The Soviet missile program was one impetus for the CIA’s involvement in ELINT, but so too was the Soviet space program. Outer space had become a major battleground in the rivalry between the two superpowers. The Soviets had seized the initiative with the launch of Sputnik 1 in November 1957 and, in the years following, threatened to embarrass the United States further by sending unmanned spacecraft to photograph and land on the moon, Venus, and Mars.
Rather than wait for the Soviets to announce their missions, accept whatever information they provided, and trust that it was accurate, the CIA wanted the capability of independently monitoring Soviet space efforts. The agency sought to provide advance warning of missions, to determine whether Soviet claims were accurate, and to identify the failures that the Soviets would surely try to conceal.
One target of the CIA’s monitoring effort was the first images of the far side of the moon, which Luna 3 sent back to earth in October 1959. Nicholas Johnson, an American expert on the Soviet space program, assessed the mission as “one of the most astounding technological achievements of any nation, considering the state of the art of the time.” The spacecraft developed the pictures on board and then broadcast them to ground stations when its orbit swung closest to earth.155
Receiving the broadcast was a matter of employing collection equipment capable of picking up Luna’s very weak signal. Deciphering it was dependent on knowing the format in which it had been transmitted. Neither factor was a problem for the Soviet Union, but the task was not so simple for the United States. The effort, according to former CIA official Henry Plaster, involved “special ELINT collection techniques, new approaches to signal analysis, . . . and intelligence interpretation of pictures.”156 The first problem was solved with the cooperation of Sir Bernard Lovell, head of the Jodrell Bank Radio Observatory at the University of Manchester in England. The observatory’s 250-foot radio telescope could pick up the weak signals undetectable by standard U.S. ELINT collection facilities—which it did on October 7. Graduate students there, however, in trying to eliminate “noise” from the recorded signal, also obliterated much of the video data. CIA technical analysts had only a single poorly recorded intercept to work with but were able to conclude that the Soviet pictures were authentic.157
The CIA also was able to verify Soviet claims that the USSR had developed a radio-television system that allowed continuous monitoring of the dogs carried aboard their Sputnik 5 and 6 earth-orbiting missions of August 19 and December 1, 1960. The signals were recorded by ELINT sites and OSI analysts were able to transform the Sputnik 6 signals into pictures, which supported the Soviet claim.158
On October 10, 1960, an SS-6 rocket lifted off from Tyuratam, at the instant when the earth’s rotation brought it into alignment with a minimum energy path to Mars. Another SS-6 was launched on October 14. The established Soviet practice of launching probes at the precise moment that was optimum for a mission led the CIA to conclude that the launches involved Mars flybys. Intercepted telemetry showed that the loaded upper stages weighed more than thirty tons. Telemetry also told the CIA something that the Soviets, who never announced the missions, did not—that the attempted Mars flybys failed when the third-stage engines ignited and then misfired after burning for only a few seconds. CIA analysts also were able to determine from the very slow acceleration revealed by the telemetry that the vehicles were the most heavily loaded ever launched.159
Four months after their Mars failures, the Soviets tried to send two spacecraft on a Venus flyby—Sputnik 7 on February 4, 1961, and Venera 1 on February 12. Sputnik 7 never left earth orbit, but after almost one orbit of the earth, Venera 1 headed toward Venus. Placing a space probe in a “parking orbit” and then ejecting it toward its target represented another major technical first for the Soviets, who published a description of the launch, orbit, and ejection phases. Their claims proved to be consistent with the data intercepted.160
However, neither the CIA nor any other U.S. intelligence organization was able to verify or contradict later bulletins on the mission’s progress. Jodrell Bank again came to the aid of the CIA’s ELINT effort, when its radio telescope was employed to track the Venera 1 spacecraft that the Soviets hoped would reach Venus. Bernard Lovell announced that the spacecraft apparently failed before the end of February, after completing only a small portion of its planned three-month mission. Ironically, when the probe stopped communicating with its Soviet controllers, fifteen days after launch, they had also turned to Lovell for assistance. In mid-May when the probe was to have reached Venus, Jodrell Bank detected possible signals from the vehicle and reported them to Moscow.161
The CIA’s interception activities in 1959 focused primarily on ELINT, but they also involved interception of communications. This task was performed by perhaps the most secret unit within the very secret Deputy Directorate for Plans—Division D, which was formally a component of the directorate’s Foreign Intelligence Staff.162
CIA defector Philip Agee reported that by 1964, a Division D contingent had been stationed in the embassy in Montevideo, Uruguay, “for some years.” The team used “sophisticated equipment” to “scan frequencies . . . and record radio communications” as part of a program designated ZRBEACH. In addition, Agee claimed that mobile intercept units were stationed as close as possible to encryption machines—particularly those housed in the Soviet embassy—to capture their emanations, which could be employed to decipher the messages.163
According to William Martin and Bernon Mitchell, two NSA mathematicians who defected to the Soviet Union in 1960, Division D’s mission also included obtaining cryptographic information through more conventional espionage operations. The defectors claimed that Division D bribed a code clerk in Turkey’s Washington embassy to supply information that helped NSA read Turkey’s coded messages.164
EARTHLING
During the 1950s, Pakistan hosted a number of U.S. intelligence operations, some run by the CIA and some by the military, that were designed to collect intelligence about Soviet nuclear, missile, and space activities. Missions to collect debris from Soviet nuclear tests included a stop at Lahore; U-2 flights took off from Peshawar air base; and the U.S. Air Force eavesdropped on the Soviet Union and China from Pakistan.165
In March 1961, yet another U.S. intelligence-collection project began operating from Pakistan, in which the CIA was a partner. Rather than reAnother plot called for James antennae, the project employed an over-the-horizon (OTH) radar to monitor Soviet missile tests. Such radars use the ionosphere as a reflector for high-frequency radio energy and therefore are not limited to the “line-of-sight” restrictions of conventional ground-based radars. OTH radars promised to provide information on missile and aircraft activity up to 3,100 miles away—by bouncing a radio signal off the ionosphere and onto the target and receiving the reflected signal. The technology had been tested by the CIA, which, along with the Office of Naval Research, shared a U.S.-based radar facility code-named CHAPEL BELL.166
Plans for installing an overseas radar were first formulated in 1958. First designated CHAPLAIN, then EARTHLING, the radar was designed primarily for detecting ICBM or satellite launches from the Tyuratam launch site. However, it also proved useful in providing data regarding some Soviet high-altitude atmospheric nuclear tests.167
LICENSE TO KILL
Frank Olson’s death had been unintended by Sidney Gottlieb, but Gottlieb and TSD did play central roles in CIA plans to assassinate two foreign leaders. In September 1960, Gottlieb prepared an assassination kit, which contained a lethal biological agent, hypodermic needles, rubber gloves, and gauze masks. He then delivered it to Lawrence Devlin, the CIA station chief in Leopodville, who had been ordered to kill Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese nationalist leader then in U.N. custody. A cable from Allen Dulles stated that “we conclude that his removal must be an urgent and prime objective.” And Lumumba was killed, but not by the CIA. Devlin never carried out his mission, although he may have been aware of the plans of Belgian agents, who
may have actually carried out the murder.168
Earlier in the year, Gottlieb had been asked by Richard Bissell, who had become the Deputy Director for Plans in late 1958, to conduct research on assassination techniques. Bissell was particularly interested in the possibility of eliminating Fidel Castro, who like his predecessor was a dictator, but unlike his predecessor was a pro-Soviet dictator.169
Bissell’s interest continued into the Kennedy administration, fueled by Kennedy’s strong desire to eliminate Castro and Soviet influence in Cuba. From 1960 until 1965, there were at least eight plots to end Castro’s life. Some of them involved nothing more scientific than a rifle and a bullet.170 Others plots depended on TSD.
Cornelius Roosevelt, a grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt and the chief of TSD during the fall and early winter of 1960, later told the CIA’s Inspector General that methods that had been considered included shellfish toxin administered by a pin, bacterial material in liquid form, bacterial treatment of a cigarette or cigar, and a handkerchief treated with bacteria. His best recollection was that bacteria in liquid form would be the best method, given that Castro frequently drank tea, coffee, or bouillon.171
Despite that conclusion, TSD provided botulinum toxin pills to Security Chief Sheffield Edwards in January 1961. However, when Edwards dropped one of the pills into a glass of water, it did not even disintegrate, much less dissolve. In February 1961, TSD delivered a new batch of pills to Edwards, with assurance of their lethality, although it is not clear that this assurance was justified. Edwards then passed them on to mobster Johnny Rosselli in Miami, who had been recruited to serve as the middleman. Later that month, or early the next, Rosselli told the CIA that the pills had been passed on to a man in Castro’s entourage who agreed to help kill the dictator, but the man returned them after losing his job and his access to Castro.172
Another plot called for James B. Donovan, the lawyer negotiating with Castro for the release of the prisoners taken during the Bay of Pigs invasion, to give scuba-diving enthusiast Castro a wet suit. TSD purchased a suit, then contaminated the breathing apparatus with tuberculosis bacilli and the suit with fungus spores that would cause a chronic skin disease called madura foot.173 But Donovan gave the Cuban dictator a wet suit on his own, and the CIA destroyed the infected suit.
*In 1952, the CIA consolidated several offices into components for intelligence, operations, and administration—the Deputy Directorates for Intelligence, Plans, and Administration. In 1965, they would become Directorates.
2
FALSE START
By November 1961, the exploitation of science and technology in pursuit of secret intelligence had become a significant component of CIA activities. While the CORONA and U-2 programs were providing valuable intelligence, the CIA was working on an improved version of CORONA, as well as the successor to the U-2, OXCART. CIA electronic intelligence operations included funding the Kirkenes station in Norway as well as operating the Beshahr station in Iran. The EARTHLING radar in Pakistan was also yielding dividends. In addition, the Office of Scientific Intelligence continued to produce intelligence on a variety of foreign developments, the most important being foreign nuclear and missile programs.
In many ways, it was exactly what James Killian and Edwin Land had in mind when they wrote Allen Dulles in 1954 about the CIA’s need to adopt scientific solutions to pierce the Iron Curtain. Dulles had been reluctant to embrace the U-2 program, but he had proved a strong advocate of the CIA’s role in such areas—defending the CIA’s role in running the U-2 program against Air Force attempts to seize control, opposing attempts to cut the number of CORONA launches, and arguing that the CIA, not the military, should operate the National Photographic Interpretation Center.1
But Dulles and, apparently, Bissell were on their way out—both undone by the April 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco. In the future, historians, commentators, and intelligence officers would debate whether the prime cause for the failure was CIA incompetence or a loss of nerve by President Kennedy. But in 1961, it was Dulles and Bissell who were going to pay the price. Brought in to replace Dulles was John McCone, a staunch Republican, the type often referred to in the press as “rock-ribbed.” McCone came to the CIA with impressive credentials in both private industry and government service. Born in 1902 and trained as an engineer, he went on to become executive vice-president of the Consolidated Steel Corporation and then founded his own engineering company, which became a major builder of ships and aircraft during World War II. His government service included stints as the Under Secretary of the Air Force (1950–1951), and Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (1958–1960).2
Killian and Land, though pleased at the CIA’s successes in science and technology, did have some concerns, ones shared by the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB, as the board of consultants had been renamed), which Killian chaired and on which Land served. They would soon bring these to the attention of the new director.
THE NEXT STEP
Killian and Land had concluded that two interrelated problems had developed with the CIA’s effort in the science and technology area. The first was Richard Bissell’s promotion to the position of Deputy Director for Plans (DDP), which put him in charge of the CIA’s espionage and covert-action operations. When Bissell assumed command of the Plans directorate in early 1959, he took the U-2, OXCART, and CORONA programs with him. What had been the stand-alone Development Projects Staff became the Development Projects Division (DPD) of the Plans directorate.3
Both Killian and Land looked at science and technology with reverence and as something to be shielded from “contamination” by the “dirty tricks” activities of Plans. Land was particularly upset at the employment of U-2s in the Bay of Pigs disaster. At one of McCone’s first meetings with the PFIAB, he discovered that Killian, Land, and others were concerned that the CIA’s scientific and technical efforts might be limited by the continuing association with Plans. To protect and strengthen those efforts, they recommended creation of a separate directorate that would focus exclusively on science and technology.4
Beyond contamination, they were probably also concerned that with DPD as but one of a number of divisions in Plans, it would not receive the same level of attention from Bissell or his successor as it had in the past—and that the status of its activities would be reduced. They might also have been concerned that the CIA’s scientific and technical effort was too scattered and had no single manager: Reconnaissance was the responsibility of DPD; the scientific intelligence and photointerpretation functions were performed within the intelligence directorate; and ELINT operations were conducted by OSI and the administration directorate’s Office of Communications. Furthermore, the initially small efforts in each field had grown substantially.5
After the meeting, McCone established a three-man working group to review the CIA’s organizational structure and activities. CIA Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick served as chairman, with PFIAB Secretary Patrick J. Coyne and retired Army General Cortland Schuyler, an adviser to New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, as the other two committee members. One topic discussed was the suggestion that a research and development directorate be established. As part of their study, they sought comment from all deputy directors. In a still-unreleased January 10 memo on “Technical Intelligence Collection,” Bissell expressed adamant opposition to the idea, explaining why he believed the DPD’s activities should be managed by his directorate.6
At a January 22, 1962, meeting of the PFIAB, McCone told Killian that he planned to establish a deputy directorate for technical collection under which all of the agency’s scientific activities would be consolidated. Bissell’s opposition to the PFIAB’s desire to remove DPD from his control, combined with the fallout from the Bay of Pigs, further strained relations with Killian and Land.7
Despite his opposition to a new directorate, Bissell was the leading candidate to become its first head. In fall 1961, McCone and Bissell had agreed that the latter would resign a
t the end of December. Not long after, McCone’s wife died, and McCone asked Bissell to stay on until he determined if he would continue as DCI. When McCone returned to Washington in January, he decided he wanted Bissell to head the new directorate. After receiving approval from Attorney General Robert Kennedy and then President Kennedy, McCone extended an offer.8
Since the Kennedy brothers had not changed their mind about the need for Bissell to leave the DDP job, it was a choice between the new directorate or departure. Bissell chose to depart. In a letter to his daughter, he explained that he felt the new position would be a demotion, that it would be very awkward to be cut off from the covert operations he had planned. “I have a horror,” he wrote, “of hanging on here to a job that is not at the center of things, as so many people do.”9
McCone was apparently under the impression in early February that Bissell was seriously considering accepting the position. But in a February 7 letter to the DCI, Bissell wrote, “I have not conveyed to you clearly my feeling with respect to my own future and have allowed a serious misunderstanding to arise.” He noted that “you have done me the great honor of urging that I remain . . . as Deputy Director (Research).” Still, he had previously “expressed to you . . . my serious misgivings about the organizational validity of this proposal” as well as his “reluctance, as a matter of personal preference, to assume certain of the responsibilities that would be involved.”10
The Wizards of Langley Page 6