The Wizards of Langley (8 page)

There were a number of reasons for Helms’s reluctance to part with TSD. A memo noted his “alarm” at any encroachment of his authority to conduct overseas clandestine operations, the concern that the gulf that already existed between those developing agent equipment and those using it would be exacerbated by TSD’s transfer out of the operations directorate, and the aversion of
Plans to provide detailed information on clandestine operations to technicians in another directorate.
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Of course, as much as Cline and Helms wished to retain control of OSI and TSD, respectively, a mere stroke of a pen by McCone would have effected the transfers. But despite, or perhaps because of, Cline and Helms being McCone appointees, the DCI refused to deliver OSI and TSD to Scoville. Scoville soon discovered that holding McCone to his commitments would be a problem—that the steely-eyed, rock-ribbed Republican was not always as tough as he looked.

While the OSA and OEL groups were created from existing components of the CIA, the Office of Research and Development (ORD) was a creation of Scoville and his deputy, Air Force Colonel Edward Giller, who also became its first head. They envisioned an office that would look several years into the future, investing in research and development activities that might pay dividends for collectors or analysts in five or ten years.
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Indeed, failure was part of ORD’s mission over the years, not only to find out what would work but also what wouldn’t—before another part of the agency poured millions of dollars into a doomed effort.

ORD began work in January 1963 with a staff of three individuals transferred from the technical services division—one person for each of its divisions (Research, Systems, Analysis). The initial focus of the office was to be “research and development . . . to support intelligence collection by advanced technical means.” Topics of particular interest identified in ORD’s charter were new optical systems leading to improved resolution; use of lasers to permit night photography; chemistry research related to collection concerning biological and chemical warfare activities; and acoustic and seismic research related to missile intelligence.
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In addition to research, ORD (through its Systems Division) was to analyze promising ideas falling outside the responsibility of the directorate’s overhead and ELINT collection offices and turn them into technical collection systems. The division even fielded collection systems and assumed responsibility for the EARTHLING site in Pakistan.
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Part of ORD’s initial charter was to assume TSD’s main research functions, including in behavioral science, leaving that organization to handle the operational support and related R&D functions that Helms believed must remain in Plans. Thus, ORD took over part of the MKULTRA program.
Dr. Stephen Aldrich, a graduate of Amherst and Northwestern Medical School who had served in the agency’s Office of Medical Services and OSI’s Life Sciences Division, assumed many of the responsibilities that had belonged to Sidney Gottlieb.
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With Aldrich directing that portion of ORD’s activities, its scientists continued searching for ways of controlling human behavior. The research they inherited from TSD included placing electrodes in the brains of dogs and other animals and then using radio signals to guide them along specific courses. The technical services division also placed electrodes into the brains of cold-blooded animals—apparently snakes. The experiments with dogs were directed at bugging an office, but the experiments with cold-blooded animals may have had a more cold-blooded objective, possibly “executive action-type assassinations.”
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Creating amnesia remained a major objective of ORD. Advances in brain surgery facilitated far simpler psychosurgery and the possibility that “a precisely located electrode probe could be used to cut the link between past memory and current recall.” According to one account, ORD had access to prisoners in at least one American penal institution, and office staffers worked with the Edgewood chemical laboratory to develop a drug that could be used to implant false memories into the mind of an amnesia subject.
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ORD also supported work done at the Scientific Engineering Institute (SEI). A group of behavioral and medical scientists was permitted to conduct independent research as long as it met SEI standards. The scientists were available to consult with frequent visitors from Washington. One project apparently involved stimulating the pleasure centers of crows’ brains in order to control the birds’ behavior.
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Heading the new Office of ELINT (OEL) was George Miller, who had been serving as head of OSI’s electronic intelligence effort. The activities he managed as OEL chief included support to the Norwegian Kirkenes facility, the Norwegian Barents Sea boat operation, the CIA ELINT collectors in Iran, and the “Quality ELINT” program. Support for an Austrian COMINT station, essentially on behalf of NSA, was also a mission of the office.

Collection targets continued to include Soviet space activities as well as early warning radars that were in the developmental stage. On April
26, 1962, the Soviet Union launched
Cosmos 3
, identified only as “a new data transmission system,” which was actually a test of a SAMOS-type photographic system (code-named BAIKAL), employing electronic readout to return the data to earth. CIA ELINT specialists attempted to demodulate the signals and similar ones from the
Cosmos
launch of July 28. They were able to establish some of the signal parameters but could not produce identifiable pictures. They did conclude that one or more cameras on board were taking photos, probably of cloud formations, and that the film was developed by an on-board processor. In addition, they determined that the film was being electronically scanned and transmitted to ground-based receivers in the Soviet Union. The effort directed against
Cosmos 9
, launched on September 27, which carried the same type of system as
Cosmos 3,
was more successful. Cloud cover was easily identified in a series of six pictures, and further analysis led to the conclusion that
Cosmos 9
was an experimental weather satellite.
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ELINT collection and analysis also focused on two targets that appeared in 1960 U-2 and CORONA photography—a pair of radars the U.S. intelligence community designated Hen House and Hen Roost. Both were located on the western shore of Lake Balkhash in the USSR and looked out from the Sary Shagan antiballistic missile (ABM) test center toward Kapustin Yar, the launch point for ballistic missiles employed in ABM tests. Both facilities were enormous. The Hen House antenna building was over 900 feet long—more than 3 football fields—and nearly 50 feet high. The Hen Roost radar had 2 antennae, a half-mile apart, each over 500 feet long. One antenna was a mere 15 feet tall; the other reached 65 feet.
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Radars of this type were just being developed in the United States. Rather than employing traditional radar dishes that were mechanically steered, the face of these phased-array radars consisted of radiating elements. The delay in the signals sent out from those elements meant a beam could be electronically steered to detect incoming objects. But the CIA, the Strategic Air Command, and other elements of the national security establishment needed to know more. They needed information on the system’s operating characteristics in order to determine whether the radars could provide the data required by Soviet ABMs to destroy incoming U.S. warheads, and how to neutralize the radars. But electronic monitoring of any activity out of Sary Shagan was virtually impossible at the time. The site was over the horizon from all U.S. ground stations, and the
electronic signals emitted by Hen House or Hen Roost would head off into space before they could be intercepted by U.S. antennae.

The first inroad came in late 1962, due to the Soviet decision to renew atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, testing that involved detonating missile warheads as they approached Sary Shagan. Two missiles were fired sequentially from Kapustin Yar; the warhead of the first was detonated in the atmosphere to determine if the Sary Shagan radars could detect the second missile through the nuclear cloud. The release of such vast amounts of energy can cause radical changes in the radio transmission properties of the surrounding atmosphere. In the highly ionized region created by a nuclear blast, radar waves, which would ordinarily travel straight into space, can be reflected or bent in different directions. On October 28, one of the ABM-related tests at Sary Shagan had just that effect. U.S. ELINT stations in the Middle East, possibly including Beshahr, recorded thirteen new signals, many of which were believed to have originated in the Sary Shagan region.
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The signal of greatest interest was originally designated BUEB, which analysis indicated was designed to be used against targets more than 800 miles away. Aircraft flying at the highest altitudes are well below the horizon when they are 300–400 miles from a radar, and they travel rather slowly. Ballistic missiles rise several hundred miles above the earth and approach their target rapidly, making it desirable to detect them as far away as possible. BUEB therefore became a prime candidate to be an ABM radar signal. In addition, each pulse was transmitted at a different frequency, which would be expected from an electronically steered radar beam. One major question remained: Which radar was the United States hearing, Hen House or Hen Roost? It would be a few more years before that question would be settled.
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Soviet early warning radars were only one focus of the CIA’s ELINT effort. Another was the air defense radars that would be crucial to any attempt to detect, track, and destroy U.S. reconnaissance flights that might overfly Soviet territory. That effort had begun in 1959—before the May 1960 U-2 shootdown and while the OXCART program was in its early stages. OXCART staffers wanted to know how widespread the radars were, the extent of territory they covered, the power they radiated, and their sensitivity. While seeking to answer the first question, the ELINT
unit of OSI discovered a technique that enabled the Beshahr station in Iran to monitor Soviet missile tracking radars and eliminated the need to rely on chance occurrences such as that of late October 1962.

Gene Poteat, a member of the ELINT staff, joined the CIA after working as an electrical engineer and physicist for Bell Labs, reporting to work in early January 1960. He recalled an occasion at Cape Canaveral in the 1950s when a signal was received from a ground-based radar located 1,000 miles beyond the horizon because the signal had reflected off a Thor IRBM (Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile) during a test flight. This event led to the suggestion that the phenomenon, which would later become known as “bistatic intercept,” could be used to locate high-powered Soviet radars over the horizon from U.S. intercept sites. Instead of pointing ELINT antennae in the direction of possible Soviet radars, the antennae would seek to capture signals reflected off the missiles.
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George Miller suggested Poteat try out the idea on two experts from private industry—William Perry of Sylvania and Albert “Bud” Wheelon of TRW. Both men offered moral and technical support. Feasibility studies and engineering calculations followed, which required solving spherical trigonometry equations using slide rules, logarithm tables, and hand-operated mechanical calculators.
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Funding came quickly for the program, which Poteat code-named MELODY after one of his favorite sounding words, and the appropriate equipment was installed at the Beshahr site. The MELODY program produced bistatic intercepts of virtually all Soviet ground-based tracking radars, including all of the ABM radars at the Sary Shagan test range.
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MELODY also provided new intelligence on the dispersion of Soviet air defense radars, although it did not help OXCART planners to identify all such radars. Determining the range and power of the radars was the objective of the aerial ELINT operations of the Quality ELINT program, but the program also had the more secret element of determining their sensitivity. That element was known by the code word PALLADIUM.

OXCART planners wanted to determine the sensitivity of Soviet radar receivers and the proficiency of their operators. With the help of scientific consultants, Poteat came up with a scheme to electronically generate precisely calibrated false targets and insert them into Soviet radars—deceiving the Soviet radar operators into seeing and tracking ghost aircraft.
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The Soviets would expect a radar signal to return after bouncing off an aircraft. The first step in the Quality ELINT deception was to capture the radar’s signal and feed it into a “variable delay line” before sending the
signal back to the radar. By smoothly varying the length of the delay line, CIA technicians could simulate the notional aircraft’s range and speed. The knowledge gained from the Quality ELINT power and coverage measurements enabled program staffers to simulate an aircraft of any radar cross-section—from an invisible stealth airplane to one that would create a large blip on a Soviet radar—and fly it along any path, at any speed and altitude.
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The smallest blip would provide a measure of the sensitivity of the radar and the skill of the operators. The key was to find a way of determining which blips the Soviets could see on their radar screens, and which they could not. Poteat and his colleagues considered either monitoring other Soviet radars when a ghost airplane was projected to see if they were switched on in an effort to pick up the imaginary intruder detected by the target radar, or intercepting the pertinent Soviet communications link. With the assistance of NSA, it was possible to intercept and decrypt the relevant communications.
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