Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base

Notes

1. Nevada Test and Training Range: Map reference number NTTR01, NGA stock no. 84413.

2. Nevada Test Site: Map based on NTS Boundary Coordinates: FFACO, appendix 1, January 1998, revision 2, 6. On Aug 23, 2010, the Nevada Test Site changed its name to the Nevada National Security Site. Throughout the book, I refer to it as the Nevada Test Site, as that is the name it went by for nearly sixty years.

3. 105 nuclear weapons: Department of Energy, “United States Nuclear Tests,” xii-xv. Total atmospheric for Nevada Test Site (NTS) is officially listed as 100 and total Nellis Air Force Range (NAFR) is listed as 5. Underground is 804 by U.S. plus 24 by U.S./UK for a total of 933.

4. weapons-grade plutonium and uranium: Darwin Morgan, spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, Nevada Site Office, clarified: “The [Nevada Test Site] has never been a repository for weapons grade plutonium or uranium. Of course there is the ‘expended’ material from 828 underground nuclear weapons tests that is contained within the cavities where the tests were conducted.” E-mail, September 21, 2010.

5. two known exceptions: Memo, Top Secret Oxcart, Oxcart Reconnaissance Operation Plan, BYE 2369-67, 15; second example from interview with Peter Merlin.

6. bomb’s price tag: Brookings Institute, “50 Facts about U.S. Nuclear Weapons,” fact no. 1 (1996 dollars: $20,000,000,000; 2011 dollars: $28,000,000,000).

7. was relayed to him by two men: Wiesner, Vannevar Bush, 98. This fact is hardly known; credit is usually given to General Leslie R. Groves and War Secretary Henry L. Stimson. Wiesner, Vannevar Bush’s biographer at the National Academy of Sciences (he was also a science adviser to President Eisenhower), wrote: “Bush… had the duty, after the death of President Roosevelt, of giving President

Truman his first detailed account of the bomb.”

8. no one knew the Manhattan Project was there: Wills, Bomb Power, 10–13. Wills elaborated on how Truman had some suspicions when he was vice president and approached War Secretary Henry L. Stimson, who told him to back off, which Truman did.

9. who would control its “unimaginable destructive power”: Smyth, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes, 13.7. Also known as The Smyth Report, it was released by the government six days after Hiroshima, on August 12, 1945. Here, Smyth chronicled the administrative and technical history of the Manhattan Project, also called the Manhattan Engineering District (MED). The purpose of the report was allegedly to give citizens enough information about nuclear energy for them to participate in a public debate about what to do next. The report also encouraged the idea that handing the bomb over to civilian control, as opposed to military control, would be a more democratic scenario. Instead, the controls imposed by the Atomic Energy Commission would ultimately prove to be even more impenetrable than military controls; Hewlett and Anderson, New World.

10. the concept “born classified” came to be: Quist, Security Classification, 1. Here Quist writes: “The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 was the first and, other than its successor, the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, to date the only U.S. statute to establish a program to restrict the dissemination of information. This Act transferred control of all aspects of atomic (nuclear) energy from the Army, which had managed the government’s World War II Manhattan Project to produce atomic bombs, to a five-member civilian Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). These new types of bombs, of awesome power, had been developed under stringent secrecy and security conditions. Congress, in enacting the 1946 Atomic Energy Act, continued the Manhattan Project’s comprehensive, rigid controls on U.S. information about atomic bombs and other aspects of atomic energy. The Atomic Energy Act designated the atomic energy information to be protected as ‘Restricted Data’ and defined that data.”

11. seventy thousand nuclear bombs: Brookings Institute, “50

Facts about U.S. Nuclear Weapons,” fact no. 6.

12. Atomic Energy was the first entity to control Area 51: This is one of the central organizing premises of my book and will no doubt be contested by the Atomic Energy Commission until they are forced to declassify the project to which I refer.

13. when President Clinton: The Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE) was created by President Clinton on January 15, 1994, to investigate and make public the use of human beings as subjects of federally funded research. Created by executive order and subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), the advisory committee was obligated to provide public access to its activities, processes, and papers, some of which can be viewed at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/radiation/.

14. he did not have a need-to-know: Author interview with EG&G engineer.

15. “give[s] the professional classificationist unanswerable authority”: Quist, Security Classification, 24; Schwartz, Atomic Audit, 442-51.

16. largest facility is, and always has been, the Nevada Test Site: Written correspondence with Darwin Morgan, September 21, 2010, U.S. Department of Energy, Nevada Operations Office, Office of Public Affairs and Information.

17. not controlled by the Department of Defense: It cannot yet be determined for certain if the Department of Defense (DOD) was involved in running the very first program at Area 51. Research at NARA (National Archives and Records Administration) reveals that DOD had a lot more to do with Paperclips than previously known publicly. For example, documents obtained by me through a FOIA request reveal “in the early 1950s the Defense Department [Office of Defense Research and Engineering (ORE)] and the JIOA took up overall direction of PAPERCLIP, which ran under the acronym of DEFSIP, or Defense Scientist Immigration Program.” JIOA stands for

Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency and was run by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These multiple agencies and multiple chains of command serve to hide information.

Interviews: Joerg Arnu, George Knapp, Thornton “T.D.” Barnes, Colonel Hugh Slater, Richard Mingus, Ernest “Ernie” Williams, Dr. Albert “Bud” Wheelon, Colonel Kenneth Collins, Colonel Sam Pizzo, Norio Hayakawa, Stanton Friedman

1. Nighttime is the best time: Interview with Joerg Arnu.

2. Robert Scott Lazar appeared on Eyewitness News: Interview with George Knapp; George Knapp, “Bob Lazar: The Man Behind Area 51,” Eyewitness News Investigates,

http://area51.eyewitnessnews8.com/.

3. veiled threats of incarceration: A common note among most Area 51 employees interviewed, certainly among the Air Force enlisted men, was the “threat of Leavenworth,” meaning incarceration at the largest federal security prison in the United States at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

4. Dr. Edward Teller: Teller, who died in 2003 at the age of ninetyfive, never confirmed or denied that he referred Lazar to EG&G for work at Area 51.

*contaminated with plutonium: Interviews with Richard Mingus; see notes for chapter 6.

5. for a lecture Teller was giving: The subject of Teller’s lecture was the nuclear freeze movement under way in a post-Three Mile Island world.

6. a page-1 story featuring Bob Lazar: Los Alamos Monitor, June 27, 1982, identifies Lazar as “a physicist at the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility.”

7. Lazar’s life had reached an unexpected low: The most comprehensive information on Lazar is available at the Area 51 research Web site Dreamlandresort.com, created by Joerg H. Arnu in

1999. In “The Bob Lazar Corner” one can find a time line of Lazar’s story as well as a compilation of public records, letters, and commentary about Lazar by his critics and his friends, as researched by Tom Mahood, whom I interviewed.

8. Tracy Murk: According to the wedding certificate researched by Tom Mahood. Also according to Mahood’s research, Tracy Ann Murk and Lazar married for a second time, on October 12, 1986 (the first wedding was April 19, 1986), with Murk inexplicably using the name Jackie Diane Evans.

9. committed suicide by inhaling carbon monoxide: Ibid. Death certificate #001423-86, Clark County Health District, Las Vegas, NV; cause of death: “inhalation of motor vehicle exhaust.” Sourced by Tom Mahood.

10. Fly to Area 51: Descriptions based on multiple eyewitness interviews; see Primary Interviews.

11. designed by Raytheon to detect incoming missile signals: Interview with T. D. Barnes.

12. The miner kept the secrecy oath: Interview with Colonel Slater. 13. access point Gate 385: Interview with Richard Mingus.

14. trucks from the Atomic Energy Commission motor pool: Interview with Ernie Williams. A farm boy from Nebraska, Williams’s father was a “water witch,” and Williams inherited some water-locating charm. In this manner, he is the man credited by many Roadrunners as having officially found Area 51’s first water well.

15. men dressed in HAZMAT suits: R. Kinnison and R. Gilbert, “Estimates of Soil Removal for Cleanup of Transuranics at NAEG Offsite Safety Shot Sites,” FY 1981, 1984, 1986-91.

16. would have gone through security there: Interview with anonymous EG&G employee who worked for the airline. 17. tennis matches: Interview with Dr. Wheelon.

18. jumping into the pool: Interview with Ken Collins. 19. Area 51 bar, called Sam’s Place: Interview with Colonel Pizzo.

20. According to Lazar: Lazar’s original interviews with George Knapp are available on YouTube in six parts.

21. He glanced sideways, through a small nine-by-nine-inch window: Lazar’s interview with George Knapp, part two of six, minutes 4:10-5:05. Knapp: “In an earlier interview, you had mentioned you saw what you thought may be an alien. Was it an alien? What did you see?” Lazar: “What I had said and all that occurred was that I was walking by a door, ah, a door that had a small, nine-by-nine window in it, little wires running through it. And glanced in there, and there were two… ah, either technicians, scientists, or whoever they were, looking down at something. And what that something was caught my eye and I never really did see what it was. A lot of people have asserted, well, there was an alien, they’re aliens working around there and so on and so forth, I mean, I don’t think that was the case. But, ah, who knows. I was. You know. You’re seeing all these fantastic things and your mind gets going and you know you catch something out of the corner of your eye, who knows what your mind is going to come up with so I certainly wouldn’t stand on that as fact by any means.” See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAfVZcAsTxk.

22. what was maybe an alien: Lazar’s interview with George Knapp, part two of six, minutes 2:33-3:30. Lazar says he was told the UFO he was assigned to work on originated from another planet. He says he was shown autopsy photographs of the craft’s alien pilots, which he described to Knapp in their interview: “One or two autopsy photographs I saw ah, dealt with just a small photograph, a bust shot essentially, just head, shoulders, and chest of an alien where the ah, ah, chest was cut open in a ‘T’ fashion and one single organ was removed. The organ itself in the other picture was cut and vivisectioned essentially the, ah, showing the different chambers in there. This was totally unrelated to anything I was doing but from that photograph it looked like what you see in UFO lore as the typical ‘gray’ [slang for alien] so how tall it was from what I could see, I couldn’t tell,

’cause I only saw a portion of the photograph but if everything else you see is correct, I would imagine it was three and a half or four feet tall. But ah, there again, you know all I had to see was a photograph. And you know, I didn’t have much to go on.” See

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAfVZcAsTxk&feature=related.

23. The group made a trip: Tom Mahood, “The Robert Lazar Timeline, as assembled from Public Records and Statements,” July 1994, updated July 1997, from dreamlandresort.com. In this time line Lazar and various friends made a total of three trips into the mountains behind Groom Lake. It was on the third trip that his group was stopped by guards.

24. transcripts of his wife’s telephone conversations: Ibid. 25. Norio Hayakawa: Interview with Norio Hayakawa.

26. He had bodyguards: In the interview with Knapp, Lazar said he was shot at while driving on the freeway (YouTube interview five of six, minute 6:00) and that during his debrief at Indian Springs a gun was pointed at him (ibid., minute 8:00).

27. Lie detector tests: WSVN-7 News reporter Dan Hausle’s interview with former policeman Terry Cavernetti, accessed on December 21, 2010, YouTube, “Bob Lazar Passes the Lie Detector on UFOs.”

28. Stanton Friedman: Interview with Stanton Friedman. Friedman was employed for fourteen years as a nuclear physicist and worked on many advanced nuclear and space travel systems for companies like General Motors, General Electric, and Westinghouse. He has published eighty UFO papers, written six books, and appears in many UFO documentaries.

29. Stanton Friedman’s exposй on the Roswell incident: Recollections of Roswell, Testimony from 27 Witnesses Connected with Recovery of 2 Crashed Flying Saucers in New Mexico in July 1947, DVD, 105 minutes.

30. a book based on Friedman and Moore’s research was published: Berlitz and Moore, Roswell Incident. Friedman said it was a group decision to give Berlitz author credit instead of him, as Berlitz was from the Berlitz Language School family and had the credibility necessary to sell the publisher on the book’s controversial subject matter. Charles Berlitz spoke twenty-five languages and is often listed as one of the most important linguists of the twentieth century. His 1974 book, The Bermuda Triangle, sold an estimated ten million copies.

Interviews: Colonel Richard S. Leghorn, Ralph “Jim” Freedman, Alfred “Al” O’Donnell, Lieutenant Colonel Hervey Stockman, Colonel Slater, David Myhra

1. became convinced that Martians were attacking Earth: Trenton Evening Times, October 31, 1938. Many documents relating to The War of the Worlds radio play are available at http://www.war-oftheworlds.co.uk/documents.htm.

2. Switchboards jammed: Ibid., “Log from Jersey Police, Port Norris Station.”

3. the FCC’s role: Associated Press, “Mars Monsters Broadcast Will Not Be Repeated. Perpetrators of the Innovation Regret Causing of Public Alarm,” November 1, 1938.

4. Adolf Hitler took note as well: Hand, Terror on the Air! 7. 5. Joseph Stalin had also been: Author interview with EG&G

engineer.

6. Vannevar Bush, observed the effects: Correspondence between Vannevar Bush and W. C. Forbes, June 8, 1939; Vannevar Bush, A Register of His Papers in the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

7. “Science Discovers Real Frankenstein”: Winthrop, “Science Discovers.”

8. War of the Worlds radio broadcast as an example: Zachary, Endless Frontier, 190.

9. President Roosevelt had appointed: “Vannevar Bush, A Collection of His Papers in the Library of Congress,” Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington DC.

10. his next move: Zachary, Endless Frontier, 285. Zachary wrote,

“Bush’s role in the A-bomb’s birth actually burnished his reputation. Like Truman, most Americans were thrilled by Japan’s surrender and the end of the war… Rather than interrogate the leaders of the Manhattan Project, the public embraced them. Bush’s reputation as a scientific seer grew; his image as an unmatched organizer of expertise solidified. For Bush, the atomic bomb capped off his fiveyear rise to celebrity from relative obscurity.”

11. As Americans celebrated peace: “Majority Supports Use of Atomic Bomb on Japan in WWII”: David Moore, Gallup News Service, August 5, 2005.

12. Operation Crossroads was in full swing: Author interview with Colonel Leghorn, who was the commanding officer of Task Force 1.5.2 for the operation. I am indebted to Colonel Leghorn not only for generously sharing with me recollections of his historic role at Crossroads, beginning with his departure by airplane from the Roswell Army Air Field, but for lending me original photographs taken from his airplane during the 1946 nuclear tests. He also loaned me two original yearbook-type books where I learned the operation involved more than ten thousand instruments and nearly half the world’s supply of film. The Air Force alone took nine million photographs.

13. There were barracuda everywhere: Interview with Ralph “Jim” Freedman. Freedman’s first visit to Bikini was for the nuclear test Castle Bravo, six years after Crossroads, but the barracuda problem was the same.

14. led by a king named Juda: Bradley, No Place to Hide, 158.

15. The U.S. Navy had evacuated the natives to Rongerik Atoll: The documentary Radio Bikini (1987), directed by Robert Stone, includes remarkable outtakes of AEC footage showing military personnel rehearsing how to best pitch propaganda to the natives.

16. three-bomb atomic test series: Schwartz, Atomic Audit, 102. Operation Crossroads cost an astonishing $1.3 billion in 1946 eleven months after the war’s end, more than any subsequent test series.

Crossroads involved 95 ships and 42,000 military and civilian personnel. It was a show of force.

17. a young man named Alfred O’Donnell: Interview with Alfred “Al” O’Donnell.

18. “In the face of intense fire”: Air Force Historical Research Agency, 30 Reconnaissance Squadron (ACC), Lineage, Assignments, Stations, and Honors, Major Richard S. Leghorn, http://www.afhra.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=10193.

19. Curtis LeMay rarely smiled: Kozak, LeMay, iv. 20. five cents per bird: Ibid., 9.

21. “Caveman in a Jet Bomber”: I. F. Stone, The Best of I. F. Stone, 326-28.

22. LeMay was at Bikini to determine: Rhodes, Dark Sun, 261-62.

23. Operation Crossroads was a huge event: The New York Times described it as the largest and “most stupendous single set of experiments in history.” Senator Huffman called the test a “Roman holiday in the Pacific” and promised that the “only important impression these tests are going to give the world is that the United States is not done with war.” Members of the Southern Dairy Goat Owners and Breeders Association recommended that the sheep being used during the test be substituted with U.S. congressmen, on the grounds that good goats were harder to find than congressmen were. In the days leading up to the event, protesters picketed the White House with signs that read, BIKINI: REHEARSAL FOR WORLD WAR THREE.

24. one million tons of battle-weary steel: Fact sheet, Operation Crossroads, Defense Nuclear Agency, Public Affairs Office, Washington, DC, April 5, 1984.

25. Alfred O’Donnell stood below deck: Interview with O’Donnell.

26. the DN-11 relay system: Interview with O’Donnell; copy of a handwritten letter by Herbert Grier from O’Donnell’s collection.

27. What Leghorn witnessed horrified him: Interviews with Colonel Leghorn.

28. tossed up into the air like bathtub toys: United States Atomic Energy Commission Memorandum for the Board, August 23, 1973, #718922, Naval Vessels Sunk During Operation Crossroads; AEC film footage of the explosion, Atomic Testing Museum library, Las Vegas, NV.

29. west of the Volga River: Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 22.

Leghorn believed: Interview with Colonel Leghorn. 30. what shipyards or missile-launch facilities: Ibid.; interview with

Hervey Stockman, who was the first man to fly over the Soviet Union in a U-2 spy plane.

31. Halfway across the world: Rhodes, Dark Sun, 261.

32. chain-reacting atomic pile would go critical: O’Keefe, Nuclear Hostages, 134.

33. Joseph Stalin was developing another secret weapon: Author interview with EG&G engineer.

34. secret weapon, called Hermes: Interview with Lisa Blevins, U.S. Army public affairs officer, White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico; “Report on Hermes Missile Project,” Washington National Records Center, Record Group 156.

35. belonged to Adolf Hitler: Hunt, Secret Agenda, 27.

36. secret project called Operation Paperclip: Paperclip was a postwar operation carried out by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency, a special intelligence office that reported to the director of intelligence in the War Department. Today, this would be the equivalent of reporting to the intelligence chief for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Most details about Project Paperclip remain classified despite the government’s insistence otherwise. Paperclip began before the

war ended, and it was originally called Project Overcast and/or Project Pajamas. It had two primary goals: to exploit the minds of German scientists for American Cold War research projects and to keep the Russians from getting the German scientists, no matter how heinous their war crimes might have been. It is believed that at least sixteen hundred scientists were recruited by various U.S. intelligence groups and brought, with their dependents, to the United States. Paperclip had a number of secret, successor projects that remain classified as of 2011.

37. Wernher Von Braun: G-2 Paperclip “Top Secret” files, WNRC Record Group 330. Also from FBI dossier “Wernher Magnus Maximilian Von Braun, aka Freiherr Von Braun,” file 116-13038, 297 pages; also see Neufeld, Von Braun.

38. Dr. Ernst Steinhoff: G-2 Paperclip “Top Secret” files, WNRC, Record Group 319.

39. inside the two-million-square-acre: Schwartz, Atomic Audit, 169. Now called the White Sands Missile Range, the facility is the largest military installation in the country — the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. The first atomic bomb, Trinity, was exploded near the north boundary of the range.

40. Dr. Steinhoff said nothing: Hunt, Secret Agenda, 27; Neufeld, Von Braun, 239.

41. terrifying citizens: “V-2 Rocket, Off Course, Falls Near Juбrez,” El Paso Times, May 30, 1947.

42. Allegations of sabotage: Army Intelligence, G-2 Paperclip, Memorandum for the AC of S G-2, Intelligence Summary, Captain Paul R. Lutjens, June 6, 1947, RG 319, Washington National Records Center (WNRC), Suitland, Maryland. Hunt, Secret Agenda, chapter 3; Major Lyman G. White, “Paperclip Project, Ft. Bliss, Texas and Adjacent Areas,” MID 918.3, November 26, 1947.

43. “beating a dead Nazi horse”: In a March 1948 letter to the State Department regarding “German scientists [who] were members of

either the Nazi Party or one or more of its affiliates,” Bosquet Wev, director of the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency, wrote, “[R]esponsible officials… have expressed opinions to the effect that, in so far as German scientists are concerned, Nazism no longer should be a serious consideration from a viewpoint of national security when the far greater threat of Communism is now jeopardizing the entire world. I strongly concur in this opinion and consider it a most sound and practical view, which must certainly be taken if we are to face the situation confronting us with even an iota of realism. To continue to treat Nazi affiliations as significant considerations has been aptly phrased as ‘beating a dead Nazi horse.’”

44. What made the aircraft extraordinary: Interview with EG&G engineer.

45. fighter jet: Interviews with Colonel Slater, Area 51 base commander (1963-68), Chandler’s personal friend. Chandler relayed this story to Slater decades after it happened.

46. The recovered craft looked nothing like a conventional aircraft: Interview with EG&G engineer, who was an eyewitness.

47. Cyrillic alphabet had been stamped: Interview with EG&G engineer.

48. near the Alaskan border: Interview with EG&G engineer.

49. What if atomic energy propelled the Russian craft: Interview with EG&G engineer.

50. Amerika Bomber: Myhra, The Horten Brothers and Their AllWing Aircraft, 217-20; interview with David Myhra, who interviewed both Horten brothers, Walter in Germany and Reimar in Argentina, for hundreds of hours in the 1980s.

51. Paperclip scientists… called on for their expertise: This is my defensible speculation based on interviews with the EG&G engineer. The Paperclip group attached to the project, I learned through sources with secondhand information, allegedly included Von Braun, Ernst

Steinhoff, and also Dr. Hubertus Strughold, a former Nazi and, in 1947, a research doctor at the Aeromedical Laboratory at Randolph Field in San Antonio, Texas. While employed by the Third Reich, Strughold was the leading expert on how the human body handles high altitude during flight. During World War II, Strughold had been chief of staff of aviation medicine for the German air force, or Luftwaffe. For more on Strughold, see Bower, Paperclip Conspiracy, 214–323.

52. secreted away in a manner so clandestine: Interview with EG&G engineer.

53. top secret project called Operation Harass: Jacobsen, U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) FOIA request, “Horten Brothers and Operation Harass.” The file was declassified by INSCOM beginning on July 6, 1994, CDR USAINSCOM FO1/PO Auth para 1-603 DOD 5200.1R, 358 pages. Notes for pages 38 through 62 refer to this record group.

54. testimony of America’s Paperclip scientists: Headquarters, Counter Intelligence Corps Region I, 970th Counter Intelligence Corps, Detachment European Command, APO-154, January 6, 1948, 92. “Scientists who have better than average knowledge of the HORTEN brothers’ work are: (2) Lippisch, Prof., fnu, Wright Field, Ohio, U.S.A.” Dr. Lippisch was transferred to Wright Field, along with his senior staff Ernst Sielaff and Dr. Ringleb, from Luftfahrtforshungsandstalt Wien — a German aeronautical research institute for the development of highspeed aircraft.

55. The manhunt was on: The earliest dated Operation Harass memo in the file is from November 10, 1947, APO 189, Subject: Flying Saucers, 139. It reads, “Considerable material has been gathered by the Air Materiel Command WRIGHT FIELD, Ohio, concerning the appearance, description and functioning of the object popularly known as the ‘Flying Saucer.’ A copy of the request of the report from the Air Materiel Command is on file at this Headquarters, 2. The opinion was expressed that some sort of object, such as the flying saucer, did exist. At the present time, construction models are being built for wind tunnel tests.” This, however, is clearly not the first memo. Here of the FOIA

file, in memo APO 134, January 2, 1948, a reference is made to an earlier letter, “RE: HORTEN Brothers, SUBJECT: Flying Saucers, dated 28, October 1947.”

56. Walter and Reimar Horten… had somehow been overlooked: Interview with David Myhra.

57. been a later-model Horten in the works: “HORTEN, Walter-” LKL: A.V.V. Gottingen (14-5-46) “Expert on ‘flying-wing’ aircraft, including HO VIII IX & X,” 155 (note there are two separate pages numbered 155).

58. Timothy Cooper filed a request for documents: Because the Flying Saucer memos reveal that immediately after the crash at Roswell, the Army was seeking information on aircraft made by German scientists and not by extraterrestrials, the memos have been discounted by many ufologists as being Army intelligence propaganda. In fact, they reveal an important clue in understanding the EG&G engineer’s truth about the Roswell mystery, namely, that the Joint Chiefs of Staff and perhaps the highest rank at Air Materiel Command knew the flying disc was in fact a Russian vehicle of German design.

59. Extreme maneuverability and apparent ability to almost hover: Air Intelligence [illegible] for alleged “Flying Saucer Type Air Craft,” 152-56.

60. American Paperclip scientists living at Wright Field: Headquarters Sub Region Frankfurt, Counter Intelligence Corps Region III, APO 757, 4 February 1948, 71–72. “Leiber also stated that a Dr. Alexander LIPPISCH, who is at present working at WRIGHT Field, Ohio, USA, is also familiar with the work of the HORTON brothers.”

61. Messerschmitt test pilot named Fritz Wendel: Headquarters Counter Intelligence Corps Region IV, 970th Counter Intelligence Corps Detachment APO 407-A, US ARMY, IV-2574. Subj: WENDEL, Fritz, 1 March 1948, 6 pages. Includes Sheets I, II, III, and IV—

Sketches made by WENDEL re HORTEN aircraft; No. 179332, WENDEL, Fritz, “Ex-Luftwaffe Squadron leader. Presently working for Graf Von Ledebur, French Intell [sic] officer in Vienna Austria,” 56–63.

62. “very much like a round cake with a large sector cut out”: Memo, Secret, Headquarters Berlin Command, Office of Military Government for Germany (US), S-2 Branch, Subject “Flying Saucers,” 3 December 1947, 126; Drawing, Directrix, Secret, 128.

63. Could it hover?: Ibid., 57.

64. if groups could fly tightly together: Ibid., 58. 65. “high speed escapement methods”: Ibid., 59. 66. Could the flying disc be remotely controlled?: Ibid., 58. 67. Did Wendel have any idea about the tactical purposes: Ibid.

68. a rocket engineer named Walter Ziegler: Memo, Secret, Headquarters Counter Intelligence Corps Region IV, 970th Counter Intelligence Corps APO 407-A Subj: ZIEGLER, Walter Erich, 1 March 1948, 52–55.

69. four hundred men from his former rocket group: Ibid., 53. Ziegler called the town “Kubischew,” and said it was located “east of Moscow… where they are presently constructing rockets under Russian supervision.”

70. The Horten brothers had been found: Headquarters 970th Counter Intelligence Corps Detachment European Command, APO 757, D-198239, Subject Flying Saucers, dated 12 March 1948, 44.

71. “the Horten 13”: This is a transcription of a “report” originally written in German cursive writing and translated by SFC Dale R. Blohm. It is missing a cover page. The text suggests that the USG is making plans to hire “6 to 30” German scientists to create for them the “Horten-Parabel.” It reads, “The Discussions concerning the Project ‘Horten-Parabel’ are finalized. The results can be summed up in the following manner. 1). The Russians are in possession of the relevant

planes and will be supported by German specialists. The construction series of the so called Horten 13 (Model with 2-TL (SIC) Power Unit) should not be developed beyond the initial stages by the Russians.” At the end of the memo, the writer concluded, “to begin work, we ask for exact orders for the U.S. Army, for example timber work style, how many power units, operating radius, additional load, crew size, weapons layout, etc,” 196-97, 202-4.

72. “Walter Horten has admitted his contacts with the Russians”: Memo from European Command Message Control Secret Priority, Ref S-3773, To: United States Forces in Austria, for Director of Intelligence, 20 May 1948, 231; extracts from Horten, Walter, From D154654, “Walter HORTEN points out that the possibility of the glider of parabolic design flown by a Russian pilot in 1925–1926 at the Rhaen competitive race may have been developed into a flying saucer. In the event the Russians further developed this glider, or, after the war, installed into it jet units of the Junkers or BMW type, the result may be the flying saucer,” 232-33.

73. stay at Wright-Patterson for approximately four years: Interview with EG&G engineer.

Interviews: Colonel Leghorn, T. D. Barnes, Lieutenant Colonel Roger Andersen, Millie Meierdierck, Bob Murphy, Ray Goudey, Edward Lovick

1. was sitting in his parlor: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior,

68.

2. paramour of Princess Caradja: Thomas, The Very Best Men, 103.

3. As for the mysterious office called OPC: CIA History Staff, “Office of Policy Coordination 1948–1952,” 57 pages. Approved for release March 1997.

4. “funds generated by the Marshall Plan”: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 68.

5. Leghorn went back to Washington: Interview with Colonel Leghorn.

6. as part of Operation Lusty: Samuel, American Raiders. Operation Lusty (Luftwaffe Secret Technology) was the U.S. Army Air Forces’ effort to capture and evaluate German aeronautical technology beginning at the end of World War II.

7. Putt listened: Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 35.

8. Whereas Putt was uninterested: P. Taubman, Secret Empire, 105.

9. Killian and Land reasoned: Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 27–37.

10. “impression of World War I as a cataclysm”: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 4.

11. James Killian, who recruited Bissell: Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 16. Bissell joined the Agency in late January 1954; however, his first association with the Agency came in 1953 when he worked as a contractor. On July 26, 1954, Eisenhower authorized Killian to recruit a panel of experts to study what a U-2-type aircraft might accomplish. The group was called the Technological Capabilities Panel. In August, the idea was formally presented to Bissell. Ibid., 30.

12. a secret CIA test facility: There are several accounts of who went to Groom Lake with Bissell on that historic first trip. I compile mine from Bissell’s memoir and my interviews with Lockheed test pilot Ray Goudey.

13. Goudey had shuttled atomic scientists: Interview with Ray Goudey.

14. “I recommended to Eisenhower”: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 102-3.

15. the tents would blow away: Interview with Ray Goudey. 16. to defend against rattlesnakes: Interview with Edward Lovick. 17. The same variable occurred: Interview with Tony Bevacqua. 18. a lot of time in a recliner: Interview with Ray Goudey.

19. Bob Murphy’s job: Interviews with Bob Murphy. The U-2 engine was a P-37 specially designed by Connecticut engine maker Pratt and Whitney.

20. Mr. B., as he was known to the men: Interview with Edward Lovick.

21. Hank Meierdierck: The stories of Hank Meierdierck, the man who trained the U-2 pilots at Area 51, were relayed to me by his friends from the old days at the Ranch as well as from his personal papers, which were made available to me by his wife, Millie Meierdierck.

22. “unconventional way”: Killian, Sputnik, Scientists and Eisenhower, 82. Killian wrote, “Eisenhower approved the development of the U-2 system, but he stipulated that it should be handled in an unconditional way so that it would not become entangled in the bureaucracy of the Defense Department or troubled by rivalries among the services.” Also see Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 95.

23. hidden from Congress: Top Secret Memorandum of Conference with the President 0810, 24 November 1954. “Authorization was sought from the President to go ahead on a program to produce thirty, special high performance aircraft at a cost of about $35 million. The President approved this action. Mr. Allen Dulles indicated that his organization could not finance this whole sum without drawing attention to it, and it was agreed that Defense would seek to carry a substantial part of the financing.” From the Eisenhower Archives, DDE’s Papers as President, Ann Whitman Diary Series, Box 3, ACW Diary, November 1954.

24. stand-alone organization: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 105. Bissell wrote, “To preserve the secrecy and expeditiousness that Eisenhower and Allen Dulles insisted on, I argued for removing the U-2 project from the agency’s organizational chart and setting it up as a stand-alone organization. As a result, the entire project became the most compartmented and self-contained activity within the agency.”

25. five-page brief: Eisenhower was uniquely invested in Area 51 because the success of the U-2 program, which came to be during his administration, was critical to the nation’s security.

26. the Air Force was almost entirely left out: As recalled by General Leo Geary, Bissell’s Air Force deputy, in an interview with Jonathan Lewis, tape recording, Chevy Chase, MD, 11 February 1994; Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 100.

27. LeMay was, understandably, enraged: “Eventually President Eisenhower settled the dispute.” Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 60; Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 109.

28. the president’s decision: “I want this whole thing to be a civilian operation,” the president wrote. “If uniformed personnel of the armed services of the United States fly over Russia, it is an act of war — legally — and I don’t want any part of it.’” From Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 60.

29. Bob Murphy would often chat with George Pappas: Interview with Bob Murphy.

30. Had Pappas been just thirty feet higher: From Hank Meierdierck’s personal papers; Meierdierck located the crash remains from a U-2 he took out on a search mission.

31. the CIA acknowledged the plane crash in 2002: As part of a tribute given by the U.S. Forest Service. The CIA did not, however, acknowledge that the aircraft was traveling to Area 51; also see Kyril Plaskon, Silent Heroes.

32. security systems for Air Force One: EG&G, a Division of URS, Albuquerque Operations Web site. “EG&G has provided security systems for U.S. Government facilities: Department of Energy Headquarters, U.S. Bureau of Engraving, Presidential AF-1 Hangar Complex, Rocky Flats [nuclear weapons production facility in Colorado], Tooele [Utah, Army Depot for WMD].”

Interviews: Lieutenant Colonel Tony Bevacqua, Edward Lovick, Ray Goudey, Al O’Donnell, Jim Freedman, Wayne Pendleton, T. D. Barnes

1. Area 51, reports of UFO sightings: Haines, “CIA’s Role,” 73.

2. U-2 look like a fiery flying cross: Interview with Tony Bevacqua; the wingspan is 103 feet and the fuselage is 63 feet.

3. the crash at Roswell occurred: Hereafter, when I refer to the “crash at Roswell,” I am referring to an aircraft, not a balloon, as has also been written. While there was a balloon-borne radar-reflector project going on at White Sands in the summer of 1947, this is not what crashed at Roswell. To learn about that project and the balloon theory put forth by one of its participants, Charles B. Moore, see Saler, Ziegler, and Moore, UFO Crash at Roswell.

4. Project Sign: U.S. Air Force Air Materiel Command, “Unidentified Aerial Objects; Project SIGN”; Haines, “CIA’s Role,” 68.

5. Project Grudge: U.S. Air Force, Project Grudge and Blue Book, Reports 1-12. Since the declassification of Projects Saucer, Sign, Grudge, Twinkle, and Blue Book, which began incrementally in the 1970s, the collection is housed in the National Archives; see http://www.archives.gov/foia/ufos.html.

6. disliked technology in general: Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 17, “High altitude reconnaissance of the Soviet Union did not fit well into Allen Dulles’s perception of the proper role of an intelligence agency. He tended to favor the classical form of espionage, which relied on agents rather than technology.” Allen Dulles’s predilection to work with former Nazis has become more obvious and more troubling as time goes by and Paperclip files are slowly declassified. The last line in Dulles’s three-page CIA biography, “Secret Security Information: Subject Allen W. Dulles 7/2-127,” reads:

“At any rate, the American policy in the postwar period as regards [to] Germany has been directly and deeply influenced by MR. DULLES. He has a greater trust in the Germans than he has, for instance, in the French and the Italians.”

7. The UFO division was placed: Office Memorandum, United States Government, To: Acting Assistant Director for Scientific Intelligence, From: Todos Odarenko, Chief, Physics and Electronics Division, SI, Subject, Current Status of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOB) Projects, 17 December 1953.

8. Walter Bedell Smith: Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 4, 87, 122, 131.

9. included the flying disc retrieved at Roswell: This is my defensible speculation based on interviews with the EG&G engineer and my understanding of Bedell Smith’s role, particularly with James Forrestal, secretary of the Navy during the war and the nation’s first secretary of defense, who committed suicide on May 22, 1949.

10. Bedell Smith was the ambassador to the Soviet Union: CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, Directors and Deputy Directors of Central Intelligence, Walter Smith, General, U.S. Army.

11. Governors Island, New York: National Archives Records Administration, RG 338, Box 27, G-2 Section, Headquarters First Army, Governors Island, New York, 4, New York, Case Files.

12. summarily rejected the idea that UFOs: There are several CIA documents, declassified starting in 1996, that I base my interpretation of General Bedell Smith’s attitude toward UFOs on during his tenure at CIA. All quotes come from these documents: Central Intelligence Agency, Washington 25, D.C. Office of the Director, ER-3-2809, Memorandum to Director, Psychology Strategy Board, Subject Flying Saucers, 2 pages, signed Walter B. Smith Director, undated; Memorandum for file OSI, Meeting of OSI Advisory Group on UFO, January 14 through 17, 1953, 3 pages; Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects 14–17 January 1953, Evidence Presented, 2 pages; CIA Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects,

Comments and Suggestions of UFO Panel, 19 pages; Minutes of Branch Chief’s Meeting of 11 August 1952, 3 pages; Memorandum for Director of Central Intelligence, From Deputy Director, Intelligence, Subject Flying Saucers, Dated September 7, 1952, 5 pages.

13. flying discs appeared in many different forms of art: http://www.crystalinks.com/ufohistory.html.

14. like the boy who cried wolf: Memo, CIA Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects, Comments and Suggestions of UFO Panel, 10. “Potential related dangers. c. Subjectivity of public to mass hysteria and greater vulnerability to possible enemy psychological warfare.”

15. “hysterical mass behavior”: Haines, “CIA’s Role,” 72.

16. the publishers of Life magazine: H. B. Darrach and Robert Ginna, “Have We Visitors from Space?” Life magazine, April 7, 1952.

17. originally called Project Saucer: Haines, “CIA’s Role,” 67–68.

18. Green Fireballs: Project Twinkle, Final Report, November 27, 1951.

19. curious members of Congress: Interview with Stanton Friedman.

20. Air Force concluded for the National Security Council: U.S. Air Force Air Materiel Command, “Unidentified Aerial Objects; Project SIGN.”

21. UFO convention in Los Angeles: “Minutes of the Meeting of Civilian Saucer Investigations.”

22. Dr. Riedel had been working on Hitler’s bacteria bomb: Neufeld, Von Braun, 206.

23. There were rumors of “problems”: Ibid., 216-22.

24. “going to execute a planned ‘hoax’”: CIA Office Memorandum to Assistant for Operations, OSI, From Chief Contact Division, CO,

Date: 9 February 1953, Subject California Committee for Saucer Investigations.

25. set off alarms in its upper echelons: Special National Intelligence Estimate 100-2-57, No. 19, “Soviet Capabilities for Deception,” Submitted by the Director of Central Intelligence, 16 pages. Based on recommendations made by the Technical Capabilities Panel, chaired by Dr. Killian, the recommendation read: “We need to examine intelligence data more broadly, or to invent some new technique, for the discovery of hoaxes.”

26. trailing a colleague of Riedel named George P. Sutton: Curiously, the CIA document referenced above names George Sutton as a Riedel colleague and ufologist. Was he a plant? Was he turned? Did he reform on his own? According to the Smithsonian Papers, National Air and Space Museum, Archives Division, MRC 322, Washington, DC, 20560, in the G. Paul Sutton collection: “George Paul Sutton (1920-) was an aerospace engineer and manager. He received degrees from Los Angeles City College (AA, 1940) and the California Institute of Technology (BS, 1942; MS [ME], 1943) before going to work as a development engineer for the Rocketdyne Division of North American Aviation. He remained at Rocketdyne into the late 1960s, while also sitting as Hunsaker Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at MIT (1958-59) and serving as Chief Scientist, Advanced Research Projects Agency [ARPA] and Division Director, Institute of Defense Analysis for the Department of Defense (1959-60). Following his work at Rocketdyne he joined the technical staff at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.”

27. Agency should handle reports of UFOs: Odarenko, Office Memorandum, August 8, 1955.

28. Allen Dulles as an arrogant public servant: Letter from Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles to Congressman Gordon Scherer, October 4, 1955, ER-7-4372A.

Interviews: Colonel Slater, Hervey Stockman, Ken Collins, Frank Murray, Tony Bevacqua, Colonel Pizzo, Edward Lovick, Ray Goudey

1. protocols that are also top secret: Correspondence with Cargill Hall. The Federation of American Scientists provides a nonclassified Central Intelligence Directive from 1995 at

http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/dcid1-19.

2. bemoaned the president’s science advisers: Welzenbach, “Science and Technology,” 16.

3. Sage Control: Interview with Colonel Slater.

4. “It was like something out of fiction”: Interview with Hervey Stockman. Also sourced in this section with Stockman are passages from his compelling oral history, a project that was spearheaded by his son Peter Stockman and the results of which are “Conversations with Colonel Hervey S. Stockman,” edited by Ann Paden and Earl Haney (not published).

5. The identities of the pilots were equally concealed: Interviews with Ken Collins, Frank Murray, Tony Bevacqua, and Hervey Stockman.

6. NII-88: Brzezinski, Red Moon Rising, 22–23, 26–30, 39–44, 98, 102; Harford, Korolev, 77–80, 93, 95, 117. Also called Scientific Research Institute-88, which included the former NII-1, per Stalin on May 13, 1946.

7. Stalin declared Sergei Korolev’s name a state secret: Harford, Korolev, 1.

8. multibillion-dollar espionage platforms: Ibid., 93. Harford quotes Gyorgi Vetrov, Korolev’s Russian biographer, as saying about NII-88’s radical transformation: “Hardly anyone suspected that the plant was destined to become a production base for such complicated and

demanding technologies as rockets and space vehicles for traveling to other plants.”

9. Russia’s version of America’s Paperclip scientists: Ibid., 75. In addition to the Army intelligence CIC memos that I cited earlier regarding Fritz Wendel, Harford wrote “perhaps as many as 5,000 skilled Germans… were literally kidnapped and shipped with their families, by trains, freight cars and trucks to workplaces outside of Moscow.”

10. Operation Dragon Return: Goodman, Spying on the Nuclear Bear, 177.

11. “cannot cope with contingencies”: Brzezinski, Red Moon Rising, 81.

12. LeMay scrambled nearly a thousand B-47 bombers: Ibid., 25. The entirety of these Arctic overflights is still classified. Missions are written about in Burrows, By Any Means Necessary, 208-15, and in Bamford, Body of Secrets, 35–36. The National Security Agency cosponsored many of the ELINT missions. In Secret Empire, Philip Taubman wrote, “At least 252 air crewmen were shot down on spy flights between 1950 and 1970, most directed against the Soviet Union. It is certain that 90 of these men survived, for they were either rescued by American forces or their capture but the Soviet Union or another country was confirmed. But the fate of 138 men is unknown,” 47.

13. top secret missions as part of Operation Home Run: Interview with Colonel Sam Pizzo.

14. “Soviet leaders may have become convinced”: CIA Staff, “Analysis of the Soviet Union 1947–1999,” 27.

15. President Eisenhower was gravely concerned: Top Secret Memorandum of Conference with the President, July 8, 1959. With Dulles and Bissell present at the meeting, USAF Brigadier General A. J. Goodpaster observed, “There remains in the President’s mind the question of whether we were getting to the point where we must

decide if we are trying to prepare to fight a war, or trying to prevent one.” Office of the Staff Secretary, Subject Series, Alphabetical Subseries, Box 15, Intelligence Matters.

16. Richard Bissell promised the president: Oral history interview with Richard M. Bissell Jr. by Theodore A. Wilson and Richard D. McKinzie, East Hartford, Connecticut, July 9, 1971.

17. Alexander Orlov related: Orlov, “The U-2 Program,” 5-14. 18. “We will shoot down uninvited guests”: Ibid., 7.

19. he would be even more enraged: Ibid.; Brzezinski, Red Moon Rising, 124-35.

20. CIA men armed with machine guns: Interview with Hervey Stockman.

21. Eisenhower’s cows: P. Taubman, Secret Empire, 167.

22. Stockman approached Russia’s submarine city: Stockman also recalled in our interview, “This was good solid proof that what so many had thought to be over there, that there was this huge, dominant, strategic bomber force for the Soviet Union, [proved] not to be there.”

23. Herbert Miller wrote a triumphant memo: Declassified in 2000, the memo is called Top Secret Memorandum for: Project Director, Subject: Suggestions re the Intelligence Value of Aquatone, July 17, 1956. Three more U-2 flights followed Hervey Stockman’s. On July 10, 1956, the Soviet Union filed a note of protest. Later that same day, Eisenhower ordered Bissell to stop all overflights until further notice. Miller’s memo summarizes the intelligence value of the U-2 flights for the president and argues that the danger of stopping them was far greater than of continuing them.

24. Khrushchev told his son, Sergei: W. Taubman, Khrushchev, 443.

25. “lost enthusiasm” for the CIA’s aerial espionage program: Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 110. Further,

the president noted that if Russia were to make these kinds of incursions over U.S. airspace, “The reaction would be drastic.” Also from Andrew J. Goodpaster, memorandum on the record, July 19, 1956. The president expressed concern that if the public found out about the overflights, they would be shocked. “Soviet protests would be one thing, any loss of confidence by our own people would be quite another.”

26. he hired a team to analyze: Interview with Edward Lovick. 27. painting the U-2 was a bad idea: Ibid.

28. Air Force transferred money over to the CIA: Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 77.

29. Among those selected: Interview with Tony Bevacqua.

30. The next test was a freezing experiment: Interview with Bevacqua. Cold experiments were presented in the Nuremberg doctors’ trials as “The Effect of Freezing on Human Beings,” the purpose of which was for Nazi doctors to determine at what temperature a human subject dies from heart failure when being frozen.

31. aviation medicine school at Wright-Patterson: Hunt, Secret Agenda, 10, 16, 19, 21. Hunt wrote that during the war, Lieutenant General Donald “Putt gathered the Germans together and, without approval from higher authorities in the War Department, promised them jobs at Wright Field,” sourcing her interview with Lieutenant General Putt; “Report on Events and Conditions Which Occurred During Procurement of Foreign Technical Men for Work in the U.S.A.,” September 25, 1945, Department of the Air Force, History of the AAF Participation in Project Paperclip, Appendix, May 1945-March 1947.

32. previously worked at Nazi concentration camps: Bower, Paperclip Conspiracy, 214–323. Colonel Harry Armstrong, a surgeon with the U.S. Eighth Air Force, petitioned for the Nazi doctors to come to America after the war and “at the end of his distinguished career, in 1976, he would boast that the thirty-four German aviation doctors he

brought to America had saved ‘a great many millions of dollars.’” Armstrong had obtained approval from Eisenhower for an operation to “exploit certain uncompleted German aviation medicine research projects.” Also see Staff Memo to Members of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, “Post-World War II Recruitment of German Scientists — Project Paperclip,” April 5, 1995 (as per President Clinton). The committee obliquely concludes: “Follow-up Research. The staff believes this trail should be followed with more research before conclusions can be drawn about the Paperclip scientists… It is possible that still-classified intelligence documents could shed further light on these connections.”

33. conducting barbaric experiments: In Linda Hunt’s Secret Agenda, chapter 5, “Experiments in Death,” she chronicles several Nazi scientists who became Paperclips. Siegfried Ruff and Hermann Becker-Freyseng conducted death experiments on prisoners at Dachau, placing them in a pressure chamber that simulated high altitudes of up to 39,260 feet. “The U.S. military still viewed Ruff and Becker-Freyseng as valuable assets, despite their connection to these crimes. They were even employed under Paperclip [at the AAF Aero Medical Center in Heidelberg, Germany] to continue the same type of research that had resulted in the murder of Dachau prisoners,” Hunt wrote. Ruff and Becker-Freyseng never got permanent U.S. Paperclip jobs; both were eventually arrested and tried at Nuremberg. Ruff was acquitted, Becker-Freyseng was convicted and given a twenty-year prison sentence. Another notable case was that of Konrad Schaefer. In an effort to study if Luftwaffe pilots could survive on seawater, Schaefer forced prisoners to drink seawater until they went mad from thirst. He then punctured their livers in order to sample fluid and blood. Schaefer was tried at Nuremberg and acquitted, at which point the United States hired him as a Paperclip. “When he arrived at San Antonio in 1950,” wrote Hunt, “he was touted as ‘the leading German authority on thirst and desalinization of seawater.’”

34. six hundred million still-classified: Pauline Jelinek, “U.S. Releases Nazi Papers,” Associated Press, November 2, 1999. But in reality, this number is just a guess, since documents can be hidden

inside agencies that are still classified (as the National Reconnaissance Office, NRO, was from 1961–1992); Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records, April 2007. In 1998, President Clinton signed into law the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, which “required the U.S. Government to locate, declassify, and release in their entirety, with few exceptions, remaining classified records about war crimes committed by Nazi Germany and its allies.” An interagency working group was created to oversee this work. Steven Garfinkel, acting chair of this five-year effort, wrote: “the IWG has ensured that the public finally has access to the entirety of the operational files of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), totaling 1.2 million pages; over 114,200 pages of CIA materials; over 435,000 pages from FBI files; 20,000 pages from Army Counterintelligence Corps files; and over 7 million additional pages of records.” Garfinkel makes no mention of any Atomic Energy Commission files or the files of private contractors inside the Atomic Energy Commission, such as EG&G, who control documents classified as Restricted Data (RD).

35. U-2 was as radical and as unorthodox: Interview with Tony Bevacqua.

36. Edgerton’s famous stop-motion photographs: Available for viewing at the Edgerton Center at MIT, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room 4-405, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as online at Edgerton.org; Grundberg, “H.E. Edgerton, 86, Dies, Invented Electronic Flash,” New York Times, January 5, 1990.

37. Kenneth J. Germeshausen: Joan Cook, “Kenneth Germeshausen, 83, Dies; Was Nuclear and Radar Pioneer,” New York Times, August 21, 1990. Information on Germeshausen also comes from the Kenneth J. Germeshausen Center for the Law of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Franklin Pierce Law Center; MIT archives; author interviews with Al O’Donnell, Jim Freedman.

38. the most highly classified engineering jobs: Interviews with former EG&G employees Al O’Donnell, Jim Freedman, Wayne Pendleton, T. D. Barnes, and others.

39. EG&G agreed to set up a radar range: Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 130. It is also interesting to note that in the footnotes in this CIA monograph, the source for information regarding the location of EG&G’s radar range is redacted, only that they are from Office of Special Activity (OSA) records. Written requests to the CIA were denied.

40. Lockheed test pilot Robert Sieker: Among pilots living at Area 51, a debate ensued about the cause of Sieker’s crash. U-2 pilots Tony Bevacqua and Ray Goudey told me they believe pilot error caused Sieker’s crash. According to them, he was known to open up his faceplate and take bites of candy bars during flight. Bevacqua himself flew a U-2 dirty bird and lived to tell the tale. Many of these mission flights were made over Asia. Lovick maintains it was the Boston Group’s paint that caused the aircraft to overheat.

41. “As it beeped in the sky”: Killian, Sputnik, Scientists and Eisenhower, 7.

42. Killian and Bissell found themselves: Welzenbach, “Science and Technology,” 18. “Killian had confidence in Bissell. A special relationship existed between Killian and Bissell going back to 1942.”

43. formidable top secret billion-dollar spy plane: Top Secret Memorandum of Conference with the President, July 20, 1959. “It will have a radar cross section so low that the probability of hostile detection and successful tracking would be very low. It would have a 4000-mile range at mach 4, with 90,000 feet altitude.” Office of the Staff Secretary, Subject Series, Alphabetical Subseries, Box 15, Intelligence Matters.

44. Advancing science and technology for military purposes: The Advanced Research Projects Agency was Eisenhower’s response to Sputnik, “a high-level defense organization to formulate and execute R&D projects that would expand the frontiers of technology beyond the immediate and specific requirements of the Military Services and their laboratories.” In 1972, ARPA became DARPA. The D denotes Defense.

Interviews with Richard Mingus, Al O’Donnell, Jim Freedman, Dr. Wheelon, Troy Wade, Darwin Morgan, Stephen M. Younger

1. involved thirty consecutive nuclear explosions: Defense Threat Reduction Agency, fact sheet, Operation Plumbbob: “Operation Plumbbob, the sixth series of atmospheric nuclear tests conducted within the continental United States, consisted of 24 nuclear detonations and six safety tests. The Plumbbob series lasted from April 24 to Oct. 7, 1957, and involved about 14,000 Department of Defense (DoD) personnel.”

2. airplane transporting an atomic bomb would crash: Atomic Energy Commission, Summary of Project 57, the First Safety Test of Operation Plumbbob, report to the General Manager by the Director, Division of Military Application, 24.

3. the perfect place to do this was Area 51: Ref. Sym 5112-(127), Appendix A, Administrative Committee Report, J. D. Shreve Jr., Sandia Corporation (seven pages, no date). “B. Area Chosen (clockwise perimeter) (Groom Mine Map) Start at intersection of 89 with north NTS boundary; follow 89 north to 51 (off map); 90 east on 51 to 04, south on 04 to Watertown (north) boundary, thence west to 95, south to NTS line, and finally west along NTS line to 89. More simply, it is the rectangle of land (1) bounded north and south by grids 51 and an extension of the north NTS edge respectively, (2) bounded east and west by grids 04 and 89 respectively, (3) excluding all area assigned to Watertown,” 5.

4. “relinquished for 20,000 years”: Operation Plumbbob, Summary Report, Test Group 57, Nevada Test Site, Extracted Version, MayOctober 1957, ITR-1515 (Extracted Version), 17.

5. “no preexisting contamination”: Minutes, First General Meeting, the 57 Project, January 18, 1957, at Sandia Corporation, Red. Sym 5112-(127), declassified 8/9/83.

6. “a safety test”: Memo dated April 2, 1957, LAV-57-33 Atomic Energy Commission, Las Vegas Branch, Office of the Branch Chief; also see Safety Experiments, November 1955-March 1958, Defense Nuclear Agency, United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Report Number DNA 6030.

7. dispute was over eight dead cows: The University of Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station, Knoxville, November 30, 1953, #404942, Stewart Brothers, Las Vegas, Nevada. Through courtesy of Joe Sanders of AEC, 1–5.

8. The commission had paid the Stewarts: Memo to Dr. W. S. Johnson, Section Leader, Test Operations Section, University of California, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, October 20, 1953, #4049641.

9. aerial inspection of Groom Lake: Col. E. A. Blue, DMA/AEC; J. D. Shreve Jr., SC, W. Allaire (ALO), M. Cowan (SC) all inspected the area from the air on a special flight prior to January 18.

10. “60 to 80 cattle who hadn’t gotten the word”: Minutes, First General Meeting, the 57 Project, January 18, 1957, at Sandia Corporation, Red. Sym 5112-(127), 3.

11. excluded from official Nevada Test Site maps: Ref. Sym 5112(127) Appendix A, Administrative Committee Report, J. D. Shreve Jr., Sandia Corporation (seven pages, no date). “It remains undecided whether Area 13 is considered on-site or off-site so far as NTS is concerned… This is very important to rule on soon.” Ultimately, it was decided to exclude Area 13 from all maps and it remains this way on declassified maps today because Area 13 lies inside Area 51. Denoting it on a map would lead to questions that the Atomic Energy Commission does not want asked.

12. nuclear warhead was flown: Ibid., 6. “It will be requested that weapon be flown to Yucca Lake air strip March 15, transferred to Building 11 for storage awaiting ready date for the shot. Checkout would be done in Building 10 and the unit moved from there to Area 13

(requested designation for site) for firing.”

13. Richard Mingus was tired: Interviews with Richard Mingus. 14. America’s first dirty bomb: Operation Plumbbob, Summary

Report, Test Group 57, Nevada Test Site, Extracted Version, MayOctober 1957, ITR-1515 (Extracted Version), 85 pages.

15. Pacific Proving Ground: General information comes from Buck, History of the Atomic Energy Commission; O’Keefe, Nuclear Hostages; Fehner and Gosling, Battlefield of the Cold War.

16. made its zigzag course: Fehner and Gosling, Origins of the Nevada Test Site, 39.

17. arguing for an atomic bombing range: Ibid., 46–47.

18. Armed Forces Special Weapons Project: “History of the Air Force Special Weapons Center 1 January-30 June 1957.” Department of Defense, DNA 1. 950210.019, declassified with deletions 2/2/95.

19. code-named Project Nutmeg: Bugher, Review of Project Nutmeg, #404131.

20. “The optimum conditions”: Fehner and Gosling, Battlefield of the Cold War, 37.

21. the goal of fostering competition: Interview with Dr. Bud Wheelon; also see Nevada Test Organization, Background Information on Nevada Nuclear Tests, Office of Test Information, July 15, 1957, #403243, 25.

22. most ambitious series: Plumbbob Series 1957, Technical Report, Defense Nuclear Agency 6005F, DARE Tracking 48584, 6075.

23. Delta, nothing more: Interview with Richard Mingus.

24. scientists really had no clear idea: Safety Experiments, November 1955-March 1958, Defense Nuclear Agency, United

States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Report Number DNA 6030.

25. Workers set up: Ref. Sym 5112-(127) Appendix B, Particle Physics Committee Report, M. Cowan, Sandia Corporation Presiding (nine pages, no date). This document refers to various objectives of the particle physics program, an “experimental approach” to fallout collection, “balloon born precipitators,” air samplers on the ground, collection of fallout trays. It described how “some small plywood shacks with open windows and doors will be constructed in the fallout array. Air and surface contamination levels will be measured within the structures and compared to readings on the outside.”

26. “stocked with radiation equipment and protective clothing”: Plumbbob Series 1957, Technical Report, Defense Nuclear Agency 6005F, DARE Tracking 48584, 60–75, 316.

27. Mother Nature’s emissary: Interviews with Richard Mingus and Al O’Donnell, who introduced me to Mueller’s widow.

28. Project 57 balloons broke loose: Telex TWX 01A 2008242, From Reeves Attention Gen AD Starbird, 1957 Apr 20 AM 3:39; also see “Feasibility of Weapon Delivery By Free Balloons,” OSTI ID: 10150708; Legacy ID: DE98056381, 34 pages.

29. hand-fired by an employee from EG&G: Operation Plumbbob, Summary Report, Test Group 57, Nevada Test Site, Extracted Version, May-October 1957, ITR-1515 (EX). Sandia Corporation, Albuquerque, NM, October 10, 1958. “At 0350 PST. April 24, a surface charge of 110 pounds of stick dynamite was fired 1,000 feet east of Zone C (as position 42–61) to verify predictions of cloud height. Timing and firing circuits were the ultimate in simplicity; the weapon was hand fired by EG&G at the Test Group Director’s instruction.”

30. fallout was to the north: Ibid., 55 (6.1., Weather Observations). The weather was meticulously recorded, which is ironic given how “fast and loose” everything else was running out at the test site, as stated by an EG&G employee who also worked as a liaison to the Pentagon.

“April 10, 1957. Hodographs during the period 2100 to 2330 PST showed that satisfactory conditions existed at 2100 PST, but a recommendation for cancellation was made after the wind shifted to northwest on the 2300 PST soundings. April 1F, [sic] 1957. Satisfactory wind conditions existed at 0441 PST, but the morning inversion broke more quickly than expected. By 0530 PST, winds were too strong and the shear had disappeared, forcing cancellation. April 20, 1957, Intermittent light showers began at 2330 PST on the 19th and continued through the remainder of the night and following morning. Hodographs indicated that satisfactory winds existed during this period, but moisture on the instrumentation forced cancellation. April 24, 1957. Scattered middle clouds were observed and a moderate dew formed during the night. The sequence of wind changes from 0415 to 0756 is shown by the hodographs. The shot was fired at 0627 PST.”

31. The bomb was indeed dirty: In June of 1982, Sandia Corporation produced an extracted 102-page report on the results of its dirty bomb or plutonium-contamination effects study on Project 57 for the director of the Defense Nuclear Agency, in lieu of a proposed cleanup of Area 13 (see chapter 18). Information in this chapter comes from portions of that extracted study. The stated objectives of the project “were to estimate the immediate and long-term distribution of plutonium and gain an understanding of how this distribution comes about, to conduct a biomedical evaluation of plutonium-laden environments, to investigate relevant methods of decontamination, and to evaluate alpha field survey instruments and monitoring procedures.” And yet Area 13 soil decontamination was not even considered for twenty-five years.

32. “extract” of the original report: The full, still-classified document, originally prepared by Sandia Corporation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in October of 1958, is called ITR-1515.

33. “the alpha half-life of plutonium-239”: Ibid., 17 (“Motivation and Mission, 1.1 Historical Resume”). The text reads: “once in the stomach, their stay in the body is short, for they are excreted as an

inert material with virtually no body assimilation. Inhalation is a different mechanism entirely and one which presents a considerable threat. Any particle small enough to reach the lower respiratory tract apparently has an excellent chance of clinging to alveolar surfaces and staying to do radiation damage… One cannot outlive the influence, because the alpha half life of plutonium-239 is of the order of 20,000 years.”

34. “respirable plutonium remarkably far downwind”: Ibid., 7 (“Foreword, Abstract”).

35. “earthworms moved 18 tons of soil”: Ibid., 101 (8.6, “A New Program”). “Finally, Dr. Kermit Larson agreed to exploit an idea which grew out of discussions among participants in the anniversary measurements — earthworms. Compton’s Encyclopedia reports that the renowned Charles Darwin studied an acre of garden in which he claimed 53,000 hard-working earthworms moved 18 tons of soil. Translocation of soil, the possibility that earthworm body chemistry may vary plutonium form, etc., could turn out to be significant influences, intentional or unintentional, in the rehabilitation of a weapon-accident environment.”

36. Pauling said: The quotes in this two-page section, and also the newspaper quotes here, are from the extensive newspaper archive collection located in the Atomic Testing Museum library reading room in Las Vegas, Nevada.

37. The Pentagon wondered: Fehner and Gosling, Battlefield of the Cold War, 159-82.

38. caused Area 51 personnel: Interview with Richard Mingus.

39. “the Indoctrination Project: DNA 6005F, Plumbbob Series 1957, United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Chapter 4, Exercise Desert Rock VII and VIII Programs, 81, 96.

40. Committee on Human Resources: Memorandum, Members of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, September 8, 1994, “Human Experiments in Connection with the

Atomic Bomb Tests,” attachment 5, item 10.

41. “mythical attack by an aggressor force”: During the Hood nuclear bomb, the Marine Corps conducted coordinated air-ground assault maneuvers that included helicopter airlifts and tactical air support; “Exercise Desert Rock VII–VIII, Operation Plumbbob,” Defense Nuclear Agency 4747F.

42. Mingus saw that a large swath of the desert was on fire: Interview with Mingus.

43. Area 51 had become uninhabitable: Interview with Richard Mingus; also Office Memorandum, United States Government, Observed Damage at Watertown, Nevada, following the Sixth Nuclear shot of Plumbbob, July 9, 1957. R. A. Gilmore, Off-Site Rad-Safe, NTO, #0150371.

Interviews: T. D. Barnes, Peter Merlin, Al O’Donnell, Richard Mingus, Jim Freedman, Ed Lovick, Tony Bevacqua, Ray Goudey, Ernie Williams, Harry Martin, Colonel Slater, Frank Murray

1. measuring fallout with Geiger counters in hand: Interview with T. D. Barnes; Operation Plumbbob Projects and Reports: Program 2, Project 2.2., Neutron Induced Activities in Soil Elements WT-1411; Project 2.5 Initial Gamma Radiation Intensity and Neutron-Induced Gamma Radiation of NTS Soil WT-1414.

2. dressed in white lab coats and work boots: Photographs viewed at the Atomic Testing Museum library, Las Vegas.

3. from pinhead particles to pencil-size pieces of steel: DNA 6005F, Plumbbob Series 1957, United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Chapter 4, Exercise Desert Rock VII and VIII Programs, Civil Effects Test Group, Fallout Studies, 204–247; AEC Research and Development Report BNWL481-1, 113 pages.

4. surprise of the nuclear scientists: McPhee, Curve of Binding Energy, 166-67.

5. could locate them with magnets: Roadrunners Internationale newsletter, August 1, 2009, 34th edition. From the personal diary of Dan Sheahan, owner and operator of the Groom Mine, provided to the Roadrunners Internationale by his great-granddaughter Lisa Heawood.

6. weapons planners moved ahead: Interviews with Al O’Donnell, Richard Mingus, and Jim Freedman. There was a nuclear test ban moratorium on the horizon, which meant that all weapons tests were scheduled to end on October 31, 1958. At the test site, weapons engineers worked at a frenzied pace to finish as many nuclear tests as they could before the deadline.

7. the animals observed: An anonymous eyewitness related to me

the horror of watching a dying horse seek water at Area 51. The AEC has never declassified its animal observations, which I understand are extensive. In an AEC document released to the public on July 15, 1957, entitled “Responsibility for U.S. Nuclear Weapons Programs,” in a section called “Operating Controls,” it is stated that “cattle and horses grazing within a few miles of the detonation suffered skin deep beta radiation burns on their hides (1952 and 1953 series) with no effect on their breeding value and no effect on the cattle’s beef quality. Radiation fallout more than a few miles from detonation has been quite harmless to humans, animals or crops.” In The Day We Bombed Utah, John G. Fuller presents the opposite argument.

8. emergency landing on the former U-2 airstrip: Interview with Peter Merlin.

9. Edward Lovick was standing on: Interview with Edward Lovick.

10. grandfather of stealth: Before working on the A-12, Lovick’s first job at Skunk Works was to try to reduce the radar reflections being bounced back from the U-2 to the Soviet radar systems. With Area 51 still shuttered from atomic fallout, the physicist’s first efforts took place at a remote hangar in the north corner of Edwards Air Force Base in California. There, Lovick and colleagues spent hours coming up with all kinds of antiradar schemes: “It was our job to invent something that would neither compromise the aircraft’s height, nor allow its hydraulic system to overheat as had happened with Sieker. Kelly Johnson had a rule: one pound of extra weight applied to the aircraft would reduce its altitude by one foot. This meant our camouflage coating couldn’t exceed a quarter of an inch and had to weigh as little as possible.”

11. aircraft would be radically different: Interviews with Ed Lovick, Dr. Wheelon, T. D. Barnes. Other federal agencies were also secretly experimenting with supersonic flight, but not sustained flight at Mach 3. The Air Force, NASA, and the Navy were involved in the experimental X-15, a hypersonic airplane that would lay the groundwork for travel into space. But the X-15 was boosted off the back of a mother ship, whereas the Agency’s new plane would leave the tarmac on its own power and return to the base the same way.

12. twenty-second window: Peebles, Dark Eagles, 51. 13. it loses precision and speed: Interview with Dr. Wheelon.

14. minutiae involving radar returns: Jones, The Wizard War. Lovick spent hours describing for me the fundamental concepts of radar, which is an acronym for radio detection and ranging, which first came into being in 1904 when a German engineer named Christian Hulsmeyer figured out that electromagnetic waves could be used to identify, or “see,” a metal ship floating in dense fog. It didn’t take long for the military to realize the inherent value of radar as a way to detect large, moving metal objects otherwise invisible to the naked eye. This was especially true for ships and airplanes, two key means of transport in twentieth-century warfare.

15. fourteen-year-old children were doing in 1933: Interview with Lovick. By high school, Lovick had created a radio receiver from scrap metal, vacuum tubes, and discarded radio parts which enabled him “to detect signals a hundred miles away, which gave me the intense feeling of discovering something that I did not previously have evidence as being there.”

16. the Archangel-1: Robarge, Archangel, 4–5. Archangel is a term meaning “an angel of high rank” and it is also a port city in northwestern Russia, home to many Soviet radar stations that would one day be trying to track the A-12.

17. fifty Skunk Works employees returned to Area 51: Ibid., 6. 18. “build a full scale mockup”: Johnson, History of the Oxcart Program, 5.

19. code-named Titania: United States Nuclear Tests July 1945 through September 1992 DOE/NV-209-REV 15, 144. The bomb was named after a satellite of the planet Uranus.

20. Each member of Lovick’s crew: Interview with Lovick. 21. “Ike wants an airplane from Mandrake the magician”: Rich,

Skunk Works, 198.

22. “by adding the chemical compound cesium”: Johnson, History of the Oxcart Program, 4. Johnson wrote: “we proposed the use of cesium additive to the fuel. This was first brought up by Mr. Ed Lovick of ADP, its final development was passed over to P&W.” Lovick recalls traveling to Pratt and Whitney’s research center in Florida where the aircraft engines were being tested. “I realized that I had utilized theory that applied to thermal ionization of gases and would need to use parameters appropriate to electron emission from hot solid surfaces. Our results indicated that we were dealing with mixtures of the two states but we did not know how to determine how much of each kind of material, gas or solid, was involved in the production of the ionization that we measured. The results were encouraging, but we needed to know more. So we were moved to much better facilities at the P. & W. Willgoos Turbine Laboratory in East Hartford, Connecticut.” It was there that the problem was solved.

23. Oxcart being the fastest: CIA Document EO 12958 3.3(b) Oxcart Facts: A-12 Specifications; A-12 Experience Record (as of July 10, 1967). Note that in November of 1961, the X-15 rocket plane flew Mach 6, or 4,092 mph. At the time of this meeting, the CIA thought they were building the fastest airplane in the world, which technically it was, because the X-15 didn’t take off on its own power. As per interviews with T. D. Barnes, who worked on both projects.

24. Area 51 was back in business: Parangosky, The Oxcart Story, 3 (per Dr. Wheelon, Parangosky was the true author of this seminal work on Oxcart; any other name was a pseudonym). The contract was officially signed on February 11, 1960.

25. the CIA hired work crews from next door: Interview with Ernie Williams.

26. The construction of a new runway and the fuel farm: Interview with Harry Martin; Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 25–26.

27. The A-12 Oxcart was a flying fuel tank: Interview with Harry Martin.

28. CIA’s “own little air force”: Interview with Colonel Slater. 29. Getting the Oxcart to fly: Interview with Frank Murray.

30. 186-mile swath just to make a U-turn: Interview with Colonel Slater.

31. same was true at NORAD: Interviews with Dr. Wheelon, Colonel Slater.

32. they passed a simple sketch: Interview with Ed Lovick. 33. S. Varentsov: CIA Memo, S. Varenstov, Chief Marshal, USSR,

The Problem of Combat with the Nuclear Means of the Enemy and Its Solution, August 1961.

34. advancing surface-to-air missile technology: Interviews with Dr. Wheelon, Ed Lovick, T. D. Barnes.

Interviews: Gary Powers Jr., T. D. Barnes, Dr. Wheelon, Jim Freedman, Gene Poteat, Helen Kleyla (Richard Bissell’s longtime secretary, via written correspondence)

1. drenched in sweat: Powers, Operation Overflight, 75.

2. Tyuratam was Russia’s Cape Canaveral: CIA report on U-2 Vulnerability Tests, April 1960, Eisenhower Archives, Office of the Staff Secretary, Subject Series, Alphabetical Subseries, Box 15, Intelligence Matters. Memo: ICBM Targets — The Urals and Tyura Tam, “Sverdlovsk in the Urals is the best bet on the location of a major ICBM factory.” Notable color U-2 flight maps are in this file.

3. head up to a facility at Plesetsk: Harford, Korolev, 112. “R-7s and R-7As were deployed at only two launch pads at Baikonur and, eventually, four at Plesetsk, a launch center readied by 1959… Plesetsk soon became the busiest of the USSR’s three launch facilities, having responsibility for placing in orbit reconnaissance and other military satellites.”

4. two-and-a-half-foot increments: Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball, 185.

5. indicated he wanted to speak with him: Powers, Operation Overflight, 69.

6. had a premonition: Ibid.

7. awakened by a ringing telephone: W. Taubman, Khrushchev, 443.

8. a sharp poke in the eye: Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 444. “Sverdlovsk, was an especially deep penetration into our territory and therefore an especially arrogant violation… They were making these flights to show up our impotence. Well, we weren’t impotent any longer.”

9. “An uncomfortable situation was shaping up”: Orlov, “The U-2 Program,” 10.

10. Soviets’ secret bioweapons program: Hoffman, The Dead Hand, 119.

11. Kyshtym 40 was as valuable: Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball, 43. 12. “Destroy target”: Orlov, “The U-2 Program,” 11. 13. Stop and think: Powers, Operation Overflight, 83. 14. “He’s turning left”: Jack Anderson, “US Heard Russians

Chasing U-2,” Washington Post, May 12, 1960.

15. NSA operators heard: Bamford, Body of Secrets, 49.

16. “Bill Bailey did not come home”: Richelson, Wizards of Langley, 18.

17. The brand was Laika: Powers, Operation Overflight, 91.

18. “We believed that if a U-2 was shot”: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 121-22. But Bissell also admitted that the Agency agreed “unanimously” that the “big rolls of film aboard the plane would not be destroyed… Their nonflammable base would prevent them from burning, and they could be dropped from a height of ten miles and survive. We always knew that in the event of a crash there was going to be a couple rolls of film lying around, and there was not much we could do about it.”

19. the White House claimed: Department of State, for the Press, No. 249, May 6, 1960; Department of State, for the Press, No. 254, May 9, 1960.

20. But Khrushchev had evidence: Incoming telegram, Department of State, Control 6700, May 10, 1969.

21. With great bravado: W. Taubman, Khrushchev, 455-58. 22. “I would like to resign”: P. Taubman, Secret Empire, 396.

23. Eisenhower wouldn’t bow: Bamford, Body of Secrets, 53–54. “For Eisenhower, the whole process was quickly turning into Chinese water torture. Every day he was being forced to dribble out more and more of the story.”

24. “the first time any nation had publicly admitted”: Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball, 49.

25. authorized a Soviet military base: Ibid., 55.

26. twenty-five minutes’ time: Havana, Cuba, to Washington, DC, is 1,130 miles. In 1960, a Russian missile traveled at approximately Mach 3.5.

27. During Powers’s trial: “Report on Conclusion of Powers Trial, USSR International Affairs,” August 22, 1960, approved for release September 1985, 39 pages.

28. “Las Vegas firing range (poligon) in the Nevada desert”: Ibid., RB-6.

29. “criminal conspiracy”: Ibid. 30. “follower of Hitler”: Ibid., RB-20.

31. Watertown as the U-2 training facility: Powers, Operation Overflight, 114.

32. out at the Ranch: Parangosky, The Oxcart Story, 6–7.

33. Richard Bissell had a tennis court put in: Interview with Dr. Wheelon.

34. Prohibited Area P-275: Interview with Peter Merlin.

35. “thirteen million different parts”: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 133.

36. the titanium that first held everything up: Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 21–22.

37. nearly 95 percent of what Lockheed initially received: Robarge,

Archangel, 11.

38. Russia was spending billions of rubles: Interview with Ed Lovick.

39. “who thought ELINT was a dirty word”: Poteat, “Engineering and the CIA,” 24.

40. Barnes was recruited by the CIA: Interview with Barnes; CIA Personal Resume, 1966, Barnes, Thornton Duard.

41. Castro’s regime “must be overthrown”: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 153.

42. “Richard Bissell,” Kennedy said: Thomas, “Wayward Spy,” 36. 43. put a bullet in his own head: Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 303. 44. Bahнa de Cochinos, or the Bay of Pigs: Kirkpatrick, The Real

CIA, chapter 8; Pfeiffer, CIA’s Official History of the Bay of Pigs; Warner, “CIA’s Internal Probe.”

45. could help in gathering intel: Oral history interview with Richard M. Bissell Jr. by Theodore A. Wilson and Richard D. McKinzie, East Hartford, Connecticut, July 9, 1971.

46. Bissell blamed the mission’s failure on his old rival General Curtis LeMay: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 176. In discussing the decision of the Joint Chiefs, which included LeMay sitting in for the commandant of the Marines, “to cancel the air strikes so readily,” Bissell stated, “one could make a case that their view reflected rivalry between the air force and the CIA. The agency’s earlier success with the overhead reconnaissance programs had disturbed certain high-ranking members of the air force.” Certainly he is referring to LeMay. “Friends of mine in the military spoke frankly to me about this,” Bissell added. “There was no denying that the sentiment existed among military that all the air activities undertaken by the CIA in the U-2, SR-71 [note: Oxcart had not been declassified yet] and spy satellite programs should have come under jurisdiction of the air force. Robert Amory recalled in a 1966 interview that, after I

was put in charge of the U-2 program, ‘essentially the air force’s eye was wiped in you-know-what and they resented that from the beginning.’” For Bissell, “the resentment never died.”

47. if LeMay had provided adequate air cover: Ibid., 175. “Curtis LeMay (who was sitting in for the absent commandant of the Marines) and several of the chiefs admitted their doubt about the absolute essentiality of air cover… I was shocked. We all knew only too well that without air support, the project would fail.”

48. “time zone confusion”: Ibid., 189. Bissell wrote, “When the B26s lumbered into the air the next day, however, no navy cover appeared. It seemed that a misunderstanding about the correct time standard had prevented the air support from being at the target area when expected. As a result, the B-26s were either forced from the field of battle or shot down, the final tragic blow.” From the National Security Archive: “The unmarked jets failed to rendezvous with the bombers, however, because the CIA and the Pentagon were unaware of a time zone difference between Nicaragua and Cuba.”

49. Lyman B. Kirkpatrick Jr.: Interviews with Jim Freedman.

50. Lyman Kirkpatrick contracted polio: Biography of Lyman B. Kirkpatrick, Princeton University Library, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Public Policy Papers. Lyman B. Kirkpatrick Papers, circa 1933–2000, Call Number MC209.

51. relegated to the role of second-tier bureaucrat: In his memoir, Bissell does not mince words. He calls Kirkpatrick “an ambitious man who, in spite of paralysis from polio, aspired to position of director of central intelligence. His illness necessitated a move from the exciting and challenging directorate of plans to the more mundane, bureaucratic position of inspector general, a shift he always resented.” Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 193.

Interviews with Harry Martin, Jim Freedman, T. D. Barnes, Al O’Donnell, Peter Merlin, Millie Meierdierck

1. the man in charge of property control at Area 51: Interviews with Jim Freedman, T. D. Barnes, Al O’Donnell.

2. “The high and rugged northeast perimeter”: Interview with Peter Merlin, who obtained copies (largely redacted) of Kirkpatrick’s visit to Area 51 from the CIA’s online reading room (CIA.gov). These documents appear to have since been removed.

3. “Bay of Pigs will embolden the Soviets”: Absher, Mind-Sets and Missiles, 10.

4. Area 51 was a target: Interviews with Peter Merlin, Jim Freedman.

5. decided to make a hunting trip: Interview with Jim Freedman; Hank Meierdierck’s personal papers.

6. Richard Bissell resigned: Oral history interview with Richard M. Bissell Jr. by Theodore A. Wilson and Richard D. McKinzie, East Hartford, Connecticut, July 9, 1971 (Harry S. Truman Library and Museum), http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/bissellr.htm.

7. keep the CIA in the spy plane business: Welzenbach, “Science and Technology,” 23.

8. Richard Bissell alone, had gone rogue: Ibid., 22.

9. CIA might work in better partnership: Richelson, Wizards of Langley, 58–60.

10. “Wayne Pendleton was the head of the radar group”: Interview with Wayne Pendleton.

11. “and ‘dirty tricks’ of Dick Bissell’s”: Welzenbach, “Science and

Technology,” 22. The full passage reads: “However, a note of discord crept into Bissell’s relations with Land and Killian… both Land and Killian looked upon science and technology almost as a religion, something sacred to be kept from contamination by those who would misuse it for unwholesome ends. Into this category fit the covert operations and dirty tricks of Dick Bissell’s Directorate of Plans.”

12. called Teak and Orange: Film footage viewed at the Atomic Testing Museum, Las Vegas.

13. which is exactly where the ozone layer lies: Hoerlin, “United States High-Altitude Test,” 43.

14. “The impetus for these tests”: Ibid., 47.

15. his rationale: Ground stations were supposed to measure acoustic waves that would happen as a result of the blast but Teak detonated seven miles laterally off course to the south and the communication systems were knocked out. Orange detonated four miles higher than it was supposed to and “the deviations affected data acquisitions.”

16. The animals’ heads had been locked in gadgets: Oral history interview with Air Force colonel John Pickering, 52. Film footage viewed at the Atomic Testing Museum, Las Vegas.

17. “Teak and Orange events would ‘burn a hole’ into the natural ozone layer”: Hoerlin, “United States High-Altitude Test,” 43.

18. Von Braun can be seen examining the Redstone rocket: Teak shot film footage viewed at the Atomic Testing Museum library, Las Vegas.

19. left the island before the second test: Interview with Al O’Donnell; Neufeld, Von Braun, 332.

20. to dash up to Hitler’s lair: Neufeld, Von Braun, 127.

21. project called Operation Argus commenced: Final Review of Argus Fact Sheet, 16 Apr. 82. “The tests were conducted in complete

secrecy and were not announced until the following year.”

22. Christofilos convinced Killian: Killian, Sputnik, Scientists and Eisenhower, 187.

23. “probably the most spectacular event ever conducted”: The White House Memorandum for the President, From J.R. Killian Jr., Subject: Preliminary Results of the ARGUS experiment, dated November 3, 1958, declassified 5/20/77.

24. Walter Sullivan hand-delivered a letter to Killian: The letter is marked “By Hand” and dated February 2, 1959, written on New York Times letterhead, and addressed to Dr. James R. Killian Jr. at the White House.

25. “Neither confirm nor deny such leaks”: Memorandum to Dr. James R. Killian, Jr. Subject: Release of Information on ARGUS. Dated January 20, 1959, signed Karl G. Harr, Jr. Special Assistant to the President. Among other things, it is interesting to note here that on White House stationery, Killian is referred to as “Dr. Killian.” He was not a doctor; he never received a PhD but rather a bachelor’s degree in management. This fact was confirmed for me by MIT library staffer Jennifer Hirsch. “Mr. Killian always went out of his way to remind people he was not a doctor,” I was told — apparently not so with the White House.

26. “I would be protected from congressional inquisition”: Killian, Sputnik, Scientists and Eisenhower, 25.

27. “Are you still there?”: Admiral Parker of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project; Defense Technical Information Center Staff, Defense’s Nuclear Agency 1947–1997, 140; Defense Threat Reduction Agency, 2002.

Interviews: Harry Martin, Louise Schalk, Dr. Wheelon, Colonel Slater, Frank Murray, Roger Andersen, Ken Collins

1. Martin had been at Area 51 since the very first days: Interviews with Harry Martin.

2. The generals would inevitably show up: Classified Message, Secret 2135Z 14 May 62, To Director, Prity [sic] OXCART. “1. General Power, General Compton, Col Montoya and Col Geary [redacted], A12… During the flight the visitors were shown [redacted]… Kelly Johnson flew back to Las Vegas with the group… General Power seemed very impressed with the aircraft.” Declassified by CIA, August 2007.

3. “Lou, wake up!”: Interview with Louise Schalk.

4. “The aircraft began wobbling”: Johnson, History of the Oxcart Program, 12.

5. “What in Hell, Lou?”: Rich, Skunk Works, 219.

6. Martin thought for sure the airplane was going to crash: Interview with Harry Martin.

7. Rare film footage of the historic event: CIA footage, T. D. Barnes’s personal collection.

8. Bud Wheelon: Central Intelligence Agency, “Biographic Profile, Albert Dewell Wheelon,” May 10, 1966, NARA, MRB, RG 263.

9. Howard and Jane Roman: Helms, A Look Over My Shoulder, 275. “When the CIA Counterintelligence Staff was established, Jim Angleton assumed responsibility for operational liaison with the FBI. Jane Roman, a veteran OSS X-2 officer, handled the daily meetings…”; interview with Dr. Wheelon.

10. hand-picked by President Kennedy’s science advisers: Central

Intelligence Agency, R. V. Jones Intelligence Award Ceremony Honoring Dr. Albert Wheelon, December 13, 1994.

11. “in this way, I became the new ‘Mayor of Area 51’”: Interview with Dr. Wheelon.

12. Agency had been analyzing reports: McAuliffe, CIA Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis 1962, 1-31.

13. including 1,700 Soviet military technicians: Ibid., 37. 14. jamming facilities against Cape Canaveral: Ibid.

15. McCone left for his honeymoon in Paris: Interview with Dr. Wheelon.

16. Not another Gary Powers incident: This was a common theme among military planners all through the 1960s.

17. the CIA got presidential approval: Office of Special Activities DD/S&T Chronological History, 30 August 1966, Top Secret, Approved for release Jul 2001, 5. “5 October 1962, Last CIA Flight over Cuba (50 flown in all).”

18. pushing for preemptive strikes: Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball, 265.

19. Ledford had been asked by McCone: Interview with Dr. Wheelon.

20. General LeMay encouraged him to take the CIA liaison job: Richelson, Wizards of Langley, 53.

21. Ledford’s plane crash, involving heroics: Official Website of U.S. Air Force, biography of Brigadier General Jack C. Ledford, retired Oct. 1, 1970; died Nov. 16, 2007.

22. tried to treat Ledford with opiates: This story was legendary among the men who worked under Ledford at Area 51 and is sourced from multiple interviews including with Colonel Slater and Frank Murray. A version of it can be read at the Arlington National Cemetery

Web site. Ledford’s backseater, Sergeant Harry C. Miller, died of his original wounds several hours after Ledford and the medic helped him out of the plane.

23. The chances were one in six, Ledford said: Richelson, Wizards of Langley, 53.

24. Kennedy felt that if a CIA spy plane: Interview with Dr. Wheelon.

25. Air Force pilot flying an Agency U-2: Richelson, Wizards of Langley, 54.

26. Photographs showing nuclear missiles: Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball, photographic inserts.

Interviews: Ken Collins, Don Donohue, Sam Pizzo, Frank Murray, Roger Andersen, Florence DeLuna, Frank Micalizzi, Harry Martin

1. Collins went by the code name Ken Colmar: Interviews with Ken Collins, who had never revealed his code name before.

2. She made it as far as Athens: Powers, Overflight, 59.

3. he flew deep into North Korea: Citation, First Lieutenant Kenneth S. Collins, SO. No. 221 Hq FEAP, APO925, 6 May 53, by Command of General Weyland.

4. fired at by MiG fighter jets: Ibid.

5. Distinguished Flying Cross: Citation to Accompany the Award of the Distinguished Flying Cross (First Oak Leaf Cluster) to Kenneth S. Collins. AO 2222924, United States Air Force.

6. coveted Silver Star for valor: Citation for Silver Star, First Lieutenant Kenneth S. Collins, by direction of the president.

7. a total of five Oxcarts being flight-tested at Area 51: Robarge, Archangel, 17.

8. Captain Donald Donohue would start out following Collins: Interview with Don Donohue.

9. Later, Jack Weeks: Interview with Ken Collins.

10. “Suddenly, the altimeter was rapidly unwinding”: Interview with Ken Collins.

11. Sam Pizzo had a monumental amount of work: Interview with Sam Pizzo.

12. took to the desert terrain on horseback: Interview with Ken Collins.

13. filled by Air Force brass: Interview with Colonel Slater.

14. Holbury had been given a commendation by General Patton: General Robert J. Holbury biography, Air Commander, Detachment 1 of the 1129th U.S. Air Force Special Activities Squadron at Groom Lake, Nevada; Roadrunners Internationale official Web site.

15. a pitot tube had in fact caused the crash: Interview with Collins; Parangosky, The Oxcart Story, 11.

16. monitoring phone conversations: Briefing Note for the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, 10 March 1964. Attachment 1 to BYE2015-64, “Project Oxcart Awareness Outside Cleared Community.” The Agency also had a system in place to monitor air traffic chatter during Oxcart test flights to see if any commercial or military pilots spotted the plane.

17. increasingly suspicious CIA: Col. Redmond White, Diary Notes, September 27, 1963, Secret. White was the CIA’s deputy director/support and his notes include a second reference to the disclosure to Aviation Week as well as a notation that CIA director John McCone said, “OXCART is going to blow sooner or later.”

18. the Air Force ordered not one but three variants: Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 33.

19. letters stood for “Reconnaissance/Strike”: Memorandum, Secretary of the Air Force Eugene Zuckert to General Bernard Schriever, April 8, 1963, w/att: Procurement and Security Provisions for the R-12 Program, Top Secret.

20. eight hundred million dollars developing the B-70 bomber airplane: Marcelle Size Knaack, Encyclopedia of U.S. Air Force Aircraft and Missile Systems, Post-World War II Bombers, 559. The XB-70A had its genesis in Boeing Aircraft Corporation’s Project MX2145. Also see Ball, Politics and Force Levels, 216-18.

21. the President was astonished: Rich, Skunk Works, 228. 22. “unnecessary and economically unjustifiable”: President

Kennedy, Special Message to the Congress of Urgent National Needs, delivered in person before a joint session of Congress, May 25, 1961.

23. Congress cut back its B-70 order even further: House Armed Services Committee, Authorizing Appropriations for Aircraft, Missiles and Naval Vessels for the Armed Forces (1961), 569, see FY 1962, 1564-65, 1577.

24. “Johnson, I want a promise out of you”: Rich, Skunk Works, 231.

25. LeMay promised to send Lockheed: Robarge, Archangel, 52. The Air Force initially envisioned a fleet of as many as a hundred YF12s, designed to intercept a Soviet supersonic bomber rumored to be in the works.

26. At the Ranch, it was business as usual: Interview with Colonel Slater.

27. finally delivered to the Ranch: Robarge, Archangel, 17. The J57 engine could reach a maximum speed of Mach 1.6 and a maximum height of 40,000 feet; interview with John Evans of Pratt and Whitney.

28. An X-ray showed the outline of a pen: Interview with Ed Lovick. 29. new set of challenges: Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central

Intelligence Agency, 38.

30. F-101 chase plane had run off the airstrip: Interview with Don Donohue.

31. Lyndon Johnson would be briefed: CIA Memo, Meeting with the President, Secretary Rusk, Secretary McNamara, Mr. Bundy and DCI. Re: Surfacing the OXCART, 29 November, 1963, 1.

Interviews: Jim Freedman, Colonel Slater, T. D. Barnes, Stanton Friedman

1. “I heard it was in Area 22”: Interview with Jim Freedman. In contemporary maps of the test site, Area 22 is located down by Camp Mercury. In the 1950s and 1960s, many of the quadrants were numbered differently.

2. 354,200 feet — almost 67 miles up: Jenkins, Hypersonics Before the Shuttle, 119. The Kбrmбn line, commonly used to define the boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space, is at an altitude of approximately 328,000, or 62 miles above sea level. The U-2 flew at 70,000 feet, or approximately 13 miles; the A-12 flew at 90,000 feet, or approximately 17.5 miles.

3. “on 30 April, A-12 was in air”: Priority Secret Classified Message to Director from—2219Z Classified Message Secret 15 May 62, ZE19C “Oxcart Secure Ops.”

4. commercial pilots would report sightings: Interview with Colonel Slater; Annie Jacobsen, “The Road to Area 51,” Los Angeles Times Magazine, April 5, 2009, 26–28, 77.

5. Walter Cronkite hosted a CBS news special report: The report can be viewed online, “From the Vault,” CBS Reports.

6. Dr. Robertson appeared on a CBS Reports: Haines, “CIA’s Role,” 74.

7. House Armed Services Committee held hearings on UFOs: “Congress Reassured on Space Visits,” New York Times, April 6, 1966.

8. Air Force laying blame for the cover-up on the CIA: Walter L. Mackey, executive officer, memorandum for DCI, “Air Force Request to Declassify CIA Material on Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO),”

September 1, 1966.

9. According to CIA historian Gerald Haines: Haines, “CIA’s Role.” 10. journalist named John Lear: Lear, “The Disputed CIA

Document on UFO’s,” Saturday Review, September 3, 1966.

11. One of the more enigmatic figures: Hillenkoetter took over amid negotiations on May 1, 1947, of what would be the National Security Act of 1947, so when the CIA came into being on September 18, 1947, he was already DCI, per the Central Intelligence Agency Library, Roscoe Henry Hillenkoetter, Rear Admiral, US Navy, CIA.gov.

12. served on the board of governors: Haines, “CIA’s Role,” 74.

13. Hillenkoetter testified to Congress: “Air Force Order on ‘Saucers’ Cited; Pamphlet by the Inspector General Called Objects a ‘Serious Business,’” New York Times, February 28, 1960.

14. he mysteriously resigned: NICAP Web site, “The Who Was Series,” Hillenkoetter, Vice-Admiral Roscoe,

http://www.nicap.org/photobio.htm; in my interview with Stan Friedman, Friedman said there was nothing mysterious about Hillenkoetter’s resigning, “he just resigned.” Nor does Friedman believe that Hillenkoetter was planted at NICAP to gather information.

15. Bryan’s true role with the ufologists: Ibid. In the official NICAP bio for Hillenkoetter, it is written, “He resigned from NICAP in Feb 1962 and was replaced on the NICAP Board by a former covert CIA high official, Joseph Bryan III, the CIA’s first Chief of Political & Psychological Warfare (Bryan never disclosed his CIA background to NICAP or Keyhoe).”

16. the CIA had maintained three lines of thought on UFOs: Memorandum for file OSI, Meeting of OSI Advisory Group on UFO, January 14 through 17, 1953, 3 pages; Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects, 14–17 January 1953, Evidence Presented, 2 pages; CIA Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects, Comments and Suggestions of UFO Panel, 19 pages.

The CIA party line on UFOs had been firmly established by General Bedell Smith during his tenure and was maintained until sometime around 1966, when this new thinking emerged.

17. This new postulation came from the Agency’s monitoring: CIA Memo, Translation, Vitolniyek, R. (Director) Flying phenomena, Sovetsknya Latviya, no. 287, 10 Dec. 67; CIA Memo, 10 Aug. 67, “Report on Conversations with Soviet Scientists on Subject of Unidentified Flying Objects in the USSR”; CIA Memo, Translation of Memo from Konsomol’skaya pravda, no. 13, 20 January 68, author Zigel, 3.

18. Villen Lyustiberg: CIA Memo, Translation, Lyustiberg V. (Science commentator for [illegible]), “Are Flying Saucers a Myth?” Pravda, Ukrainy, no. 40, 17 Feb. 68.

19. “the U.S. publicizes them to divert people from its failures and aggressions”: CIA Memo, Translation, “Nothing But the Facts on UFOs or Which Novosti Writer Do You Read?” 9 April 1968, 12 pages.

20. Zigel, had come to believe: The CIA followed Zigel closely. In the Agency’s author biography on him, it states: “Zigel, F. Yu., Dr of Technical Science, writes under auspices of Moscow Aviation Institute, Associate Professor there as of 1969.” CIA analysts discovered that Zigel’s interest in UFOs began with his interest in astronomy and mathematics in 1936, after he participated in an expedition to Kazakhstan to observe a solar eclipse. Zigel had also visited the Tunguska crater in Siberia, where a comet likely exploded, in 1908. The blast knocked over approximately 80 million trees and flattened 830 square miles of Siberian forest. In the early 1960s Zigel stunned his colleagues by suggesting that the Tunguska crater could have been created by an outer space vehicle that crashed there.

21. “UFO Section of the All-Union Cosmonautics Committee”: Title: Unidentified flying objects, Source: Soviet Life, no. 2 1968, 2729, 1.

22. “The hypothesis that UFOs originate in other worlds”: Ibid.

Interviews: Ken Collins, Charlie Trapp, Colonel Slater, General Hsichun “Mike” Hua, Edward Lovick, Changti “Robin” Yeh (via written correspondence), Hervey Stockman

1. Collins knew the kind: Interview with Ken Collins.

2. simulated jungle survival: Interviews with Ken Collins, Charlie Trapp.

3. CIA pilot named Yeh Changti: Hua, Lost Black Cats, ix. 4. the Black Cats flew: Ibid., viii-x.

5. “no information was released about Yeh Changti”: Interview with General Hua.

6. “His code name was Terry Lee”: Interview with Colonel Slater. Yeh Changti’s American name is Robin Yeh (the Chinese put family names first).

7. getting hard intelligence on China’s nuclear facilities: National Photographic Interpretation Center, Mission [GRC-169], 23 August 1963, 30 pages. The designation for these missions was Operation Church Door. Images of targets photographed by the Black Cats include the Lop Nur nuclear facility, missile launch sites, airfields, ports, and industrial complexes.

8. Yeh Changti was tortured and held prisoner: Interview with General Hua; in Lost Black Cats, Hua, a former CIA Black Cat U-2 pilot, tells the tragic and amazing story of the nineteen years Changti and Chang spent as captives of Communist China, based on personal interviews. The sacrifices made by Changti and Chang have never been acknowledged by the CIA. On September 17, 1998, the CIA held a symposium called “U-2: A Revolution in Intelligence” to honor the declassification of many CIA-controlled U-2 operations and to celebrate its success. But the symposium omitted any mention of the

Black Cat U-2 pilots according to my interview with General Hua.

9. second Black Cat pilot named Major Jack Chang: Ibid., ix. To clarify, General Hua also refers to Major Jack Chang as Chang Liyi— Jack being the pilot’s American nickname and Liyi being his “first name” in Chinese, which is his family name, the reverse of Western usage.

10. dull, dirty, and dangerous: Interview with T. D. Barnes.

11. “and then head back out to sea”: Interview with Lovick. “A colleague named Mike Ash and I designed an electrical circuit into the drone’s pallet to select an antenna to be used to radiate the recovery beacon signal. If the sensor package was not recovered by an aircraft and it fell into the water, an antenna was deployed to allow radio signals to enable recovery.” If the sensor package landed upside down, Lovick and Ash had created a system which allowed the seawater to act like a switch and activate a second antenna.

12. Yuletide: Interviews with Colonel Slater, Frank Murray. 13. “with PJs nearly falling off cliffs”: Interview with Charlie Trapp. 14. flight engineer, Ray Torick: There are many different ideas

about why and how Torick died. I adhere to Colonel Slater’s view of the events. The drone’s first official test launch was on March 5, 1966, and during that flight, the drone launched successfully off the back of the mother ship while traveling at a speed of Mach 3.2. It then flew approximately 120 miles before it ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea, as was planned. A month later, a second launch sent a drone flying for 1,900 miles, at Mach 3.3, until it fell into the sea. It was on the third test launch that disaster struck and Torick died.

15. “He impulsively and emotionally decided”: Rich, Skunk Works, 267.

16. “never again allow a Francis Gary Powers situation”: Ibid. 17. “Ben, do you recognize this?” Ibid., 270.

18. dubbed Operation Aphrodite: Singer, Wired for War, 48.

19. Tesla’s pilotless boat: Tesla, “Inside the Lab-Remote Control,” PBS, http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ins/lab_remotec.html.

20. Goliath carried 132 pounds of explosives: “Rise of the Machines,” ArmyTechnology.com, May 21, 2008, http://www.armytechnology.com/features/feature1951/.

21. mother ship called Marmalade: AFSC History Staff, History of Air Force Atomic Cloud Sampling, 9.

22. Fox, was blasted “sixty feet higher: Ibid., 11.

23. Operation Sandstone: For the Air Force, maintaining a drone wing was expensive. It was also a security risk. In early 1947, that more atomic tests were being planned was a closely guarded national secret because the public was being led to believe that the United States was genuinely considering outlawing the bomb — or at least putting the United Nations in control of atomic energy. In reality, it was during this period of alleged international debate that the drone unit was again called back into action for the next test series in the Pacific. Operation Crossroads was supposed to have been a singular event, and so talk surfaced among the drone pilots. Being reactivated could only mean one thing: more nuclear tests in the pipeline. This security leak made its way up the chain of command.

24. accidentally flew through the Zebra bomb’s mushroom cloud: AFSC History Staff, History of Air Force Atomic Cloud Sampling, 21.

25. “Now pilots, not drones, would be sent”: Ibid., 23–24.

26. fear that the entire world’s atmosphere could catch on fire: Interviews with Al O’Donnell and Jim Freedman.

27. what happened to Oppenheimer sent a strong message: Interview with Al O’Donnell.

28. measurements inside the thermonuclear clouds: Now called Task Group 3.4 and operating out of Eglin Air Force Base in Florida,

these new drones were modified T-33 aircraft, as opposed to the old TF-80s used in earlier tests. The wing fell under the command of Colonel Thomas Gent, who was also in command of the 550th Guided Missile Wing of the Air Proving Ground.

29. crash-landed on a deserted island called Bogallua: AFSC History Staff, History of Air Force Atomic Cloud Sampling, 37.

30. That group included Hervey Stockman: Ibid., 82. Hervey’s name is misspelled as “Harvey.”

31. Stockman, then flew sampling missions: Ibid., 80–85. Interview with Hervey Stockman.

32. “scientists put monkeys in the cockpits”: “Conversations with Colonel Hervey S. Stockman,” edited by Ann Paden and Earl Haney (not published), from a section called “Nuclear testing program.”

33. “not serving as guinea pigs”: AFSC History Staff, History of Air Force Atomic Cloud Sampling, 66.

34. “In those days”: “Conversations with Colonel Hervey S. Stockman,” edited by Ann Paden and Earl Haney (not published), from a section called “Pacific testing ground.”

35. Jimmy P. Robinson was one of the six pilots: The details of Robinson’s story, including where I quote him, can be found in AFSC History Staff, History of Air Force Atomic Cloud Sampling, 69–75. Robinson’s name is redacted from the monograph, the words “privacy act material removed” stamped in their place. In 2009, Mark Wolverton wrote “Into the Mushroom Cloud” for Air and Space magazine and revealed the pilot’s name publicly for the first time. Robinson was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross about a year after his death, but his family had no idea how he actually had died. Wolverton wrote that Robinson’s daughter Rebecca, “a baby when her father died, spent years petitioning the government for more information about his last mission, with only limited access.” Rebecca Robinson says most of the information about her father’s death is “still classified.”

36. Atomic-sampling pilots wore lead-lined vests: AFSC History Staff, History of Air Force Atomic Cloud Sampling, 101.

37. “It was one of the ones that was too big”: Interview with Al O’Donnell.

38. In contrast, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima: Rhodes, Dark Sun, photograph #76, “Mike over Manhattan.” Here, the Ivy Mike fireball is shown in comparison with a Nagasaki-scale atomic bomb. Mike’s stem was 20 miles in diameter and its mushroom cap only began at 50,000 feet, approximately twice as high as commercial airplanes fly. The top of the mushroom cloud extended into the troposphere and was approximately 200 miles wide.

Interviews: Colonel Slater, Dr. Wheelon, Ken Collins, Kenneth Swanson, Frank Murray, Charlie Trapp, Frank Murray, Tony Bevacqua, Dr. Robert B. Abernethy

1. air-conditioned hunting blind: Woods, LBJ, 313. 2. “I’ll be dammed”: Brzezinski, Red Moon Rising, 175. 3. “Soon they will be dropping”: Dickson, Sputnik, 117. 4. not a cause for panic: Korda, Ike, 700.

5. “What most actually saw”: Brzezinski, Red Moon Rising, 176.

6. Johnson sat in the Oval Office with CIA director: CIA Memo, Meeting with the President, Secretary Rusk, Secretary McNamara, Mr. Bundy and DCI. Re: Surfacing the OXCART, 29 November, 1963, 1.

7. it would hold aviation records: T. D. Barnes explained, “Officially, the SR-71 Blackbird still holds the world speed record for sustained flight in an oxygen-breathing plane in horizontal flight but it is common knowledge throughout the Blackbird community that the A-12 flew higher and faster because of the sacrifices the SR-71 made to accommodate a second passenger. The reason the SR-71 holds the ‘records’ is because those of the A-12 were not certified. The A-12 Oxcart didn’t exist when the Air Force was setting records.”

8. outing the Oxcart was a terrific idea: If the public knew about Oxcart, there would no longer be a reason to have the Agency in charge of a program that needed secrecy as a cover. The Air Force knew the CIA had done all the work getting Oxcart up and running; now was the time to push the Agency aside. This echoes what happened with Curtis LeMay’s early summation of the U-2 program in 1955: “We’ll let [the CIA] develop it and then we’ll take it from them,” from Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball, 24.

9. they could take over Oxcart: Letter, General Bernard Schriever

to Eugene M. Zuckert, July 11, 1963, Top Secret.

10. McCone tried a different approach: CIA Memo, Meeting with the President, Re: Surfacing the OXCART, 29 November, 1963, 1. “The development of the CIA and Air Force reconnaissance planes (15 in number) would cost about $700 million, of which about $400 million have now been spent.” This figure does not include the aircraft’s “extraordinary engines,” made by Pratt and Whitney. Regarding those costs, Lockheed Skunk Works chief (from 1975–1991) Ben Rich wrote, “The CIA unhappily swallowed the enormous development costs of $600 million.”

11. the fictitious name A-11: Parangosky, The Oxcart Story, 4: “The President’s reference to the ‘A-11’ was of course deliberate. ‘A11’ had been the original design designation for the all-metal aircraft first proposed by Lockheed; subsequently it became the design designation for the Air Force YF-12A interceptor which differed from its parent mainly in that it carried a second man for launching air-to-air missiles. To preserve the distinction between the A-11 and the A-12 Security had briefed practically all participating personnel in government and industry on the impending announcement. OXCART secrecy continued in effect. There was considerable speculation about an Agency role in the A-11 development, but it was never acknowledged by the government.”

12. “The world record for aircraft speed”: Public Papers of Presidents of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963–1964, 1:322-23.

13. the aircraft were still dripping wet: Interview with Colonel Slater.

14. “without the specific knowledge of the President”: Summary of Meeting with Secretary McNamara and Secretary Gilpatric, General Carter and Mr. McCone on 5 July 1962. DCI Records dated 6 July 1962.

15. approved the Oxcart for Operation Skylark: Carter Memorandum to Wheelon, “SKYLARK,” 22 Aug. 1964.

16. according to Ken Collins: Interview with Ken Collins.

17. specially designed J-58 turbojet engines: Interview with Dr. Robert Abernethy. Robarge, Archangel, 12–13.

18. two men working there were crushed to death: Rich, Skunk Works, 221.

19. tiny black dots began to appear: Ibid., 223, from a story told by Norm Nelson, the CIA-Lockheed Skunk Works liaison during Oxcart.

20. nearly knocking him unconscious: Interview with Ken Collins. 21. he always sat patiently with the project pilots: Ibid. 22. “Fix it,” Park said: Rich, Skunk Works, 221. This story was also

clarified for me by Ken Collins, who provided additional details.

23. “‘Get me out of here!’” Rich later recalled: Rich, Skunk Works, 227.

24. Project Kempster-Lacroix: Interview with Ed Lovick; Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 42.

25. the government had exploded 286 nuclear bombs: Through Operation Hardtack there were 119 aboveground tests. Testing resumed on September 15, 1961. From then through the end of 1964, there were 167 underground tests at NTS, including 4 at Nellis Air Force Range.

26. “The first jamming system was called Red Dog”: Interview with Kenneth Swanson.

27. Trapp thought it sounded interesting: Interview with Charlie Trapp.

28. General Ledford, the head of the Office of Special Activities: My portrait of General Ledford is based on my interviews with men who knew him well, including Dr. Wheelon, Colonel Slater, and Frank Murray, in addition to his U.S. Air Force biographical information.

29. it was not in Frank Murray’s character: Interview with Colonel Slater.

30. In 2005 NSA admitted: Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 276-80.

31. Robert McNamara performing an about-face regarding Oxcart: Robarge, Archangel, 31.

32. supplying surface-to-air missile systems: Helms Memorandum to the 303 Committee, OXCART Reconnaissance of North Vietnam, with Attachment, 15 May 1967.

33. set up around Hanoi: Interview with Tony Bevacqua; photographs from Bevacqua’s personal collection.

Interviews: Ken Collins, Colonel Slater, Frank Murray, Fred White, Charlie Trapp, William “Bill” Weaver, Brigadier General Raymond L. Haupt

1. shaken from their beds: Interview with Ken Collins. A moratorium on testing meant that the Titania bomb, exploded on October 30, 1958, was the last nuclear bomb fired at the Nevada Test Site for a period of nearly three years. In August of 1961, the Russians announced they were resuming testing and conducted thirty-one nuclear tests over the next three months, including the fifty-eightmegaton Tsar Bomba, the largest bomb ever exploded. In response, Kennedy had the AEC resume testing at the Nevada Test Site; interview with Al O’Donnell.

2. The incident has never been declassified: Interview with Collins.

3. the less you knew, the better: A sentiment unanimously shared by all CIA and USAF pilots interviewed.

4. No radio, almost no TV: Interviews with Slater, Murray, Collins. 5. “like an incubus”: Helms, A Look Over My Shoulder, 309.

6. “The only sin in espionage is getting caught”: David Robarge, “Richard Helms.”

7. Helms would be recruited by the Office of Strategic Services: Helms, A Look Over My Shoulder, 31.

8. a seafood run to Westover Air Force Base: Interview with Colonel Slater.

9. MKULTRA files destroyed: The authority on this subject is John Marks, a former State Department analyst and staff assistant to the intelligence director. In June of 1977, Marks obtained access to part of seven boxes of MKULTRA, the only ones allegedly not lost and consisting mostly of financial records. In his book The Search for the

Manchurian Candidate, Marks wrote that shortly before leaving the CIA, “Helms presided over a wholesale destruction of documents and tapes — presumably to minimize information that might later be used against him,” 219.

10. front page of the New York Times: According to Colonel Slater.

11. Slater and General Ledford would be asked: No. 303 National Security Action Memorandum, June 2, 1964; Top Secret, From the Director of Central Intelligence, Memorandum for the 303 Committee, 22 March 1966.

12. “McNamara was delaying finding a mission”: Interview with Dr. Wheelon.

13. if a CIA spy plane were to get shot down: CIA Memorandum, “Reactions to a possible US Course of Action,” 17 March 1966; “OXCART Development Summary and Progress,” 1 October 1966-31 December 1966.

14. The majority voted against deployment: Robarge, Archangel,

33.

15. Slater now wanted it reduced by nearly 30 percent: Interview with Colonel Slater.

16. Park had flown over all four corners of America: John Parangosky, deputy for technology, OSA, wrote in summation of Park’s flight: “An impressive demonstration of the OXCART capability occurred on 21 December 1966 when Lockheed test pilot Bill Park flew 10,198 statute miles in six hours. The aircraft left the test area in Nevada and flew northward over Yellowstone National Park, thence eastward to Bismarck, North Dakota, and on to Duluth, Minnesota. It then turned south and passed Atlanta en route to Tampa, Florida, then northwest to Portland, Oregon, then southwest to Nevada. Again the flight turned eastward, passing Denver and St. Louis. Turning around at Knoxville, Tennessee, it passed Memphis in the home stretch back to Nevada. This flight established a record unapproachable by any

other aircraft; it began at about the same time a typical government employee starts his work day and ended two hours before his quitting time.” Full text at Roadrunners Internationale official Web site.

17. Walt Ray was, by all accounts, a terrific pilot: Interviews with Colonel Slater, Walt Murray, Ken Collins, Roger Andersen, Charlie Trapp.

18. “flew down to Cabo San Lucas”: Interview with Ken Collins.

19. fuel gauge move suddenly: Briefing Memorandum for Acting Deputy Director for Science and Technology, Subject Loss of Oxcart A-12 Aircraft, 6 January 1967.

20. Walt Ray told Colonel Slater through his headset: Interview with Colonel Slater.

21. “I’m ejecting”: Interview with Colonel Slater. Immediately after the crash Air Force channels reported that an SR-71 flying on a routine flight out of Edwards Air Force Base had gone missing and was presumed down in Nevada.

22. unable to separate from his seat: Memorandum for Acting Deputy Director for Science and Technology, Subject Loss of Article 125 (Oxcart Aircraft), 25 January 1967, 2.

23. Roger Andersen flew in low, in a T-33: Interview with Roger Andersen.

24. Charlie Trapp found the aircraft first: Interview with Charlie Trapp.

25. “‘How’d you like to fly the plane?’”: Interview with Frank Murray.

26. eight-page letter to the president: Top Secret Idealist/Oxcart, Central Intelligence Agency Office of the Director, BYE-2915-66 Alternative A, 14 December 1966.

27. a scandalous waste of an asset: DRAFT, Director of Special Activities, Comments to W.R. Thomas III Memorandum to the Director, BOB, 27 July 1966, 11.

28. Gary Powers incident had actually strengthened: Ibid., 3.

29. the CIA “controls no nuclear weapons”: Top Secret Idealist/Oxcart, Central Intelligence Agency Office of the Director, BYE2915-66 Alternative A, 14 December 1966, 4.

30. But would the president see things his way: Memorandum for the President, Subject: Advanced Reconnaissance Aircraft, December 26, 1966, Top Secret. Participants included Cyrus Vance (deputy secretary of defense), Donald Hornig (the president’s science adviser), C.W. Fischer (bureau of the budget), and Helms. All except Helms recommended mothballing Oxcart. On December 28, the president approved this memo recommendation and ordered the phaseout of the A-12 fleet by January 1968.

31. Slater was instructed to return to Area 51: Interview with Colonel Slater.

32. ahead of a two-star general: Ibid. 33. Slater went to visit Werner Weiss: Ibid.

Interviews: Colonel Slater, Ken Collins, Roger Andersen, Hervey Stockman, Peter Stockman, Frank Murray, Ronald L. “Jack” Layton, Eunice Layton, Charlie Trapp

1. “never found have much use for intelligence”: Hathaway and Smith, Richard Helms, 2. The most telling comment comes from Helms (ibid., 7): “With President Johnson… I finally came to the conclusion that what I had to say I should get into the first 60, or at least 120 seconds, that I had on my feet. Because after that he was pushing buttons for coffee or Fresca, or talking to Rusk, or talking to McNamara, or whispering here or whispering there. I had lost my principal audience.”

2. Target Tuesday lunch: Barrett, “Doing ‘Tuesday Lunch,’” 676-

77.

3. Helms told the president: John Parangosky, Deputy for Technology, OSA, wrote in summation, “Director of Central Intelligence, Richard Helms, submitted to the 303 Committee another formal proposal to deploy the OXCART. In addition, he raised the matter at President Johnson’s ‘Tuesday Lunch’ on 16 May, and received the Presidents approval to ‘go.’ Walt Rostow later in the day formally conveyed the President’s decision, and the BLACK SHIELD deployment plan was forthwith put into effect.”

4. A million pounds of matйriel, 260 support crew: Johnson, History of the Oxcart Program, 1. The three A-12s that were deployed to Kadena flew nonstop from Groom Lake across the Pacific. They refueled twice en route and got to Kadena in a little less than six hours; interview with Colonel Slater, Ken Collins, Frank Murray, Roger Andersen.

5. “the bird should leave the nest”: CIA Director of Special Activities to CIA Director of Reconnaissance, “Operation readiness of the OXCART System,” 12 November 1965.

6. nearly 40 percent of all islanders’ income: CIA NLE MR Case No. 2000-69, Ryukyu Islands (Okinawa) June 1960, 2. “The military economy employs 13 % of the working population and generates 36 % of the national income.”

7. to keep an extremely low profile: Interview with Ken Collins. 8. “no plausible cover story”: Interview with Colonel Slater.

9. the first Oxcart mission: Photographic Interpretation Report: Black Shield Mission X-001, 31 May 1967. NPIC/R-112/67, June 1967.

10. by the time the photographic intelligence got back: John Parangosky, Deputy for Technology, OSA, wrote: “Film from earlier missions was developed at the Eastman Kodak plant in Rochester, New York. By late summer an Air Force Center in Japan carried out the processing in order to place the photointelligence in the hands of American commanders in Vietnam within 24 hours of completion of a BLACK SHIELD mission.”

11. four were “detected and tracked”: CHESS RUFF TRINE OXCART, BYE-44232/67, Black Shield Reconnaissance Missions 31 May-15 August 1967, 22 Sept. 1967, Central Intelligence Agency, 1. Declassified in August 2007.

12. first attempted shoot-down: Robarge, Archangel, 36.

13. when he was involved in a midair crash: interview with Hervey Stockman; also from Conversations with Hervey Stockman (not numbered) in a section called “Mid-air collision.”

14. to find U.S. airmen who’d gone down: Interview with Frank Murray.

15. “I hope they try something because we are looking for a fight”: Karnow, Vietnam, 514.

16. it was on an espionage mission: CIA Top Secret [Redacted], 24 January 1968, Memorandum: Chronology of Events Concerning the

Seizure of the USS Pueblo, 8 pages.

17. two MiG-21 fighter jets appeared on the scene: Ibid., 3.

18. The captain considered sinking his ship: Bamford, Body of Secrets, 259.

19. 90 percent of the documents survived: Ibid., 305.

20. Pentagon began secretly preparing for war: Department of Defense, Top Secret Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, January 25, 1968.

21. pinpointed the Pueblo’s exact location: TOP SECRET TRINE OXCART, BYE-1330/68 Figure 9; a map of Weeks’s flight is noted as Mission BX-6847, 26 January 1968, figure 5.

22. he told his fellow pilots about the problems: Interviews with Frank Murray, Ken Collins.

23. very few individuals had any idea: In fact, for forty years, Frank Murray believed he had located the USS Pueblo because, in a bizarre twist, the CIA told him he did. Only in 2007, when the CIA declassified the official documents on the Oxcart program, was Jack Weeks’s true role in the crisis finally revealed. Murray’s other mission remains classified.

24. “So we had to abandon any plans to hit them with airpower”: Rich, Skunk Works, 44. This is in a section of Rich’s book written by Walt W. Rostow, President Johnson’s national security adviser from 1966 to 1968.

25. Murray was assigned to fly Oxcart’s second mission over North Korea: TOP SECRET TRINE OXCART, BYE-1330/68 figure 7. Mission BX-6853, 19 February 1968.

26. a U.S. federal judge determined: Wilber, “Hell Hath a Jury.” 27. There were beautiful sunsets to watch: Interview with Ken

Collins.

28. collectively flown twenty-nine missions: Robarge, Archangel, 35. The pilots were put on alert to fly a total of fifty-eight. Of the twentynine, twenty-four were over North Vietnam, two were over Cambodia, Laos, and the DMZ, and three were over North Korea.

29. “using our jamming systems on the bird”: Interview with Frank Murray. The Pentagon was also using Oxcart photographs to identify potential targets for U.S. Air Force air strikes. TOP SECRET CHESS RUFF TRINE Oxcart BYE-44232/67.

30. The Blackbirds were arriving on Kadena to take Oxcart’s place: Interviews with Ken Collins and Tony Bevacqua. The SR-71 began arriving in March of 1968.

31. “reaffirmed the original decision to end the A-12 program”: Helms Memorandum to Paul Nitze (DOD) and Horning, “Considerations Affecting OXCART Program Phase Out,” 18 April 1968.

32. Jack Weeks became ill: Interview with Ken Collins. 33. After Bevacqua had left Groom Lake: Interview with Tony

Bevacqua.

34. mission on July 26, 1968: This was the first time an SR-71 was fired upon by an SA-2. With Bevacqua, in the backseat, was reconnaissance systems officer Jerry Crew.

www.blackbirds.net/sr71/sr-crew-photos/ (accessed December 29, 2010).

35. The 1129th Special Activities Squadron had reached its end: The Oxcart program lasted just over ten years, from its inception as a drawing on a piece of paper called A-1, in 1957, to termination in June of 1968. Lockheed produced fifteen A-12 Oxcarts, three YF-12As, and thirty-one SR-71 Blackbirds. The CIA’s John Parangosky wrote in summation, “The 49 supersonic aircraft had completed more than 7,300 flights, with 17,000 hours in the air. Over 2,400 hours had been above Mach 3. Five OXCART were lost in accidents; two pilots were killed, and two had narrow escapes. In addition, two F-101 chase

planes were lost with their Air Force pilots during OXCART testing phase.”

36. The CIA held a special secret ceremony at Area 51: Interviews with Ken Collins, Frank Murray, Colonel Slater, and Jack Layton. Vice Admiral Rufus L. Taylor, deputy director of Central Intelligence, presented the CIA Intelligence Star for Valor to Kenneth S. Collins, Ronald L. Layton, Francis J. Murray, Dennis B. Sullivan, and Mele Vojvodich. Jack W. Weeks’s award was accepted by his widow, Sharlene Weeks. The United States Air Force Legion of Merit was presented to Colonel Hugh Slater and his deputy, Colonel Maynard N. Amundson.

37. The men moved on: Interviews with Ken Collins, Colonel Slater, Frank Murray, Charlie Trapp, Roger Andersen.

Interviews: T. D. Barnes, Doris Barnes, Tony Landis, Peter Merlin, Colonel Slater, Frank Murray, Roger Andersen, Grace Weismann (Joe Walker’s widow)

1. Iraqi air force colonel named Munir Redfa: Uzi Mahnaimi, “Stolen Iraqi Jet Helped Israel Win Six-Day War,” Sunday Times of London, June 3, 2007.

2. “Turn back immediately”: Geller, Inside the Israeli Secret Service. I use information from chapter 3, “Stealing a Soviet MiG.”

3. Redfa flew over Turkey: Obituary, “Major-General Meir Amit,” Telegraph, July 22, 2009.

4. Amit sat down with the Israeli air force: Ibid.

5. James Jesus Angleton: Helms, A Look Over My Shoulder, 275. “Jim’s interest in Israel was of exceptional value… To my knowledge, only Israel has ever dedicated a monument to a foreign intelligence officer.” Angleton worked as “the Agency’s liaison with the FBI… The best of Angleton’s operational work is still classified and in my view should remain so.”

6. Agency’s most enigmatic and bellicose spies: Author visit to CIA spy museum, CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia.

7. “wilderness of mirrors”: Helms, A Look Over My Shoulder, 277. The phrase has become synonymous with Angleton’s thinking and most notably included Angleton’s belief that the split between the Soviet Union and China was not real. According to Helms, Angleton’s “conviction that the Sino-Soviet split was mirage created by Soviet deception experts [was] interesting but simply not true.”

8. when they worked in the OSS counterintelligence unit, X-2: Ibid., chapter 28, “Beyond X-2.”

9. Helms’s status with President Johnson: Weiner, Legacy of

Ashes, 319.

10. But what didn’t make the news: Interviews with Colonel Slater, Frank Murray, T. D. Barnes.

11. Doris was reading the classified: Interview with Doris Barnes. 12. Beatty, Nevada, was one strange town: Details about Beatty in the 1960s come from interviews with Doris Barnes and T. D. Barnes.

13. “Daddy’s spaceship!”: Interviews with the Barnes’s two daughters, who wish to remain anonymous.

14. where the X-15 could land if need be: Interview with Peter Merlin; Barnes, “NASA X-15 Program,” 1.

15. Barnes got on the radio channel: The dates and data regarding X-15 mission flights can be found in Jenkins, Hypersonics Before the Shuttle. This story of the missing audiotape comes from Barnes.

16. a catastrophic midair collision occurred: I tell the story as Barnes related it to me. Another account appears in Donald Mallick’s The Smell of Kerosene, 132-35. Mallick was assigned the helicopter mission to locate Walker’s crash site.

17. reverse engineering Colonel Redfa’s MiG: Interview with Barnes.

18. Test pilots flew a total of 102 MiG missions: Barnes, “Exploitation of MiGs at Area 51, Project Have Doughnut,” http://area51specialprojects.com/migs_area51.html; Tolip, “Black Ops: American Pilots Flying Russian Aircraft During the Cold War,” MilitaryHeat.com, October 4, 2007.

19. gave birth to the Top Gun fighter-pilot school: Interview with Barnes.

20. The scales had tipped: Wilcox, Scream of Eagles, 76–77.

Interviews: Richard Mingus, T. D. Barnes, Troy Wade, Darwin Morgan, Milton M. Klein, Harold B. Finger

1. to see what would happen: Atomic Energy Commission, Summary of Project 57, the first safety test of Operation Plumbbob, report to the General Manager by the Director, Division of Military Application, Objective, 24.

2. bomber flying with four armed hydrogen bombs: “Palomares Summary Report,” Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico: Field Command Defense Nuclear Agency Technology and Analysis Directorate, January 15, 1975.

3. SAC bombers would already be airborne: When LeMay left SAC in 1957 to become the Air Force vice chief of staff, he left behind a fighting force of 1,665 bomber aircraft, 68 bases around the world, and 224,014 men. The man who took over was Thomas S. Powers.

4. “all of a sudden, all hell”: Ron Hayes, “H-bomb Incident Crippled Pilot’s Career,” Palm Beach Post, January 17, 2007.

5. aerosolized plutonium: Gordon Dunning, “Protective and Remedial Measures Taken Following Three Incidents of Fallout,” United States Atomic Energy Commission, 1968. This was originally given as a speech called “Radiation Protection of the Public in Large Scale Nuclear Disaster,” for an international agency symposium in Interlaken, Switzerland, in May 1968.

6. President Johnson learned: Moran, Day We Lost the H-Bomb,

36.

7. official nuclear disaster response team: Memo, Secret, United States Atomic Energy Commission, No. 234505, “Responsibility for Search and Rescue Operations,” to M. E. Gates, Manager, Nevada Operations, November 19, 1974.

8. to assist in the cleanup efforts: Nuclear Weapon Accident Response Procedures (NARP) Manual, Assistant to the Secretary of Defense (Atomic Energy), September 1990, xii.

9. “will never be known”: Schwartz, Atomic Audit, 408.

10. “I don’t know of any missing bomb”: Anthony Lake, “Lying Around Washington,” Foreign Policy, no. 2 (Spring 1971): 93. Thirtyeight U.S. Navy ships participated in the search for the bomb, which was eventually located five miles offshore in 2,850 feet of water by a submersible called Alvin.

11. during a secret mission over Greenland: SAC History Staff, Project Crested Ice, SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA, SPECIAL HANDLING REQUIRED, AFR 127-4: FOIA 89-107 OAS-) 1793. This source document provided many facts for this section.

12. A second fire started at the crash site: The cloud formed by the explosion measured “850 m high, 800 m in length, and 800 m in depth, and undoubtedly carried some plutonium downwind,” according to the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

13. One of the bombs fell into the bay: Gordon Corea, “Mystery of Lost US Nuclear Bomb,” BBC News, November 10, 2008.

14. “a cleanup undertaken as good housekeeping measures”: SAC History Staff, Project Crested Ice, 28.

15. “abundance of plutonium, americium, cesium”: Rollins, “Nevada Test Site — Site Description,” Table 2–4.

16. Called remote sensing: Department of Energy Fact Sheet DOE/NV #1140. The Remote Sensing Laboratory was established in the 1950s, an offshoot of atomic cloud sampling projects. Today, it is a secret industry about which very little is known publicly; http://www.nv.doe.gov/library/factsheets/DOENV_1140.pdf.

17. initially called the EG&G Remote Sensing Laboratory: EG&G Energy Measurements Division (EG&G/EM) of EG&G, Inc., managed and operated the research facility under DOE Contract DE-ACO3

93NV11265. On January 1, 1996, Bechtel Nevada Corporation operated the research and production facilities under DOE M&O Contract DE-ACO8-96NV11718.

18. to secure the government contracts to clean things up: And what a massive market it would become. In addition to future nuclear accidents, there would be a colossal amount of radiation detection work to be done in, on, and around the Pacific Proving Ground. Between 1946 and 1958, the Atomic Energy Commission had exploded forty nuclear bombs, including the largest thermonuclear bomb ever exploded by the United States, the fifteen-megaton Castle Bravo bomb — a thousand times as powerful as the weapon dropped on Hiroshima. In June of 1971, an EG&G crew was dispatched to Eniwetok Atoll by the Atomic Energy Commission “for the purposes of pre-cleanup surveying.” EG&G had armed, wired, and fired all the bombs in the Pacific. Now, using radiation detection equipment, the company determined that the island was still uninhabitable by all life forms in the water and the air — even after thirteen years. But clean-up efforts could begin. These efforts would take decades, cost untold dollars, and involve several different contractors. EG&G would lead the way.

19. EG&G had been taking radiation measurements: Interviews with Al O’Donnell, Jim Freedman; Eniwetok Precleanup Survey Soil and Terrestrial, Radiation Survey (Lynch, Gudiksen and Jones) No. 44878; draft revised 5/14/73.

20. corporate headquarters won’t say: Interview with Meagan Stafford, EG&G/URS public relations, Sard Verbinnen & Co., July 16, 2010.

21. President Clinton was in 1994: Interview with EG&G engineer. DOE Openness Initiative, Human Radiation Experiments, EG&G Energy Measurements, Las Vegas, Nevada, Finding Aids, Radioactive Fallout: “EG&G/EM played an important role in monitoring airborne radiation from weapons testing, and it retained many records relating to monitoring air-borne radiation including reports on the Nevada Aerial Tracking Systems for the 1960s. The company has

developed a computerized inventory of the collection which includes some 24,000 classified documents, films, view-graphs, and other materials. Currently the company is attempting to reorganize its archives into a usable collection designed to accommodate future research efforts. The dismantling process that was begun in 1986 has been halted. The CIC will retain fallout records from the aboveground testing program. All other original research documentation, film, notebooks, and other records relating to EG&G/EM’s important role in monitoring airborne radiation and weapons testing, including reports and maps of cloud tracking still housed at EM, will be retained by EM. Classified Material Control (CMC) contains numerous reports on later testing programs and Aerial Tracking Systems reports for the 1960s. The company also holds original survey data for the period before 1971, but this has not been inventoried. There is an effort under way to obtain the funding to inventory and create a computerized database for these records.”

22. the president did not have a need-to-know: Interview with EG&G engineer.

23. one-line reference: Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments Final Report, 506–507.

24. If Area 51 had a doppelgдnger: At Groom Lake, for a thirteenyear period beginning in 1955, the CIA and the U.S. Air Force comanaged spy plane programs using science and technology to advance the art of aerial espionage. Forty miles to the southwest, at Jackass Flats, beginning around 1955 and for a period of seventeen years, the Atomic Energy Commission, NASA, and the Department of Defense comanaged nuclear rocket programs using science and technology to try to get man to Mars. There is an interesting paradox. At Area 51, the spy plane programs were funded by black budgets, meaning their existence was hidden from Congress and the public. Not until they were declassified by the CIA — the U-2 program in 1998 and the A-12 Oxcart program in 2007—were their existences confirmed. The term Area 51 has remained redacted, or blacked out, from declassified documents. When Air Force and CIA officials are

asked to comment on Area 51, they have no comment, because technically the facility does not exist. At Area 25, the nuclear rocket ship programs have been funded with public awareness. No one at the Air Force, the Atomic Energy Commission, or NASA will deny that nuclear rocket development went on there. But what was really going on behind the facade at Jackass Flats has always been labeled Restricted Data, which is classified.

25. piloted by one hundred and fifty men: McPhee, The Curve of Binding Energy, 168.

26. Taylor designed nuclear bombs for the Pentagon: According to Taylor’s colleague the legendary Freeman Dyson, Ted Taylor made “the smallest, the most elegant and the most efficient bombs… freehand without elaborate calculation. When they were built and tested they worked.” Dyson left Princeton University’s Institute for Advanced Study to work on the Mars spaceship with Taylor.

27. “Everyone seems to be making plans”: McPhee, The Curve of Binding Energy, 170.

28. same as a Coke machine: Ibid., 174.

29. “It would have been the most sensational thing anyone ever saw”: Ibid.

30. “Whoever builds Orion will control the Earth”: Ibid., 184. 31. Space Nuclear Propulsion Office, or SNPO: Dewar, To the

End of the Solar System, xix.

32. built into the side of a mountain: Interview with Barnes; see photographs. On Nevada Test Site official maps, these mountains, in Area 25, are called Calico Hills.

33. the underground tunnel was 1,150 feet long: “Corrective Investigation Plan For Corrective Action Unit 165: Areas 25 and 26 Dry Well and Washdown Areas, Nevada Test Site, Nevada.” DOE/NV788, Environmental Restoration Division, National Nuclear Security Administration, January 2002, 12.

34. 34 million to 249 million miles to Mars: According to NASA, “the distance between Earth and Mars depends on the positions of the two planets in their orbits. It can be as small as about 33,900,000 miles (54,500,000 kilometers) or as large as about 249,000,000 miles (401,300,000 kilometers).”

35. a remote-controlled locomotive: DOE/NV #1150, “Last Stop for the Jackass & Western.”

36. “One hundredth of what one might receive”: Ibid., 287.

37. Soviet satellites spying: Dewar, To the End of the Solar System, appendix F, “The Russian Nuclear Rocket Program.” Dewar wrote, “The Soviets built a test complex vaguely similar to Jackass Flats.”

38. 2,300 Kelvin: Finger and Robbins, “An Historical Perspective,”

7.

39. “The Pentagon released information after I filed a Freedom of Information Act”: Interview with Lee Davidson. Davidson’s original 1990s story is from the Deseret News, where he was the Washington bureau reporter for twenty-eight years. During this time, Davidson reported on a number of secret AEC radiation tests in Utah, at Dugway Proving Grounds. “They had a lot of money to play with,” Davidson says of the AEC. “Here in Utah, they were trying to figure out what a meltdown would look like from a number of different angles. The AEC released more radiation in Utah than was released during the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island.”

40. “Los Alamos wanted a run-away reactor”: Dewar, To the End of the Solar System, 280.

41. “data on the most devastating accident possible”: Ibid. Notably, Dewar lays blame for the original idea of exploding the reactor on Los Alamos. The nuclear laboratory may have come up with the idea but Los Alamos takes marching orders from the Atomic Energy Commission, and in the end, the two entities agreed to go ahead and

explode the nuclear reactor on the grounds that it was a safety test. “It was critical to know the total energy release in the explosion and the amount and pattern of radioactive distribution,” Dewar wrote.

42. “over 4000 °C until it burst”: Ibid., 281.

43. chunks as large as 148 pounds: Ibid., 282.

44. “equipped with samplers mounted on its wings”: Ibid., 281. 45. “blew over Los Angeles”: Ibid., 280.

46. “accurate data from which to base calculations”: Ibid., 285. 47. “I don’t recall that exact test”: Interview with Harold Finger.

48. code-named Phoebus: Barth, Delbert, Final Report of the OffSite Surveillance for the Phoebus 1-A Experiment, SWRHL-19r, January 17, 1966. “The data collected indicate that radioactivity levels did not exceed the safety criteria established by the Atomic Energy Commission for the off-site population.”

49. “suddenly it ran out of LH2”: Dewar, To the End of the Solar System, 129.

50. cleanup crews in full protective gear could not enter the area for six weeks: “Decontamination of Test Cell ‘C’ at the Nuclear Rocket Development Station After a Reactor Accident,” January 18, 1967, LA3633; Dewar, To the End of the Solar System, 129-31.

51. long metal tongs: The workers dropped the radioactive chunks into one-gallon paint cans, which were driven out of Area 25 on a lead dolly.

52. officially ended on January 5, 1973: Dewar, To the End of the Solar System, 203.

53. no such final test: Interview with Darwin Morgan. 54. records are “well organized and complete”: Ibid., 323. 55. “Due to the destruction of two nuclear reactors”: Rollins,

“Nevada Test Site — Site Description,” 25 of 99.

56. Milton Klein might know: Interview with Harold Finger; interview with Milton Klein. Klein also says he “takes issue with the use of the word meltdown because that’s not exactly what happens to a reactor when it’s deprived of coolant.”

57. radioactive elements were still present: Table 3–2, “Corrective Investigation Plan For Corrective Action Unit 165: Areas 25 and 26 Dry Well and Washdown Areas, Nevada Test Site, Nevada,” 32.

312 “may have percolated into underlying soil.” Ibid. Certainly, Barnes’s eyewitness testimony suggests as much. “When we would run the reactor, we had to clear out forty miles of the canyon around Calico Hills, it would emit that much radiation,” Barnes explained. “And every time we ran the reactor, giant dewars of water would flood the whole area, which would help cool everything down. Enough water to make a temporary pond of water several feet deep.”

58. Area 25 began serving a new purpose: Interview with T. D. Barnes.

59. “It’s a PhD experience for first responders”: Film shown on a loop at the Atomic Energy Museum in Las Vegas. Also in this section of the museum was a photograph of Area 25, which depicted desert terrain interrupted by a bright blue sign on a post that read: “EG&G Training 295-6820”—an indication that the federal partner in WMD training at Area 25 was EG&G. Morgan denies this partnership existed and insists EG&G stopped working as an “official contractor” at the test site in the 1990s. The photograph at the Atomic Testing Museum has since been taken down, but as of December 30, 2010, the telephone number remained in service (using the local area code) with a voice mail stating: “You have reached [name redacted] in the training department. Please leave a message and I will return your call as soon as possible.”

60. one day a nuclear facility could very well melt down: For an understanding of nuclear reactor physics, how a power reactor differs

from a nuclear rocket reactor, and how both differ from a nuclear bomb, see Dewar, To the End of the Solar System, xvii.

61. five “boom year(s)”: Rogovin, Three Mile Island Report, 182-

83.

62. nuclear reactor “units”: Ibid., 182.

63. dispatched an EG&G remote sensing aircraft: EG&G, Inc., Las Vegas Operations, “An Aerial Radiological Survey of the Three Mile Island Station Nuclear Power Plant,” U.S. Department of Energy, 1977. The cover page of the president’s commission on the accident at Three Mile Island features a thermal photo accredited to EG&G.

64. “may be the best insurance that it will not reoccur”: Rogovin, Three Mile Island Report, 5.

65. nuclear-powered Russian spy satellite crashed: Gates, Mahlon, Operation Morning Light, Northwest Territories, Canada 1978, A Non-Technical Summary of U.S. Participation; “The Soviet Space Nuclear Power Program,” Directorate of Intelligence, CIA.

66. a decision was made not to inform the public: Weiss, “The Life and Death of Cosmos 954.” Marked Secret, Not to be Released to Foreign Nationals, 7 pages, no date. Declassified 10/24/97.

67. “playing night baseball with the lights out”: Ibid., 2. 68. “It was extremely tense”: Interview with Richard Mingus.

69. NEST: Secret, United States Atomic Energy Commission, No. 234505, Responsibility for Search and Rescue Operations, to M.E. Gates, Manager, Nevada Operations. November 19, 1974; see also Gates, “Nuclear Emergency Search Team,” 2, www.nci.org.

70. “established within EG&G”: Gates, “Nuclear Emergency Search Team,” 2.

71. “space age difficulty”: “Cosmos 954: An Ugly Death,” Time magazine, February 6, 1978.

316 would be panic like in The War of the Worlds: Interview with Richard Mingus.

72. meant to look like bakery vans: Interview with Troy Wade.

73. Troy Wade was the lead federal official: Note that Mahlon Gates, who authored Operation Morning Light and put together NEST, was the senior U.S. government representative on the project and also the head of DOE Nevada Operations but did not have an active role in the boots-on-the-ground operation.

74. high above was an Air Force U-2: Weiss, “The Life and Death of Cosmos 954,” 3.

75. somewhere on America’s East Coast: Time magazine reported, “The craft crashed into the atmosphere over a remote Canadian wilderness area last week, apparently emitting strong radiation. American space scientists admitted that if the satellite had failed one pass later in its decaying orbit, it would have plunged toward Earth near New York City — at the height of the morning rush hour.”

Interviews: Buzz Aldrin, Colonel Slater, Ernie Williams, Richard Mingus, Michael Schratt, Bill Irvine, James Oberg

1. July 20, 1969: For details regarding Apollo 11, “Humankind’s first steps on the lunar surface,” http://nasa.gov; for transcripts of the first lunar landing, visit “Apollo 11 Lunar Surface Journal,” by Eric M. Jones, http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11.landing.html.

2. Armstrong’s hundreds of hours flying: Jenkins, Hypersonics before the Shuttle, appendix 9.

3. astronauts visited the Nevada Test Site: NASA, Appendix E. Geology Field Exercises: Early Training, Field Training Schedule for the first 3 Groups of Astronauts (29), 3, Feb 17–18 & 24–25, 1965 & March 3–4, 1965. “The trip provided an opportunity to examine in detail the craters and ejecta formed by detonation of subsurface nuclear devices in lavas and unconsolidated sediments”; USGS OpenFile Report 2005–1190, Table 1, “Geologic field-training of NASA Astronauts between January 1963 and November 1972.”

4. Ernie Williams was their guide: Interview with Ernie Williams.

5. first water well: Interviews with T. D. Barnes, Colonel Slater, Ernie Williams.

6. astronauts arrived with a lunar rover vehicle: Gerald G. Schaber, “A Chronology of Activities from Conception through the End of Project Apollo (1960–1973),” U.S. Geological Survey, Branch of Astrogeology.

7. by-products of underground bomb tests: “The Containment of Underground Nuclear Explosions,” #69043 Congress of the United States, Office of Technology Assessment, 32.

8. astronauts twice referred to: DOE/NV 772 REV 1, “Apollo Astronauts Train at the Nevada Test Site,” 2. The mission commentary

voice transmissions can be downloaded at

http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/mission_trans/apollo17.htm.

9. hearing this comparison was a beautiful moment: Interview with Ernie Williams.

10. Just two months after Armstrong and Aldrin returned: Author interview with James Oberg, and from a chapter in his book UFOs and Outer Space Mysteries. In addition to being an aerospace historian and leading debunker of lunar-landing and UFO-on-the-moon conspiracies, Oberg spent his career as a rocket scientist working for NASA contractors, including at Mission Control in Houston, Texas.

11. moon being a base for aliens and UFOs: Interview with James Oberg.

12. Spielberg said in a 1978 interview: Matthew Alford, “Steven Spielberg,” Cinema Papers, 1978.

13. With these three questions: The answers, presented by a popular Web site dedicated to debunking the moon-hoax theory, are: Q: How can the American flag flutter when there is no wind on the moon? A: The movement comes from the twisting motion of the pole. Q: Why can’t the stars be seen in the moon photographs? A: There are plenty of Apollo photos released by NASA in which you can see stars. Q: Why is there no blast crater where Apollo’s landing vehicle landed? A: The moon’s surface is covered by a rocky material called lunar regolith, which responds to blast pressure similar to solid rock; http://www.braeunig.us/space/hoax.htm.

14. he experienced “an intuitive feeling”: Fox Television broadcast, “Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?” February 15, 2001.

15. the Today show: A transcript of Kaysing’s interview with Katie Couric, cohost of the Today show, which aired on NBC, August 8, 2001, can be read online at Global Security.

16. canceled the book: Dr. David Whitehouse, “NASA Pulls Moon Hoax Book,” BBC News, November 8, 2002.

17. CIA admitted it had been running mind-control programs: Marks, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” 211. During the 1977 Senate hearings, CIA director Stansfield Turner summed up some of MKULTRA’s eleven-year legacy: “The program contracted out work to 80 institutions, which included 44 colleges of universities, 15 research facilities or private companies, 12 hospitals or clinics, and 3 penal institutions.”

18. 58,193 Americans were killed trying: The National Archives, Statistical information about casualties of the Vietnam War, ARC ID: 306742.

19. Great Moon Hoax: Goodman, The Sun and the Moon, 12.

20. Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon: This section is based on my interview with Buzz Aldrin, and also from chapter 20 in his book Magnificent Desolation, which addresses the event and is called “A Blow Heard Around the World,” 332-46 (galley copy).

21. 25 percent of the people interviewed: Brandon Griggs, “Could Moon Landings Have Been Faked? Some Still Think So,” CNN, July 17, 2009. Griggs noted that a “Google search this week for ‘Apollo moon landing hoax’ yielded more than 1.5 billion results.”

22. involve captured aliens and UFOs: AboveTopSecret.com.

23. “The tunnels were dug by a nuclear-powered drill”: Interview with Michael Schratt.

24. N-tunnels, P-tunnels, and T-tunnels: U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, The Containment of Underground Nuclear Explosions.

25. “deactivated,” according to the Department of Energy: Michael R. Williams, “Ground Test Facility for Propulsion and Power Modes of Nuclear Engine Operation,” 4.

26. the revelation of the Greenbrier bunker: Ted Gup, “The Ultimate Congressional Hideaway,” Washington Post, May 31, 1992.

27. “Secrecy, denying knowledge of the existence”: KCET American Experience, “Race for the Superbomb,” interview with Paul Fritz Bugas, former on-site superintendent, the Greenbrier bunker.

28. on average, twelve months: U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, The Containment of Underground Nuclear Explosions, 18.

29. at least sixty-seven nuclear bombs: U.S. Department of Energy, United States Nuclear Tests, July 1945 through September 1992, 15.

30. Piledriver experiments studied survivability: Cherry and Rabb, “Piledriver Drilling,” UCRL–ID-126150, August 9, 1967.

31. “to destroy enemy targets [such as] missile silos”: Operation Hardtack II, Defense Nuclear Agency, 3 December 1982; interview with DOE officials during my tour of the Nevada Test Site, October 7, 2009.

32. guarding many of the nuclear bombs: Interview with Richard Mingus.

33. After the test ban, the Pentagon reversed its policy: U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, The Containment of Underground Nuclear Explosions, 21.

34. has changed its name four times: See NNSA Timeline, http://www.nnsa.energy.gov/aboutus/ourhistory/timeline. Notably, there is another agency that has changed its name four times, the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP), which, like the Atomic Energy Commission, also began as the Manhattan Project. On May 6, 1959, it changed its name to the Defense Atomic Support Agency (DASA); on July 1, 1971, it changed its name to the Defense Nuclear Agency; on June 26, 1996, it changed its name to the Defense Special Weapons Agency. Schwartz, Atomic Audit, 61.

35. “mission is to advance technology and promote related innovation”: Google DOE.gov and this statement is the subhead. Or go

to http://www.energy.gov/.

36. formal beginning in 1908: Federal Bureau of Investigation Official Web site, Timeline of FBI History, 1900–1909.

37. Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko in a secret CIA prison: Edward Jay Epstein and Susana Duncan, “The War of the Moles,” New York, 2837.

38. His true allegiance remains the subject of debate: Walter Pincus, “Yuri I. Nosenko, KGB Agent Who Defected to the U.S.,” Washington Post, August 27, 2008. In CIA documents released decades later, Nosenko is quoted as forgiving the CIA for the harsh treatment, stating “while I regret my three years of incarceration, I have no bitterness and now understand how it could happen.” Shortly before he died, CIA officials gave Nosenko a ceremonial U.S. flag from CIA director Michael Hayden.

39. memorandum dated May 1, 1995: Memorandum to Members of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, from Advisory Committee Staff, May 1, 1995, “Official Classification Policy to Cover Up Embarrassment.” Clinton Staff Memo is marked “Draft, For Discusssion Purposes Only,” and cites 1947 memo listed below.

40. “All documents and correspondence”: “Report of Meeting of Classification Board During Week of September 8, 1947,” Atomic Energy Commission.

41. “cause considerable concern to the Atomic Energy Commission insurance Branch”: September 28, 1947, memorandum from J.C. Franklin, manager Oak Ridge Operations to Carroll L. Wilson, General Manager Re: Medical Policy, 2–3; located circa 1995 by Clinton staff.

42. “medical papers on human administration experiments done to date”: Ibid.

43. “reworded or deleted”: October 8, 1947, Memorandum to Advisory Board on Medical and Biology Re: Medical Policy, 8; located

circa 1995 by Clinton staff.

44. In 2011 there are an estimated 1.8 billion Internet users: According to Miniwatts Marketing Group.

45. Deny Ignorance: Interview with AboveTopSecret CEO Bill Irvine.

46. the New World Order conspiracy theory: Wikipedia has an interesting overview of New World conspiracy theories, with bibliography.

Interviews: Richard Mingus, Ed Lovick, Bob Murphy, T. D. Barnes, Gene Poteat, Peter Merlin, Harry Martin, Millie Meierdierck, Dr. Wheelon, Joe Behne

1. most sensational near catastrophes: Interview with Richard Mingus. Interview with Joe Behne.

2. a mock helicopter attack: The details of the mock helicopter attack remain classified. Darwin Morgan, spokesman for the NNSA, Nevada Site Office, would neither confirm nor deny the event. Both Mingus and Behne were able to discuss this event with me because the details of the helicopter attack were only ever relayed to them secondhand. Their jobs had to do with the nuclear bomb going down the hole. In other words, while both men were privy to the security scare, neither man was ever officially briefed on the mock attack.

3. The bomb, one of eighteen: U.S. Department of Energy, United States Nuclear Tests, July 1945 through September 1992, 14.

4. five-man security response team: Interview with Mingus. This is one of the rare security stories from the secret base. Mingus tells it because the procedure is now obsolete.

5. Quick conversation with Joe Behne: Interview with Joe Behne.

6. With astounding lack of foresight, Wackenhut Security: Interview with Richard Mingus. Interview with Joe Behne.

7. using slide rules and calculators: Interview with Ed Lovick. 8. “roughly the size of a ball bearing”: Interview with Lovick and

specifically “based on 15GhHz radar, 08 wavelength.”

9. The man in charge of engineering, fabrication, and assembly: Interviews with Bob Murphy.

10. at Groom Lake to drop bombs: Barnes points out that some bombs were dropped close in to the dry lake bed at Area 51.

11. to use a preexisting, little-known bombing range: Johnson, “Tonopah Test Range Outpost of Sandia National Laboratories,” Sandia Report SAND96-0375 UC-700 March 1996, U.S. DOE Contract DE-AC04-94AL85000.

12. the Chicago of the West: State Historic Preservation Office, Beatty, Center of the Gold Railroads, “Chicago of the West,” Nevada Historical Marker 173.

13. “secret testing [that] could be conducted safely and securely”: Johnson, “Tonopah Test Range Outpost of Sandia National Laboratories,” 8.

14. would quote Saint Paul of Tarsus: Ibid., 9.

15. Operation Roller Coaster, three dirty bomb tests: Ibid., 47; Operation Roller Coaster Sites, TTR SAFER Plan, Section 2.0. Map here; NVO-171 Environmental Plutonium on the Nevada Test Site and Environs, June 1977, 35.

16. construction for an F-117 Nighthawk support facility: Interview with Peter Merlin.

17. grow their hair long and to grow beards: Interview with Richard Mingus, who lived there.

18. test flights of the F-117: Crickmore, Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk, 4. Major Al Whitley became the first operational pilot to fly the Nighthawk in October of that year.

19. Lieutenant General Robert M. Bond: U.S. Air Force official Web site, biography.

20. men like General James “Jimmy” Doolittle: Interview with Harry Martin.

21. “There was some debate about whether the general”: Barnes had left Area 51 by this time; this is a secondhand story. Having been

involved in the MiG program since its inception, Barnes was privy to information about Bond but was never formally briefed.

22. were the general’s last words: Transcript reads: 10:17:50 a.m., Bond: “How far to the turn?” 10:17:53 a.m. Ground control: “Turn now, right 20.” Bond responds with two clicks. At 10:18:02 a.m. Bond: “I’m out of control. I’m out of…” At 10:18:23 a.m. Bond: “I’ve got to get out, I’m out of control.”

23. Fred Hoffman, a military writer: Hoffman, “Allies Help Pentagon Obtain Soviet Arms,” Associated Press, May 7, 1984.

24. at Area 51 and Area 52 for eleven years: Johnson, “Tonopah Test Range Outpost of Sandia National Laboratories,” 79. The first flight of Have Blue was December 1, 1977, by Bill Park at 7:00 p.m. as noted in Crickmore, Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk.

25. Code-named Aquiline: Hank Meierdierck’s personal papers; interview with Jim Freedman; interview with Millie Meierdierck, who had the only known mock-up of the drone sitting on the bar in her home.

26. original purpose of Aquiline: Interview with Gene Poteat.

27. Cold War Soviet hydrofoil named Ekranopian: James May, “Riding the Caspian Sea Monster,” BBC News magazine, September 27, 2008.

28. Jim Freedman to assist him on the Aquiline drone: Interview with Jim Freedman.

29. ninety-nine million dollars over budget: Hank Meierdierck’s personal papers.

30. Project Ornithopter: Richelson, Wizards of Langley, 148.

31. Project Insectothopter: Seen by the author at the CIA museum, located inside CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

32. “Acoustic Kitty”: Richelson, Wizards of Langley, 147.

33. sensor drones to detect WMD signatures: Interview with Dr. Wheelon.

34. Early efforts had been made using U-2 pilots: Interview with Tony Bevacqua, who flew “sniffer” missions in U-2s for the U.S. Air Force. The Black Cat pilots flew some of these dangerous missions, per my interview with Colonel Slater.

35. Operation Tobasco, risked exposure: Richelson, Wizards of Langley, 93–94.

36. did considerable damage to the Agency’s reputation: Marks, Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” 220. Marks’s entire chapter 12, “The Search for Truth,” is a particularly searing portrait of how the CIA was perceived during this time.

37. “probable biological warfare research”: CIA Top Secret, Biological Warfare, USSR: Additional Rumors of an Accident at the Biological Warfare Institute in Sverdlovsk. Dated October 15, 1979. Declassified 6/10/96.

38. Hellfire missiles: Lockheed makes the Hellfire, which is an acronym for its original design: helicopter-launched, fire-and-forget.

39. his name was Osama bin Laden: Coll, Ghost Wars, 533: “While hovering over Tarnak Farm outside Kandahar, the Predator photographed a man who appeared to be bin Laden.”

Chapter Twenty-one: Revelation

Interviews: T. D. Barnes, Colonel Leghorn, Hervey Stockman, Gerald Posner, Stephen Younger, John Pike, Gene Poteat, EG&G engineer, David Myhra

1. engineers and aerodynamicists had concerns: Interview with Barnes. This is educated speculation; Barnes did not work on the drone project. Coll also writes about this.

2. targeted assassination by a U.S. intelligence agency was illegal: December 4, 1981, President Ronald Reagan Executive Order 12333.

3. State Department gave the go-ahead: Coll, Ghost Wars, 539.

4. CIA and the Air Force teamed up for an unusual building project: Ibid., 534. “The Air Force ought to pay for the Afghan operation, CIA officers believed, in part because the Pentagon was learning more about the drone’s capabilities in a month than they could in a half a year of sterile testing in Nevada… Having seen the images of bin Laden walking toward the mosque at Tarnak, Black was now a vocal advocate of affixing missiles to the drone.”

5. on the outer reaches of Area 51: In Ghost Wars, Steve Coll places the mock-up “in Nevada” (549). One source interviewed by me placed the mock-up at Area 51; a second source interviewed by me placed the mock-up inside the Nevada Test and Training Range (speculating Area 52). The exact location where this took place remains classified.

6. CIA director George Tenet decided: Coll, Ghost Wars, 535. “There was a child’s swing. Families lived at Tarnak. The CIA estimated that the compound contained about one hundred women and children — bin Laden’s family and family members of some top aides.” Tenet would have made the final call.

7. CIA drones provided intelligence for NATO forces: Jim

Garamone, “Predator Demonstrates Worth Over Kosovo,” American Forces Press Service, September 21, 1999.

8. The first reconnaissance drone mission in the war on terror: 9/11 Commission Report, 213–214.

9. “a very successful tactical operation”: Wolfowitz’s interview with CNN anchor Maria Ressa appeared in print as “U.S. Missile Strike Kills al Qaeda Chief,” CNN, November 5, 2002. Wolfowitz added, “one hopes each time you get a success like that, not only to have gotten rid of somebody dangerous, but to have imposed changes in their tactics and operations and procedures.”

10. exclusive interview to the Christian Science Monitor: Yemeni Official Says US Lacks Discretion as Antiterror Partner,” Christian Science Monitor, November 12, 2002.

11. Hull spoke Arabic: Ibid.; Seymour Hersh, “Manhunt: The Bush Administration’s New Strategy in the War Against Terrorism,” New Yorker, December 23, 2002.

12. Mohammed Atef, in Jalalabad, Afghanistan: Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann, “The Drone War: Are Predators Our Best Weapon or Worst Enemy,” New Republic, June 3, 2009.

13. targeted assassination spearheaded by the CIA: Mark Hosenball and Evan Thomas, “The Opening Shot,” Newsweek, November 18, 2002.

14. Predator got a new designation: MQ-1B Predator, official Web site of U.S. Air Force, fact sheet.

15. company that built the Predator: General Atomics Aeronautical, http://www.ga-asi.com/accessed December 30, 2010.

16. “big differences between the Reaper and the Predator”: Travis Edwards, “First MQ-9 Reaper Makes Its Home on Nevada Flightline,” U.S. Air Force Public Affairs, March 14, 2007.

17. Brigadier General Frank Gorenc was remotely viewing: Major

John Hutcheson, “Balad Predator Strikes Insurgents Placing Roadside Bomb Near Balad,” Red Tail Flyer, 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing, Public Affairs, Balad Air Base, Iraq, March 31, 2006, 5.

18. “put a weapon on a target within minutes”: Ibid.

19. By 2009 the number of drone strikes would rise to fifty-three: http://www.longwarjournal.org/pakistan-strikes.php; these numbers vary. Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann are considered the authorities on the subject of drone strikes. The pair keep track of numbers and provide analysis for organizations including New America Foundation and the New Republic magazine.

20. “These are just the assets we know about”: This is because when missiles are fired it is often the work of the CIA, and CIA drone strikes are not made public. As per my interview with Pentagon officials, “That we can’t confirm or deny.” State Department officials also refuse to comment on CIA drone attacks and deflect attempts to get confirmation on the CIA’s role in drone operations. While visiting Pakistan in December of 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a group of journalists who were inquiring specifically about drone strikes, “I’m not going to comment on any particular tactic or technology.” In reality, the strategic partnership between the CIA and the Air Force that began with Bissell’s CIA and LeMay’s Air Force in 1955 is back together again.

21. the Beast of Kandahar: Originally reported by Air & Cosmos magazine, http://www.air-cosmos.com/site/, the story was quickly picked up in the U.S. press. David Hambling, “Mysteries Surround Afghanistan’s Stealth Drone,” Wired magazine, Danger Room Blog, December 4, 2009; interview with unnamed Lockheed official.

22. Defense Department confirmed: Interview with secretary of the Air Force, Public Affairs Engagements Office.

23. synthetic aperture radar, or SAR: Sandia National Laboratories: Synthetic Aperture Radar: What is Synthetic Aperture Radar? Sandia Synthetic Aperture Radar Programs (Unclassified

programs and participants); http://www.sandia.gov/.

24. thirty miles south of Area 51, at Indian Springs: Physical tour of Creech Air Force Base, Indian Springs, Nevada, October 9, 2009.

25. “Wicked Problems”: “Report of the Defense Science Board, 2008 Summer Study on Capability Surprise, Volume II: Supporting Papers, January 2010. Office of the Under Secretary of Defense For Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, Washington, DC, 20301-3140, chapter 2, Appendix 2-A, Wicked Problems, 127-31.

26. “playing the game changes the game”: Ibid., 127.

27. shot down one of their own: Carl Hoffman, “China’s Space Threat: How Missiles Could Target U.S. Satellites,” Popular Mechanics, July 2007.

28. The official Pentagon story: Jim Garamone, “Navy to Shoot Down Malfunctioning Satellite,” American Forces Press Service, February 14, 2008; “Navy Says Missile Smashed Wayward Satellite,” MSNBC.com News Services, February 21, 2008; “U.S. Missile Shoots Down Satellite — But Why?” Christian Science Monitor, February 22, 2008.

29. not required to tell the truth to Congress: Killian, Sputnik, Scientists and Eisenhower, 25.

30. “A satellite cannot simply drop a bomb”: Ibid., 287. Killian originally wrote this as “a study of space science and technology made at the request of the President for the non technical reader,” which was released from the White House on March 26, 1958. “Much has been written about space as a future war theatre, raising such questions as satellite bombers, military bases on the moon and so on… most of these schemes, nevertheless, appear to be clumsy and ineffective ways of doing a job. Take one example, the satellite as a bomb carrier. A satellite simply cannot drop a bomb.”

31. by his own admission, was not a scientist: James Killian had only an undergraduate degree in management, as per my interview

with MIT’s archivist who researched the question for me in March of 2010.

32. United States Space Surveillance Network: NASA Orbital Debris Program Office, Frequently Asked Questions, July 2009, http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/faqs.html.

33. “A one-centimeter object is very hard to track”: Carl Hoffman, “China’s Space Threat: How Missiles Could Target U.S. Satellites,” Popular Mechanics, July 2007.

34. “spy satellites launched into space”: Interview with Colonel Leghorn.

35. Leghorn founded the Itek Corporation: Itek, which stood for Information (I) Technology (tek), was founded in 1957 with seed money from venture capitalist Laurance Rockefeller. Itek built Corona cameras from the beginning of the program until Corona ended in 1972. The CIA/NRO follow-on systems were contracted out to PerkinElmer; interviews with Colonel Leghorn, Dr. Wheelon. In his memoir, Helms wrote, “Corona flew 145 secret missions, with equally rewarding results,” 267.

36. Leghorn spent decades in the commercial-satellite business: U.S. Air Force official Web site, Biography of Colonel Richard Sully Leghorn, Retired, Air Force Space Command,

http://www.afspc.af.mil/library/biographies/bio.asp?id=9942.

37. W61 Earth Penetrator: Leland Johnson, “Sandia Report: Tonopah Test Range Outpost of Sandia National Laboratories, SAND96-0375, UC-700,” March 1996, 80.

38. launch the earth-penetrator weapon: Nelson, “Low-Yield EarthPenetrating Nuclear Weapons,” 3, figure 3.

39. and signed by five of the then seven or eight nuclear-capable countries: Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (http://www.ctbto.org/). The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty was signed by the United States, China, France, the United Kingdom,

and Russia on September 26, 1996, in New York. The nuclear-armed states who did not sign (and as of 2011 have not signed) are India, Israel, and Pakistan. According to CTBTO, Israel has not reported testing but is generally assumed to be a nuclear-armed state. In 2006, Korea announced that it had conducted a nuclear test. Notably, the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, to which I also refer, prohibits nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, outer space, and underwater but allowed for underground nuclear tests. The Comprehensive NuclearTest-Ban Treaty of 1996 prohibits all nuclear explosions, including those conducted underground.

40. Rods from God: Eric Adams, “Rods from God,” Popular Science, June 1, 2004.

41. “that’s enough force”: Interview with Barnes.

42. “long-rod penetration”: Nelson, “Low-Yield Earth-Penetrating Nuclear Weapons,” 4.

43. April 1999 report: JSR-97-155, “Characterization of Underground Facilities.” JASON, MITRE Corporation, McLean, Virginia.

44. Los Alamos fired back: Interview with Stephen Younger.

45. operations at the Nevada Test Site: “NSTec Contracted to Operate NNSA Test Site,” United Press International, December 22, 2008. Interview with Stephen Younger.

46. In 2006, the Senate dropped the line item: CRS Report for Congress, “Bunker Busters”: Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator Issues, FY2005-FY2007; Domenici: RNEP Funds Dropped from Appropriations Bill,” press release, Senator Pete Domenici, October 25, 2005, FY2006 hearings. From the transcript: Representative Terry Everett: “Could you please tell me directly if there’s a military need for this, for robust earth-nuclear earth penetrator?” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: “It is a question that’s difficult to answer, because sometimes they say ‘military requirement.’ And that’s a formal process. There was no military requirement for unmanned aerial

vehicles until they came along.”

47. proposed to revive the NERVA program: Michael R. Williams, “Ground Test Facility for Propulsion and Power Modes of Nuclear Engine Operation,” Savannah River National Laboratory, Department of Energy, WSRC-MS-2004-00842.

48. six hundred million pages of information: Pauline Jelinek, “U.S. Releases Nazi Papers,” Associated Press, November 2, 1999.

49. Many documents about Area 51 exist in that pile: Interviews with EG&G engineer.

50. the Roswell crash remains: which certainly explains why the CIA and the Air Force have not been able to locate Roswell crash remains in their archives.

51. the most powerful defense contractor in the nation: In 1999, EG&G was acquired by the Carlyle Group. In 2002 it was acquired by URS. In 2000, EG&G formed a joint venture with Raytheon to create JT3 (Joint Test, Tactics, and Training) LLC, which provides “engineering and technical support for the Nevada Test and Training Range, the Air Force Flight Test Center, the Utah Test and Training Range, and the Electronic Combat Range.” Interview with Meagan Stafford, EG&G/URS Public Relations, Sard Verbinnen & Co., July 16, 2010.

52. former dean of engineering at MIT: Vannevar Bush papers located at National Security Archives, Truman Library, the Roosevelt Library, and MIT Archives; Zachary, Endless Frontier, Library of Congress, “Vannevar Bush, a Collection of His Papers in the Library of Congress,” Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

53. kidnapped by Dr. Josef Mengele: Interview with Gerald Posner; Posner and Ware, Mengele: The Complete Story, 83.

54. performed unspeakable experimental surgical procedures: Spitz, Doctors From Hell: The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments

on Humans. Spitz worked as a typist during the Nuremberg trials. Forgiving Dr. Mengele, a film by Bob Hercules and Cheri Pugh (2006); CANDLES Holocaust Museum, Biography of Eva Mozes Kor. The Japanese also performed grotesque experiments on humans during the war. “U.S. War Department, War Crimes Office, Judge Advocate General’s Office, #770475.” Japan’s version of Josef Mengele, General Ishii, was pardoned by the U.S. War Crimes Office on the grounds that information regarding the grotesque medical experiments he performed would somehow benefit the United States. Although it is science fiction, The Island of Dr. Moreau, written in 1896 by H. G. Wells, tells a twisted tale of human experimentation on a remote island.

55. children, dwarfs, and twins: Koren and Negev, In Our Hearts We Were Giants, 85-197.

56. Josef Mengele’s efforts to create a pure, Aryan race: Erik Kirschbaum, “Cloning Wakes German Memories of Nazi Master Race,” Reuters, February 27, 1997. America is not exempt from eugenic theology; see Edwin Black, “Eugenics and the Nazis: The California Connection,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 9, 2003.

57. painter named Dina Babbitt: Ibid., 103-31 and photographic inserts. Bruce Weber, “Dina Babbitt, Artist at Auschwitz, Is Dead at 86,” New York Times, August 1, 2009. Babbitt’s maiden name (used at Auschwitz) was Gottlieb.

58. Dr. Martina Puzyna: Koren and Negev, In Our Hearts We Were Giants, 109.

59. According to his only son, Rolf: Interview with Gerald Posner. Posner interviewed Rolf Mengele and was given access to 5,000 pages of Mengele’s written correspondence as well as his personal journals written after the war.

60. Mengele held up his side of the Faustian bargain: Interview with EG&G engineer.

61. Mengele never took up residence in the Soviet Union: Interview

with Posner.

62. Eileen Welsome wrote a newspaper story: Eileen Welsome, “The Plutonium Files: America’s Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War,” Albuquerque Tribune, November 1993.

63. direct violation of the Nuremberg Code: Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, Vol. 2, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949. Nuremberg Code: (1). The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. (2). The experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study, and not random and unnecessary in nature. Full text available at

http://ohsr.od.nih.gov/guidelines/nuremberg.html.

64. President Clinton opened an investigation. The advisory committee was made of fourteen members who reported to the president through a cabinet-level group called the Human Radiation Interagency Working Group, and it included the secretaries of defense and energy (formerly the Atomic Energy Commission) as well as the attorney general and the director of the CIA. The committee was dissolved in October of 1995 after publishing its findings. Today, the Office of Health, Safety and Security (HSS), a Department of Energy office, maintains a Web site. Of its efforts, DOE says, “We have undertaken an intensive effort to identify and catalogue relevant historical documents from DOE’s 3.2 million cubic feet of records scattered across the country.” Given that there are approximately 2,000 pages of documents in a single cubic foot, it is telling that a record search for “EG&G” at the HSS/DOE database delivers a paltry 500 documents.

Epilogue

Interviews: Colonel Leghorn, Ed Lovick, EG&G engineer, David Myhra

1. Army Air Forces commemorative yearbook: This is the

government-issued “Official Report, Task Force 1.52” and is meant to look like a high school yearbook.

2. The U.S. government spent nearly two billion dollars: Atomic Audit, 102. “Operation Crossroads was an astonishing $1.3 billion [circa 1996 dollars], far more than any of the subsequent thermonuclear tests conducted during the 1950s.”

3. Truman’s closest advisers: “Potsdam and the Final Decision to Use the Bomb,” Department of Energy Archives

(http://www.cfo.doe.gov/): “During the second week of Allied deliberations at Potsdam, on the evening of July 24, 1945, Truman approached Stalin without an interpreter and, as casually as he could, told him that the United States had a ‘new weapon of unusual destructive force.’ Stalin showed little interest, replying only that he hoped the United States would make ‘good use of it against the Japanese.’ The reason for Stalin’s composure became clear later: Soviet intelligence had been receiving information about the atomic bomb program since fall 1941.”

4. Stalin’s black propaganda hoax: Interview with EG&G engineer.

5. “a warning shot across Truman’s bow”: Interview with EG&G engineer. The engineer says this information was relayed to him by his EG&G boss, who had been given the information by a government superior. One cannot rule out the possibility that the elite EG&G engineers were given false information as a means of coercing them into participating in a morally reprehensible program; in 1951, there was no greater enemy to the free world than Joseph Stalin. Until Russia opens its UFO archives, Stalin’s side of the story will remain unknown, but since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Stalin’s interest in UFOs has come to light. In Korolev, Professor James Harford discusses an incident where Stalin asked his chief rocket designer, Sergei Korolev, to study UFOs (See here, here). In 2002, Pravda.ru ran a story called “Stalin’s UFOs,” identifying the dictator’s Roswell/UFO research team as “mathematician Mstislav Keldysh, chemist Alexander Topchiyev, and physician [sic] Sergey [sic] Korolev.” Other ufologists identify Stalin’s UFO team as Sergei

Korolev, missile designer and inventor of Sputnik; Igor Kurchatov, father of Russia’s atomic bomb; and Mstislav Keldysh, mathematician, theoretician, and space pioneer (see photographic insert).

6. “Hitler invented stealth,” says Gene Poteat: Interview with Gene Poteat. Also from Poteat’s participation in the CIA’s Oxcart panel discussion at the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, September 24, 2010.

7. Whatever happened to the Horten brothers: Interview with David Myhra.

8. captured by the U.S. Ninth Army on April 7, 1945: Myhra, The Horten Brothers and Their All Wing Aircraft, 229.

9. London high-rise near Hyde Park: Ibid., 230. 10. Theodore von Kбrmбn: National Aviation Hall of Fame,

biography, Theodore von Kбrmбn. http://www.nationalaviation.org/vonkarman-theodore/. Myhra, The Horten Brothers and Their All Wing Aircraft, 230.

11. tapes can be found: National Air and Space Museum, Archives Division, Reimar and Walter Horten Interviews, Accession No. 19990065.

12. “Reimar had me agree to two restrictions”: Interview with David Myhra.

13. 2010 Freedom of Information Act request: Letter, October 29, 2010, to Ms. Annie Jacobsen from Nathan L. Mitchell, Assistant to the General Counsel, Department of the Army, Office of the General Counsel, 104 Army Pentagon, Washington DC.

14. another [important] engineer: The name of this engineer and his employment with EG&G during the 1950s have been verified with other former EG&G employees.

15. empty lot of asphalt: The lot is adjacent to the buildings identified as EG&G’s original Las Vegas headquarters in a film about

the history of the Nevada Test Site, funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration, Nevada Site Office: “When EG&G first moved to Las Vegas, their headquarters were located on ‘A’ Street now called Commerce.”

16. “Little wooden discs”: Interview with Ed Lovick.

17. sworn affidavit: “Dead Airman’s Affidavit: Roswell Aliens Were Real.” Fox News.com, July 3, 2007.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,287643,00.html, accessed December 30, 2010.

18. “It’s difficult”: Written correspondence with Bob Lazar, 2010.

19. hidden inside secret “Restricted Data” files: Interview with EG&G engineer.

20. Vannevar Bush: To further understand Vannevar Bush, I reviewed his papers, letters, and hand-edited drafts of his articles, books, and monographs from three major collections: Vannevar Bush, “A Collection of His Papers in the Library of Congress,” Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC; Vannevar Bush, “Office of Scientific Research and Development,” National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland; Vannevar Bush Papers, Carnegie Institute, Washington, DC.

21. human experiments to study the effects: The trials involved high concentrations of lewisite and mustard gas. Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, Final Report, 98; Veterans at Risk: The Health Effects of Mustard Gas and Lewisite, 66–69.

22. “Although the human subjects”: Ibid., 66.

23. Dixon Institute… Feeble-Minded: Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, Final Report, Chapter Seven, Nontherapeutic Research on Children, 320–351. Dr. Susan Lederer, Military Medical Ethics, Volume 2, “The Cold War and Beyond: Covert and Deceptive American Medical Experiments,” 514. Lederer, a Clinton committee staff member, cites D. J. Rothman, Strangers at the

Bedside: A History of How Law and Bioethics Transformed Medical Decision Making, Basic Books, 1991.

24. letter-number designation of S-1: Gosling, The Manhattan Project: Making the Atomic Bomb, 10.

25. JT3: From the company Web site (http://www.jt3.com/), accessed October 18, 2010. “The Department of Defense (DoD) has merged the engineering and technical support management of several western ranges into one organization to streamline support for test and training customers. In response to this challenge, URS (URS) and Raytheon Technical Services Company (RTSC) formed JT3, a Limited Liability Company (LLC) dedicated to supporting Joint Range Technical Services (J-Tech) requirements. We are experts at assisting our customers and other contractors in the planning, preparation, and execution of test projects and training missions.”