The Wizards of Langley

by Jeffrey T Richelson

  Price also reported by phone to Targ that he saw a 55-foot-tall dome-shaped building as well as a 65- to 75-foot-tall cement silo-like building south of the dome-shaped building. However, there were no buildings at URDF-3 that resembled either of the buildings Price described. In the general area where Price claimed the buildings were located were a partially earth-covered tank and a tall cylindrical tank or tower.108

  For the evaluator, it seemed impossible to imagine how Price came up with a likeness to the actual crane unless he either saw it through remote viewing or was “informed of what to draw by someone knowledgeable of URDF-3.” The evaluator also noted that “the experiment was not controlled to discount the possibility that [Price] could talk to other people—such as the Disinformation Section of the KGB.” (Price did speak to Targ, with only the SRI experimenter’s side of the conversation audible to the CIA monitors.) But the evaluator also found Price’s repeated reporting of objects that did not exist at URDF-3 as “difficult to understand.” He suggested one rather obvious explanation—if Price “mentions enough specific objects (such as three different types of gantry cranes when there is really only one), he will surely hit on one object that is actually present.” He went on to ask, “if the user of Price’s remote viewing talents had no way of checking, how could he differentiate fact from fiction?”109

  The third day produced “the most negative evidence yet and tends to discredit Price’s ability to remotely view URDF-3.” That evidence was Price’s response to a request that he investigate whether four buildings that he described as separate were really the surface elements of a single underground building. He “looked” underground as requested and reported, “No, that’s a concrete apron, and there’s nothing subterranean right in that particular area.” In fact, the four separate buildings were four sections of a 50-foot-deep underground building.110

  The overall judgment of the evaluator was that “the validity of Price’s remote viewing of URDF-3 appears to be a failure . . . the only positive evidence of the rail-mounted gantry crane was far outweighed by the large amount of negative evidence noted in the body of this analysis.” The evaluator also said it was unfortunate that much of the experiment was conducted over the phone with only the SRI experimenter’s voice being recorded. He suggested that “future experiments be more tightly controlled to discount the possibility of the subject discussing the material with people not involved in the experiment.”111

  (Only years later, after the fall of the Soviet Union, would American scientists tour the facility and discover what the Soviet scientists were working on there. They were not trying to avoid nuclear testing restrictions or build a particle-beam weapon. Rather, research at URDF-3 was geared to developing a nuclear-powered rocket for space flight.)112

  In 1974 and in succeeding years, Puthoff and Targ claimed the experiment a success, pointing to the description of the large crane.* ORD officers did not agree, feeling that in the absence of control experiments, Price’s successes could be described as lucky guessing. Such skepticism led OTS to issue a challenge to SRI—do something of genuine operational value. A number of ideas were elicited from personnel in OTS and the Operations directorate. The idea selected was to seek to aid Division D in its job of installing audio collection systems.113

  The targets chosen were the code rooms of two Chinese embassies, one of which was in Africa, whose interiors were known to the audio teams because they had made surreptitious entries several years earlier. Price was instructed to view the embassies remotely, locate the code rooms, and extract information that could enable a member of the audio team to determine whether Price was likely to be of operational value in future undertakings.114

  According to project officer Ken Kress, Price “correctly located code-rooms, produced copious data, such as the location of interior doors and colors of marble stairs and fireplaces that were accurate and specific.” At the same time, “much was also vague and incorrect.” One operations officer did conclude, according to Kress, that remote viewing “offers definite operational possibilities.”115

  Not everyone was as enthusiastic. The experiments were followed by a review by the Operations directorate, OTS, and ORD. ORD project officers felt that the results “were not productive or even competent” and therefore decided to terminate funding to SRI. James Hirsch, then ORD director, later recalled that the experiments were conducted without proper scientific protocols—that CIA officers present during the experiments knew where the code rooms were and thus were subject to the “unconscious elicitation of information.” OTS also ceased funding SRI’s experiments—but it did sign Price to a personal services contract, and Price was assigned to work with an OTS psychologist.116

  Several OTS staffers who had volunteered to attempt remote viewing were chosen and given the geographic coordinates of a site in Libya. They described new construction that “could be an SA-5 missile training site.” According to Kress, the “Libyan desk officer was immediately impressed” and told him that an agent had reported essentially the same story.117

  The OTS psychologist passed a second set of Libyan coordinates to Pat Price, who quickly responded with a report describing a guerrilla training site along with a maplike drawing of the installation. He also described an alleged related underwater sabotage training facility several hundred kilometers away on the coast. The data were passed to the Libyan Desk, which evaluated part of the report immediately and part after obtaining special reconnaissance coverage. According to Kress, some of Price’s information was verified by reconnaissance, and his description of the underwater facility was similar to an agent’s report. A follow-up request to Price to provide information on activities inside the facilities as well as on plans and intentions went unanswered when Price, whose paranormal abilities apparently didn’t extend to precognition, died of a heart attack a few days later.118

  Price had been the last vestige of the CIA’s remote-viewing effort, and his death soon ended the CIA’s efforts to employ parapsychology for intelligence purposes—although not the efforts of other agencies or the CIA’s study of Soviet efforts. In August 1977, Adm. Stansfield Turner, Jimmy Carter’s DCI, was asked about CIA support of parapsychology research after the Washington Post ran an article about the government’s support of psychic research. Turner noted that the CIA had a man gifted with “visio-perception” of places he had never seen but, he added with a smile, the man had died two years earlier, “and we haven’t heard from him since.” According to Gene Poteat, the CIA’s support of psychic research was a “dumb exercise” that produced “lots of laughing,” but it was born out of a knowledge that the Soviets were conducting such experiments and an attitude of “let’s not leave anything uncovered.”119*

  PYRAMIDER

  Before its transformation into OTS, the technical services division also was largely responsible for electronic agent communication systems—which for many decades had meant radio. During World War II and many years after, counterespionage agencies around the world monitored illicit radio signals that might reveal the identity, location, and activities of foreign agents. During the war, U.S. intelligence officers behind enemy lines sometimes transmitted data via a system designated JOAN-ELEANOR—receivers and tape recorders carried on an aircraft flying overhead.120

  The space age brought new possibilities. Communications could be sent to a satellite. Depending on the satellite’s orbit, the message could either be stored onboard and then “dumped” when the satellite flew over the appropriate ground station or simply relayed immediately to a ground station. By the late 1970s, the Soviet Union was operating a network oflow-earth satellites, code-named STRELA, to communicate with illegals in the United States and elsewhere.

  The first U.S. effort in the field dated back to 1965–1966. The system, designated BIRDBOOK, was, by subsequent standards, primitive. The intelligence officer or agent would carry the briefcase antenna system into a suitable building, encode the message, load it, go to a windowsill on an upper floor
of a building directly under the path of the satellite, open the antenna, and point it in the direction of the satellite. The satellite would send an unlocking signal, and the transmission would begin. To verify that the signal had been properly received, the opening and closing portions were transmitted back by the satellite. The whole process had to be completed in less than five minutes, so that the Committee for State Security (KGB) would be unlikely to locate the site.121

  That effort was, according to John McMahon, “not all that successful.” 122 Two years later, plans for a new system involved only one satellite in low-earth orbit. In addition to collecting transmissions from agents, the CIA gave some consideration to using the satellite to transmit misleading data that would be intercepted by the Soviets. According to Victor Mar-chetti, “the Russians would go bananas trying to figure out what it meant, when actually it meant nothing.” But there was some concern that Soviet fears might lead the Soviet Union to take drastic action, including an attack on the satellite. In addition, there were doubts that the technology existed to develop the system properly.123

  By late 1972, the concept for an agent communications satellite system had changed dramatically. In addition, the science and technology directorate, and particularly the Office of Special Projects, had taken the lead in managing the design of the planned system. Les Dirks, then the deputy director of OSP (and soon to become director of OD&E), was charged with supervising the project. A possible system was described in a December 14, 1972, TRW submission, “Proposal for Covert Communications Satellite Study.” That study, along with related studies, had been designated Project PYRAMIDER. So secret were the studies that the CIA specified that only individuals holding BYEMAN clearances—those cleared to know of NRO projects—were eligible to work on PYRAMIDER.124

  Dirks’s office envisioned three basic types of signals that the satellite should be able to receive. The most important were those from human assets, whether officers or agents, in the field. The system would also be used to receive signals from emplaced sensors, which might detect seismic waves from a nuclear blast or telemetry from a missile test. In addition, the satellite system should be able to serve as a backup communications system to installations and facilities in the event that regular communications were knocked out or otherwise impaired.125

  The CIA had a number of other requirements: The system should “provide maximum protection of the user against signal detection and direction finding leading to determination of user location.” Without the necessary security, the covert satellites would simply be mute witnesses as CIA intelligence assets were hauled away to a grim fate. The system also must minimize dependence on overseas ground stations. A third characteristic required was “multiple simultaneous access capability to users employing different types of traffic, data rates, modulation techniques, and radiated power levels.” And in contrast to BIRDBOOK, PYRAMIDER had to enable senders to transmit data at the time and place of their choosing. The system should also “provide protection against traffic analysis, which could imply numbers, types, purpose and location of users.”126

  In attempting to satisfy such concerns, agency-contractor TRW considered a variety of approaches, both with respect to the satellite and the means of communicating with them. Transmission techniques examined included “spread spectrum,” burst, or concealed transmissions, as well as frequency-hopping. In the first case, the power level of the signal was reduced and thus harder to detect. In the second, the signal would be compressed and transmitted very rapidly—the expectation being that the extremely short transmission time would minimize the probability of detection. The contractor also examined the possibility of hiding the signal in existing radio or television signals. The apparently innocent signal when received in the United States would be stripped of its cover to reveal the secret signal. Encryption was also considered. Finally, TRW looked at frequency-hopping techniques, in which the frequency on which the signal was transmitted would repeatedly change over the course of the transmission. In its report, TRW noted that use of a frequency-hopping strategy would “reduce aircraft intercept radius in remote areas to twenty nautical miles.”127

  It is not clear exactly what communications strategy TRW recommended. What is clear is that the proposed space segment would consist of three satellites in geosynchronous orbit—at 60, 180, and 300 degrees from CIA headquarters. The locations above which the satellites would “hover” would apparently be the Atlantic Ocean (about 10 degrees east), the Indian Ocean (about 70 degrees east), and the Pacific Ocean (about 135 degrees west). Signals sent to the Atlantic and Pacific satellites would be relayed straight to the CIA; those from the Indian Ocean satellite would be relayed through another satellite or from a ground station, which for the purposes of the study was assumed to be on Guam.128

  The spacecraft itself would be launched from Cape Canaveral and have a 100-foot-wide concave antenna. The PYRAMIDER study was completed in July 1973. That fall, the CIA realized Congress would not provide the funding required to transform PYRAMIDER from a study to a functioning system and shelved the project.129 But that would not be the end of DS&T’s work on covert communications satellites.

  JENNIFER*

  On November 4, 1972, the Glomar Explorer was launched, ostensibly to mine the ocean floor for metals, especially manganese, which is important for producing steel. Of its CIA-selected 170-man crew, 40 formed the mining staff and knew of the ship’s secret mission to retrieve parts of the Soviet Gulf submarine that had imploded in 1968. After its test run, the ship returned to Los Angeles, rendezvoused with the HMB-1, and on June 20, 1974, headed out to sea on the recovery mission. At that point, Project AZORIAN became Project JENNIFER.130

  New York Times investigative reporter Seymour Hersh had learned of the Glomar Explorer’s true mission but had agreed to withhold exposing it at the request of DCI William Colby, and the cover story had held. To those interested at all, the ship would be mining manganese nodules from the Pacific depths in a purely commercial enterprise. Although several foreign ships came near to watch the Glomar at work, they didn’t stay long and floated off, their captains apparently convinced that nothing more than the advertised mission was under way.131

  By the middle of July, the Glomar Explorer reached the submarine site, and the crew set to work with the guidance of a computer and bottom-placed transducer so that the barge would stray no more than fifty feet from the mother ship. Pipe from the ship was attached to giant grapplingclaws, which resembled a series of six interconnected ice tongs hanging from a long platform. The ship’s crew then began to feed length after length of pipe through the hole. By the time the claw reached the target portion of submarine (the bow and center structure) 16,000 feet below, the pipe itself weighed more than 40,000 pounds. Claw operators used television cameras equipped with strobe lights to see what they were doing.132

  After fourteen-plus hours, the almost 200-foot-long target was about 5,000 feet off the ocean floor, with another 11,000 to go. But, according to accounts given by U.S. officials, two or three prongs of the claw had become entangled in the seabed. The claws were pulled through the seabed to encircle the submarine, but in the process some of the prongs were bent out of shape and thus were unable to fully support the submarine segment. Most of it fell back into the ocean, including the conning tower, three missiles, and the vessel’s code room (with the codebooks, decoding machines, and burst transmitters), and sank to the seabed. Only about a 38-foot section was retrieved. Among the items reportedly recovered were two nuclear torpedoes and the bodies of six Soviet seamen, including the submarine’s nuclear weapons officer. The journal he had kept of his training and assignments was also recovered, and it provided detailed information on Soviet naval nuclear systems operation and procedures. The Glomar returned on August 12, 1974.133

  It was also discovered that the Soviets used wooden two-by-fours in the building of some of the sub’s compartments—an extremely crude method—and the exterior welding of the hull was uneven and pitte
d, with the hull itself an uneven thickness. Hatch covers and valves also were crudely constructed, compared with those on U.S. submarines. Two torpedoes recovered were determined to be powered by electric motors, and another two were steam-powered, which indicated that the submarine’s firing tubes were not interchangeable. Several books and journals were recovered, and some of the pages could be deciphered after chemical treatment. Apparently included was a partial description of Soviet ciphers in effect in 1968.134

  The six Soviet seamen were buried at sea in a nighttime ceremony on September 4, 1974. Before the vault carrying their bodies was lowered into the ocean, the U.S. and Soviet national anthems were played, and a short address followed. The speaker noted that “the fact that our nations have had disagreements doesn’t lessen in any way our respect for [the seamen],” and that “as long as nations are suspicious of each other . . . brave men will die as these men have died in the service of their country.” (The fifteen-minute ceremony was filmed by the CIA, and in 1992, DCI Robert Gates gave a tape of the ceremony to Russian President Boris Yeltsin.)135

  The Glomar Explorer never got a second chance at the rest of the submarine, although the CIA wanted one. On February 7, 1975, a Los Angeles Times story, “U.S. Reported After Russian Submarine/Sunken Ship Deal by CIA, Hughes Told,” revealed the project, although the story was pushed onto page eighteen at Colby’s request. Similarly, the New York Times buried the story on page thirty. But the CIA had to believe that even if KGB officials didn’t read newspapers beyond page one, they would not have missed Jack Anderson’s discussion of the project on national television. As a result, Colby later wrote, “There was not a chance that we could send the Glomar out again on an intelligence project without risking the lives of our crew and inciting a major international incident.”136