The Wizards of Langley (14 page)

According to the OSI chief, a reevaluation of the Baotou reactor site indicated that adequate primary and backup electric power circuits for reactor operation had been installed by March 1963, a finding that reduced confidence in the August 1964 judgment that the reactor did not begin operation until early that year. Analysts also noted that another possible source of fissionable material was a facility in a large complex near Yu-men, which might contain a small operational reactor. In addition, they stated that “we no longer believe that evidence on plutonium availability justifies the on-balance judgement reached in August 1964. We believe the Lop Nur evidence indicates that a test could occur at any time.” But they hedged their bets by concluding that “we believe a test will occur sometime within the next six to eight months.”
⁴⁷

The next six to eight months included, of course, the very next day—October 16, when China announced the detonation of its first atomic device. On October 20, the same day a CORONA satellite snapped a picture of ground zero showing clear signs of the detonation, Atomic Energy Commission chairman Glenn Seaborg told a presidential cabinet meeting that analysis of the debris from the radioactive cloud confirmed that the bomb had employed uranium, not plutonium, and that it “had been more sophisticated in design than our own Hiroshima [uranium] weapon.”
⁴⁸

The misunderstood Baotou facility played no role in the production of China’s first nuclear device. Subsequently, it was responsible for the transformation of uranium oxide into uranium tetrafluoride. In 1967, the facility at Yumen was identified as a plutonium reactor, and China detonated its first plutonium device the following year. An article in the CIA’s in-house journal,
Studies in Intelligence
, concluded that “there was a pre
conception of the likely Chinese approach, and a failure to consider seriously alternative options.” The OSI, and thus the CIA, had, as Wheelon put it, “missed the boat.”
⁴⁹

Wheelon’s Directorate of Science and Technology began with five components—the three he inherited from the Directorate of Research (OSA, OEL, and ORD) and the two that were transferred from other parts of the agency (OSI and OCS). On November 7, 1963, he created a new component—the Foreign Missile and Space Analysis Center (FMSAC), with a planned staff of 270.
⁵⁰

Under its charter, FMSAC was to provide detailed technical intelligence on Soviet, Chinese, and other foreign space and offensive missile systems. OSI and other components of the intelligence community would provide overviews of space and missile programs, monitor deployments, and study strategy. Determining the trajectories, range, number of warheads, and accuracy of ICBMs as well as the precise movements and missions of satellites and space shots would be the job of FMSAC, with the help of OCS’s computers.
⁵¹

Part of Wheelon’s rationale for establishing the new organization was explained by a
Studies in Intelligence
article he had coauthored in 1961 with OSI analyst Sidney Graybeal. They characterized the space race as having many characteristics of a game, noting that “our stature as a nation, our culture, our way of life and government are tending to be gauged by our skill in playing this game.”
⁵²

In playing the game, it was important for the United States to have as much accurate intelligence as possible about Soviet space plans, capabilities, and operations. Once a space launch occurred, “intelligence must be prepared to move quickly and confidently” into a “tracking, collection, and analysis operation.” Such activity would help national leaders make “correct and appropriate comments on each new Soviet space accomplishment.” It would also allow the United States to understand when the Soviets failed and give U.S. leaders the option of revealing those failures. If statements by U.S. officials are “as authoritative and complete as possible, Congress and the public will be less likely to give undue weight to the rash of scientific but often ill-informed opinion.”
⁵³

Wheelon also had come to the conclusion that the work of OSI’s offensive systems division was not up to his standards and needed an infusion
of better-trained personnel—individuals who understood telemetry and other technical issues. Furthermore, missiles and space were not within the expertise of OSI chief Donald Chamberlain. And he also had “too much on his plate” anyway, according to Wheelon. There was also, in Wheelon’s view, a need for a forceful leader, someone willing to battle the Air Force over issues such as the capability of a new Soviet missile.
⁵⁴

Also needed was an organization that had no institutional conflict of interest in analyzing foreign efforts and had access to the full range of intelligence data. In Wheelon’s view, neither the Army’s missile intelligence unit nor the Air Force’s Foreign Technology Division satisfied both those requirements. FTD, in particular, was to Wheelon a “propaganda mill,” and one function of FMSAC would be to “keep FTD honest.”
⁵⁵

One particular controversy that, to Wheelon, indicated a need for a second voice on missile matters was the continuing debate over the SS-8 missile. In 1961, using data collected from the first tests of the missile earlier that year, scientists working for the Air Force calculated that the SS-8 nose cone weighed around 25,000 pounds—sufficient to carry a warhead in the 100-megaton class. But there were doubters in other corners of the intelligence community, including CIA, and during 1962 the question of the nose cone’s size became a matter of intense disagreement and the focus of a major analytical effort. In 1962 and 1963, outside review groups and other members of the intelligence community, including Army intelligence, moved toward the view that the SS-8 warhead was small.
⁵⁶

An October 1963 national intelligence estimate stated that the data available indicated that the SS-8, if large, could carry a nose cone weighing about 10,000 pounds, but the best estimate was that it had a payload similar to that of the SS-7—only about 4,500 pounds. The Air Force retreated but did not surrender—insisting that the evidence did not exclude the possibility of the SS-8 carrying a nose cone of up to 18,000 pounds.
⁵⁷

Wheelon intended FMSAC to be a center where all incoming information relevant to missile and space activity would arrive and be analyzed, with results distributed to the White House, NASA, and other interested parties. It would also play a role, Wheelon expected, in influencing the development and deployment of collection systems.
⁵⁸

Wheelon found a forceful leader for FMSAC in JAM SESSION colleague Carl Duckett, at the time the head of the Directorate of Missile Intelligence of the Army Missile Command at Huntsville, Alabama. Duckett differed from many of those who rose to high levels in the CIA. He
grew up in rural North Carolina and never attended an Ivy League university. When he was seventeen, his mother presented him with a new pair of jeans, some money, and instructions to get a job at the mill down the road. Duckett didn’t stop for 200 miles, until he got a job at a radio station. He was drafted for service in World War II, and when the results of his IQ tests came in, it was apparent that the military had a genius on its hands. Duckett was then sent to study radio at Johns Hopkins University.
⁵⁹

After the war, Duckett was assigned to White Sands Proving Ground and became involved in missile testing and telemetry analysis. From White Sands he moved on to Huntsville to work on range instrumentation. In 1957, he was brought to Washington as part of the JAM SESSION program.
⁶⁰

Among those Duckett brought into FMSAC were David Brandwein, a veteran of TRW and EARSHOT, who would succeed Duckett as FMSAC director; M. Corley Wonus, a future head of the directorate’s SIGINT operations; and future DS&T chief R. Evans Hineman (commonly referred to as Evan Hineman).
⁶¹
In 1956, Hineman, having obtained his degree in mechanical engineering and completed his Reserve Officer Training Course, was headed for two years of Army service. A course in technical intelligence, which he considered preferable to the alternative of learning to repair tanks, was followed by assignment to the Army missile intelligence unit at Huntsville. In his two years there, he had an inside view of Soviet space and missile efforts and was called on to brief notables such as Wernher von Braun and General John Medaris, head of the Army’s missile program.
⁶²

When his two years at Huntsville were up, Hineman joined the Army Ordnance Technical Intelligence Agency at Arlington Hall, Virginia—an organization that would become part of the Army’s Foreign Science and Technology Center (FSTC) when it was formed in 1962. Hineman first met Carl Duckett around 1960. When Duckett was subsequently put in charge of the Army’s missile intelligence effort, he tried to get Hineman to come back to Huntsville, but both Hineman and his wife felt they had seen enough of the Alabama town. When he became head of FMSAC, Duckett called again, and this time, Hineman signed up.
⁶³

Not everyone was as enthusiastic about FMSAC as Wheelon, Duckett, and Hineman. Among the least enamored were two powerful Air Force generals, Bernard Schriever, head of the Air Force Systems Command (AFSC) and chief of staff Curtis LeMay. In September 1963, LeMay had
been alerted of Wheelon’s plans in a letter from Schriever’s deputy. In December, after the center’s creation and a briefing from Wheelon and Duckett, Schriever wrote to LeMay, urging that “immediate action should be taken to slow down or block CIA action to duplicate DOD missile and space intelligence.”
⁶⁴
By “DOD” Schriever meant “FTD,” which reported to his Systems Command.

Schriever complained that “the establishment of this activity within CIA is most certainly the first step in competing with and possibly attempting to usurp the Services’ capabilities in this area of scientific and technical intelligence.” He also objected that the creation of FMSAC had “resulted in undesirable competition for special talent and special data.” Schriever characterized the Air Force capability in the area as representing “a significant investment in manpower and resources and . . . an extremely vital function which must not be lost or permitted to be eroded by another government agency.”
⁶⁵

He recommended that Joseph Carroll, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and thus the senior military official on the United States Intelligence Board, be encouraged to protest CIA activities in the area “at least until an agreement on respective responsibilities and mutual support can be reached.” But Schriever believed that since “the problem could not be solved through intelligence channels alone . . . I recommend that you and the Secretary act to protest this expensive and unnecessary duplication of DOD space and missile intelligence analysis by CIA.”
⁶⁶

On January 2, 1964, LeMay asked the head of Air Force intelligence, Brig. Gen. Jack Thomas, and a colleague to prepare a memorandum that would serve as the basis of a JCS request to the Secretary of Defense for OSD action “to oppose the FMSAC program.”
⁶⁷
That was apparently followed by a memo from LeMay to Schriever stating that he shared Schriever’s concerns and that the memo he envisioned going to McNa-mara would request the Defense Secretary to consult with McCone “in an effort to prevent a major CIA effort competing with and largely duplicating activities well under way in Department of Defense agencies.”
⁶⁸

Ultimately, the Air Force opposition proved futile. But the Defense Department’s review of missile and space intelligence activities, which was being conducted during late 1963, did result in a Defense Department competitor, at least in some respects, for FMSAC. Chartered by a Defense Department directive, the Defense Special Missile and Astronautics Center (DEFSMAC), a joint NSA-DIA operation, opened for business on June 1, 1964.
⁶⁹

The center was to receive warnings of upcoming foreign missile and space launches, alert all relevant intelligence collectors and officials of the forthcoming launches, and provide initial assessments of the launches. Former DEFSMAC chief Charles Tevis recalled that there was a “great opportunity for these two . . . centers to fight . . . everybody likes to be the first one to get a current report out,” and there was a “kind of one-upmanship in reporting.” According to Hineman, there was a rivalry with DEFSMAC over “who’s going to get to the street first,” and the rivalry was probably good for the country. Since the intelligence community was working with incomplete data, it was useful to have organizations that could go down different analytical paths in pursuit of the truth.
⁷⁰

There was ample Soviet missile and space activity to keep FMSAC and DEFSMAC busy during Wheelon’s tenure. The Soviets began orbiting a variety of military support satellites. Reconnaissance and meteorology spacecraft joined scientific satellites in orbit, usually with the uninformative
Cosmos
designation (which was also used for space probes that never made it out of earth orbit). In 1965, the first Soviet
Molniya
(“Lightning”) communications spacecraft was placed in its peculiar orbit—flying at a 63-degree inclination and reaching 24,000 miles above the earth when over the northern Soviet Union and descending to a mere 240 or so miles when it whizzed over the southern portion of the planet.
⁷¹

Manned missions were intended to claim space “firsts” for the Soviets as well as help prepare for a mission to the moon. The cosmonauts stayed close to earth initially; unmanned missions were intended to establish an ability to reach, orbit, and land upon the moon as well as send back photographs. Thus, the October 1964
Voshkod 1
mission was the first flight without spacesuits and the first with direct in-flight medical observations. The
Voshkod 2
mission of March 1965 included the first space walk, a ten-minute stroll outside the capsule by Alexei Leonov.
⁷²