in Southeast Asia. Credit 1
Roy Johnson, a vice president from General Electric, was unknown in Washington, D.C., when he was appointed as the founding director of ARPA, the nation’s first space agency. A fierce advocate of ARPA’s role in manned space missions, he clashed with the White House and the president’s science advisers. He resigned after less than two years, to pursue a career as an artist. Credit 2
Herbert York, a nuclear physicist and the agency’s first chief scientist, resented having Roy Johnson, a businessman, in charge of ARPA. York aspired to be the military’s space czar, and got his wish in December 1958, when he was appointed to be the Pentagon’s director of defense research and engineering, a position above ARPA. He then stripped the young agency of its space work. Credit 3
Herbert York and Roy Johnson addressing a Senate committee. Though they presented a united front in public, the two men clashed over the future of ARPA. Most significantly, York ended ARPA’s work on the Saturn rocket, giving the project to NASA. Disappointed, Johnson resigned from ARPA. In 1969, a Saturn rocket launched Apollo 11, the first manned mission to the moon. Credit 4
Nicholas Christofilos, pictured here in March 1958, draws a radiation belt around the earth. The “mad Greek,” as he was known, proposed to fill the belt with charged particles to create an impenetrable shield against ballistic missiles. His idea led to Operation Argus, one of ARPA’s first projects, which involved setting off nuclear explosions in the upper atmosphere. The missile shield did not work, though Christofilos’s theory helped confirm the existence of what became known as the Van Allen radiation belt. Credit 5
In 1961, South Vietnam’s president, Ngo Dinh Diem, personally approved ARPA’s work and the founding of the Combat Development and Test Center. Colonel Bui Quang Trach (Army of the Republic of Vietnam), director of the ARPA-sponsored center, escorts President Diem for a visit to see the agency’s projects. Credit 6
Diem examines ARPA’s chemical defoliation spray system. Credit 7
Colonel Vito Pedone, head of ARPA’s field unit, discusses the military dog program, which involved sending trained canines to help South Vietnamese soldiers track Vietcong insurgents hiding in the jungle. Diem remained an enthusiastic supporter of ARPA’s work until his death in 1963. Credit 8
J. C. R. Licklider, who came to ARPA in 1962 to manage research in command and control, paved the way for the Internet and personal computing. Pictured here using a light pen to interact with a computer, he articulated a vision for “man-computer symbiosis” that would “think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by the information-handling machines we know today.” Credit 9
Situated at a former French barracks, the ARPA compound in Saigon became the center of the agency’s wartime work. The compound was home to the Combat Development and Test Center, run jointly with Vietnam’s armed forces, and ARPA’s Research and Development Field Unit. For more than a decade, ARPA coordinated everything from chemical defoliation to psychological operations from the compound. Credit 10
ARPA director Stephen Lukasik visits the agency’s field unit in Vietnam. In front of him is Lieutenant Colonel Bien (full name unknown), acting director of the Combat Development and Test Center. Following him is Colonel Ephraim M. Gershater, the head of ARPA’s Research and Development Field Unit. By the time of Lukasik’s visit in 1971, the Vietnam War was sparking nationwide protests in America, and ARPA was heavily criticized for its involvement. Lukasik eventually closed the field offices, shut down the counterinsurgency program, and transformed the research into the Tactical Technology Office, which developed many of the weapons, such as drones, associated with modern warfare. Credit 11
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George Lawrence helped bring the counterculture to ARPA in the 1960s. He was hired by the agency because of his background in psychology and computers. Yet it was his interest in unconventional science that led him to create the field of biocybernetics, which sought to control computers with the human mind. He also became the agency’s point person for parapsychology investigations, popular at the time with parts of the intelligence community. Credit 13
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During the Vietnam War, ARPA funded Bell Aerosystems to build an Individual Mobility System, better known as the Jet Belt. In the version pictured here, the propulsion system, which uses a small bypass gas turbine engine, was attached to a fiberglass corset worn by the soldier. The company touted the Jet Belt for counterinsurgency operations, claiming it could be used to deploy special operations forces to track down insurgent fighters. ARPA eventually canceled the project, but the unique engine was later incorporated into cruise missiles. Credit 15
In 1964, ARPA
sponsored a nuclear test, called the Salmon Event, which involved the denotation of a 5.3-kiloton device in the Tatum Salt Dome in Mississippi. The test, one of two nuclear detonations conducted under Project Dribble, was to help determine if the Soviet Union could conceal their nuclear tests by conducting them in underground cavities. The work was part of Project Vela, the agency’s nuclear test detection program, which was credited with paving the way in 1963 for the Limited Test Ban Treaty. Credit 16
Following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, ARPA was assigned a classified program, code-named Star, to protect the president. The work drew on ARPA’s experience with counterinsurgency in Vietnam, leveraging research on armor, small arms, and threat assessment. As part of Star, the agency sponsored an investigation of various nonlethal weapons for the Secret Service, including a gas-propelled impact projectile, pictured in testing. Credit 17
A cold liquid weapon, which officials dubbed the “squirt gun.” Credit 18
Physicist John S. Foster, center, the Pentagon’s director of defense research and engineering, speaks with Colonel Trach, second from left. Foster supported ARPA’s Vietnam program, AGILE, but felt it needed more science. In 1966, he brought in Seymour Deitchman, far right, to take over the agency’s counterinsurgency work. ARPA director Charles Herzfeld, third from right, also pushed to expand the agency’s counterinsurgency work around the world. Credit 19