The Wizards of Langley

by Jeffrey T Richelson

  *That did not stop FBIS analysts in 1979 from anticipating the Chinese invasion of Vietnam by demonstrating, with rare exceptions, that the wording of authoritative

  Chinese warnings to Vietnam had been used only in instances in which Beijing used military force. (Remarks by William O. Studeman, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, Symposium on “National Security and National Competitiveness: Open Source Solutions,” December 1, 1992, McLean, Va., p. 9.)

  8

  BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS

  Leslie Dirks resigned as head of the Directorate of Science and Technology in 1982. Perhaps he was already beginning to experience the effects of what would turn out to be the early onset of Alzheimer’s disease.* By 1999, he could no longer even remember the people he worked with at CIA, or what they had accomplished together.

  The directorate Dirks left behind on July 3, 1982, if not quite the empire that Wheelon and Duckett had created, was still a key component of the CIA and intelligence community. The damage from the loss of the Iranian stations had been partially alleviated by the establishment of the CHESTNUT sites in China. The KH-11/CRYSTAL program had progressed to the point where it would soon become America’s sole satellite imagery system. A follow-on to RHYOLITE was in the works and would make its debut in 1985.

  Rather than replace Dirks with his deputy James Taylor, William Casey, who became Ronald Reagan’s first DCI, brought Evan Hineman back from the intelligence directorate, where he was serving as associate deputy director. Taylor stayed on as associate deputy director for science and technology until late September and subsequently become the agency’s executive director.1

  Recruiting a successor for Taylor proved difficult, and the job remained vacant for over six months, when James Hirsch returned to the CIA. After a stint on the Intelligence Community Staff, Hirsch had left the agency in late 1978 to do national security analysis for the BETAC Corporation. When Hineman called him in 1983, he had been doing private consulting for over a year and had grown tired of the life. One condition he placed onaccepting the job was that in addition to his overt position as Hineman’s deputy in the directorate, he also become his Program B deputy. With that issue settled, Hirsch resumed his career at the CIA in early May 1983.2

  TEARING DOWN THE WALLS

  In 1997, Hineman addressed a gathering at CIA headquarters, which celebrated the thirty-fifth anniversary of the science and technology directorate. He recalled that when he had taken charge of the directorate fifteen years earlier, all of its six offices had “built walls around themselves.”3

  At staff meetings, each office director would warily share a bit of information about his office’s activities. After the meeting, they would visit Hineman individually for far more detailed discussions of their projects. The new deputy director, who felt that he didn’t have “depth in technical smarts,” wanted a more team-oriented approach. Given the considerable talent spread across the directorate, each office could benefit from the insights and suggestions of people in other offices.4

  To try to correct the problem, Hineman, along with the directors and deputy directors of each office, met away from CIA headquarters for a few days in September 1982. Officials from each office disclosed about 90 percent of what they doing, far more than they had in any previous staff meeting. One result was to “put the problems of the directorate on the table,” to be addressed across the DS&T. The meeting also resulted in shifting some people and funds from one part of the directorate to another.5

  Second, Hineman sought to break down the barriers between offices in different directorates, particularly between NPIC, the technical service, and development and engineering offices and their consumers in the operations directorate. By 1982, OTS had been outside of the operations directorate for almost a decade and had lost some of its feel for that culture. Both NPIC and OD&E provided support to clandestine operations through the acquisition and analysis of imagery to aid covert action and espionage operations. Hineman arranged for an interchange of staffers from the relevant offices to help improve understanding across the directorate. During his early years in office, Hineman recruited Thomas Twet-ten, a veteran of the operations directorate and subsequently its chief, to serve as a chief of operations of the Office of Technical Service.6

  According to Twetten, he was able to serve as a bridge between the operations directorate and OTS. In some cases, the operations people would get a “silly notion” about some equipment they thought would be useful, and Twetten would go “have a chat” with them and talk them out of it. On other occasions, he would talk OTS out of canceling work on some project that was likely to be of great use to the operations side of the agency within a decade—a use that “there was no way for them to see.” The apparent value of such interaction led to the creation of communications mechanisms between OTS and the Directorate of Operations at a number of levels. In addition, Jack Downing subsequently succeeded Twetten as the operations directorate’s senior representative in OTS, serving as its deputy director. (Downing would also eventually succeed Twetten as the CIA’s Deputy Director for Operations.)7*

  UAVS

  Among the projects that ORD director Philip Eckman might have briefed his fellow office chiefs on in September 1982 was one being undertaken by AeroEnvironment, a small California firm with a reputation for innovation, whose involvement was part of a series of studies to find the lightest practical aircraft. AeroEnvironment’s assignment was to build an unmanned, solar-powered, propeller-driven aerial vehicle (UAV). The UAV, designated HALSOL (high-altitude solar energy), was expected to fly at 65,000 feet for weeks at a time.8 Such an aircraft would allow prolonged observation of a target by a single platform (and at relatively low cost)—something that neither aircraft nor satellites could accomplish. Such a “stationary” eye in the sky could enable the CIA to monitor developments at a nuclear test site, the massing of troops near a neighbor’s borders, or a battle in progress.

  The HALSOL prototype, completed in 1983, was constructed of state-of- the art composites, plastics, and foam. It made nine flights that year at the top-secret Area 51 at Groom Lake, Nevada. The plane, with a 100- foot wingspan, eventually flew at 2,000 feet for thirty to sixty minutes, powered by rechargeable zinc batteries. The flights demonstrated that if the plane had been equipped with the solar arrays and power-control equipment available at the time, it would have become too heavy when any useful sensor payload was added. The plane was parked in long-term storage, in the event that lighter materials became available in the future.9

  HALSOL never became a CIA asset, but it was one of a number of projects that eventually found their way to other parts of the government or the civilian sector. HALSOL was first resurrected as a Department of Defense project and then as a NASA program. In 1994, the Defense Department, under the code name RAPTOR TALON, took the aircraft, then designated PATHFINDER, out of storage and began testing its capability as a platform that could be used to detect missile launches. When that program was also canceled, NASA was next in line, and PATHFINDER became part of NASA’s Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology program.10

  In 1983, the CIA became involved in another, much more expensive and more secretive aerial program—which was expected to satisfy requirements for a number of potential users, particularly the Strategic Air Command. Among those working on it was OD&E’s David Kier. The “Q Program,” with the Q standing for QUARTZ, became the planned successor to the SR-71 after plans for a Mach 5 reconnaissance plane were scrapped sometime in the 1980s. The projected development of QUARTZ pushed aside a Navy program, AXILLIARY, to produce an aircraft that would hover off the Soviet coast. The aircraft was to detect the launch of the Backfire bombers that would attack the U.S. fleet in the advent of war.11

  The planned QUARTZ vehicle was a Lockheed design, which bested Boeing’s blueprint in a highly secret competition—although Boeing did win a subsequent competition to design the wings and flight controls (with Lockheed handling the sensors and fuselage). It w
ould look like a B-2, fly at subsonic speeds at high altitudes, and have a 250-foot wingspan. In addition, it was to have alternative pods—one that permitted it to be flown by a pilot for ferry flights and testing, the other that allowed unmanned flight for dangerous reconnaissance missions. “It was going to do everything and cook breakfast too,” said one official.12

  But the cost per vehicle would be enormous—somewhere between $500 million to $1 billion. “It was so goddamn expensive nobody could even envision how to pay for it,” the same official noted. In addition, there was concern about loss of the plane’s secrets if it was brought down over enemy territory. “We would have to bomb the country to keep them from getting their hands on it,” according to another official. As a result, QUARTZ was canceled during a late 1991 meeting whose participants included NRO director Martin Faga and DCI Robert Gates.13

  QUARTZ did spawn plans for two successively less expensive versions—the Tier 3 and Tier 3- (subsequently designated Dark Star) UAVs. But both programs were canceled before any aircraft were built. Eventually the United States would have to settle for a more modest UAV program—the Air Force’s Global Hawk.14

  SECRET WARS

  When Hineman took office, the Reagan administration, including DCI William Casey, was already committed to a secret war to undermine the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, a war that the Office of Technical Service would be called upon to assist. In March 1981, President Reagan transmitted his first “Presidential Finding on Central America” to Congress. It authorized CIA funding of selected Sandinista opponents and an “arms interdiction program” whose stated aim was to halt the flow of weapons from Nicaragua to guerrillas in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.15

  The main guerrilla force took shape in August 1981 when the 15th of September Legion and the Nicaragua Democratic Union joined with other anti-Sandinista forces to form the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, with 4,000 to 5,000 soldiers. A November 16, 1981, National Security Council meeting resulted in the CIA’s being assigned responsibility for creating a paramilitary squad of exiles, working with the governments of Honduras and Argentina as “appropriate.” A 500-man force would supplement the 1,000-man force being trained by Argentina. On December 1, Casey presented a second presidential finding to Congress and depicted the program as being limited to attacks against the Cuban presence and the Cuban/Sandinista support infrastructure in Nicaragua.16

  On January 4, 1982, Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 17, which noted that it was U.S. policy “to assist in defeating the insurgency in El Salvador, and to oppose actions by Cuba, Nicaragua, or others to introduce into Central America heavy weapons, troops from outside the region, trained subversives, or arms and military supplies for insurgents.”17

  Shortly after Casey’s appearance before Congress, the CIA station in Tegucigalpa doubled in size. The initial phase of CIA training in weapon uses, tactics, and communications, conducted in Honduras, was followed by Contra raids in January and February 1982 on small village outposts in northern Nicaragua. On March 14, 1982, CIA-equipped saboteurs blew up two major bridges in Chinandega and Nueva Segovia provinces. According to the DIA’s July 16, 1982, Weekly Intelligence Summary, between March 14 and June 21, the Contras sabotaged highway bridges, attempted to destroy fuel tanks, and attacked small military patrols and individual Sandinista soldiers. Targets included a customs warehouse, buildings belonging to the Ministry of Construction, crops, and civilian personnel involved in Nicaraguan social service programs.18

  In July 1983, the CIA began aiding another anti-Sandinista group, Eden Pastora’s Democratic Revolutionary Alliance (ARDE). The agency supplied ARDE with 500 Soviet AK-47 assault rifles, transporting them from Israel to Venezuela and finally to Tortuguero, a Costa Rican fishing lodge near the Nicaraguan border.19

  In addition to supporting the Contras, the CIA initiated its own campaign against the Sandinistas. It recruited a group of specially trained “unilaterally controlled Latino assets” (UCLAs)—Spanish-speaking operatives recruited from El Salvador, Honduras, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, and Bolivia. The operations were authorized by a presidential finding submitted to Congress in September 1983. Between then and April 1984, the agency carried out twenty-two or more attacks against vital Nicaraguan installations, in particular industrial and transportation targets, apparently in an effort to deliver quicker and more effective strikes against the Sandinistas than had been provided by previous efforts.20

  The first attack by U.S.-supported Contras occurred on September 8, 1983. Speedboats manned by the UCLAs, and launched from a mother ship anchored twelve miles offshore, hit an oil pipeline at Puerto Sandino, temporarily halting the unloading of oil. On October 2, two 380,000-gallon fuel tanks were blown up at Puerto Benjamin Zeledon on Nicaragua’s east coast. Eight days later, the port of Corinto, Nicaragua’s largest commercial port, was hit. The CIA’s Latino commandos positioned their speedboats behind a South Korean ship and then fired mortars and grenades at five large oil and gasoline storage tanks, igniting 3.4 million gallons of fuel. The Nicaraguan government claimed that more than 100 people were injured in the attack and 25,000 inhabitants of the city had to be evacuated while a fire raged out of control for two days.21

  In 1984, the Office of Technical Service began to play a significant role in the anti-Sandinista effort. Starting in January, the CIA’s UCLAs and Contra guerrillas, operating from a mother ship, used speedboats to begin depositing mines in the shipping channels of Nicaragua’s major Atlantic and Pacific coast ports—Corinto, Puerto Sandino, and El Bluff. The mines were large metal cylinders, about 10 feet long and 21 inches in diameter, stuffed with 300 pounds of C-4 plastic explosive and another 300 pounds of inert material to enhance their stability on the seabed. They were placed 2 to 3 feet below the surface of the water, anchored into the bottom, in all channels of the 3 ports. The mines were generally magnetic, but some may have been acoustic. A total of 39 mines were planted between January 7 and March 30, 20 in Corinto, 15 in Puerto Sandino, and 4 in El Bluff.22

  The first victim was a Japanese ship that struck a mine outside Corinto on January 3 and had to be towed back into port. On the night of February 29, the CIA’s Latino assets placed four magnetic mines in Corinto’s harbor. ARDE’s “Barracuda Commandos” took credit for the operation. As NSC staffer Oliver North wrote to national security adviser Robert McFarlane, “our intention is to severely disrupt the flow of shipping essential to Nicaraguan trade during the peak export period.” There was also the desire to “further impair the already critical fuel capacity in Nicaragua.” North noted that in one particular case, “while we could probably find a way to overtly stop the tanker from loading/departing, it is our judgement that destroying the vessel and its cargo will be far more effective in accomplishing our overall goal of applying stringent economic pressure. It is entirely likely that once a ship has been sunk no insurers will cover ships calling in Nicaraguan ports.”23

  By early April 1984, ten commercial ships had been hit by CIA mines—four Nicaraguan and six non-Nicaraguan (registered to Japan, the Netherlands, Liberia, Panama, and the Soviet Union). At least eight merchant marine vessels turned back from Nicaraguan ports to find safer waters, including a Mexican oil tanker carrying 75,000 barrels of much-needed fuel. The mining operation cost the Nicaraguans more than $10 million—cotton and coffee piled up on the docks, and imports and exports had to be trucked to and from ports in neighboring Central American countries.24

  OTS had been responsible for establishing the technical requirements for the demolitions. Its Weapons Group produced the mine casings from sewer pipes, and the fuses were apparently provided by the Naval Surface Weapons Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. The mines were designed not to sink ships but to damage and disable them.25

  HAZARDOUS DUTY

  Among those attending Hineman’s off-site meeting in September 1982 was Gen. Rutledge Parker Hazard, also known as “Hap” Hazard. A 1946 West Point graduate, Hazard spent the next twenty-seven years i
n the U.S. Army, including tours of duty as missile intelligence officer, an artillery group commander in Vietnam, and the manager of three different guided missile systems. When he retired from the Army in late 1973, he immediately joined the CIA. In 1978, he became the director of NPIC.26

  Hazard’s tenure as NPIC director ended in February 1984, shortly after Robert M. “Rae” Huffstutler received a call from Hineman. At the time, Huffstutler was a twenty-five-year veteran of the agency and head of the intelligence directorate’s Office of Soviet Analysis. From 1967 to 1982, he had served in the Office of Strategic Research.27

  Hineman believed that it was necessary to upgrade NPIC. Just as the advent of the KH-9 had required changes, so had the arrival of the KH-11—only more so. Part of that transition had been the creation of a Priority Exploitation Group (PEG) at Ft. Belvoir that could scan incoming imagery. Meanwhile, at NPIC headquarters, Building 213 in the Washington Navy Yard, the Imagery Exploitation Group (IEG), except in crises situations, waited, as in the past, for the product to arrive. But the transition had not been fully made, which was not surprising. There had always been more emphasis on funding expensive collection systems and less on assuring that resources had been earmarked for the processing and exploitation of the data collected. But in 1984, with the end of the KH-8 and KH-9 film-return programs in sight, the need to adjust to the digital world was even more pressing.28

  Early in his tenure, Hineman went to NPIC for a briefing on the center’s ability to exploit “soft-copy” data—KH-11 digital imagery that resided in an interpreter’s computer rather than in “hard-copy” form on a light table. He discovered that NPIC was unable to transfer the digital signals into a computer so that imagery analysts could fully exploit the data using a variety of algorithms. It was still necessary to use the digital signals to produce a hard-copy image, and then scan the image into the computer—a time-consuming, expensive process that also limited the extent to which the images could be enhanced.29