The Wizards of Langley (12 page)

Pete Scoville’s resignation left the Deputy Directorate for Research without a leader and in disarray. The NRO’s new charter threatened to strip the directorate of authority with respect to its most important endeavor. Scov-ille’s organization had never achieved the role originally envisioned, partly because of the refusal of Ray Cline and Richard Helms to turn over the scientific intelligence and technical services portfolios. As one CIA historian observed, the research directorate “never had a fighting chance.” It did not help, in the view of some, such as John McMahon, that Scoville was simply “too nice a guy.”
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But through the efforts of some key individuals, both within and outside the CIA, the directorate would receive a new name and a more extensive mission. It would champion the CIA’s role in space reconnaissance—successfully managing the procurement of several new reconnaissance satellites and forcing a revision in the NRO charter. The directorate’s ELINT operations would expand in the quest for better intelligence on the Soviet space and missile programs. In addition, technical analysis of foreign space and missile systems would become a major activity for the renovated directorate.

Such achievements did not come without significant intellectual and bureaucratic efforts. Ingenuity and perseverance were required to see some projects through to a successful conclusion. A willingness to engage in bitter and prolonged bureaucratic warfare also proved essential.

Scoville’s frustrations with his position had reached the ears of PFIAB chairman James Killian early in 1963. Neither he nor Edwin Land had been fully satisfied with the Deputy Directorate for Research, and they decided to press McCone to strengthen the CIA’s technical capabilities. In
March, the rest of the PFIAB approved Killian and Land’s “Recommendations to Intelligence Community by PFIAB,” which spelled out how this task should be done, and the report was delivered to McCone.
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The recommendations included the “creation of an organization for research and development which will couple research (basic science) done outside the intelligence community, both overt and covert, with development and engineering conducted within intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA.” It was necessary, they observed, to establish “an administrative arrangement in the CIA whereby the whole spectrum of modern science and technology can be brought into contact with major programs and projects of the Agency.” Killian and Land noted that, unfortunately, “the present fragmentation and compartmentation of research and development in CIA severely inhibits this function.”
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On April 15, McCone informed Killian and Land, through presidential National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, of the progress he had made in implementing their recommendations—which was none at all. He had taken no action, acknowledging that he had considered including OSI and TSD in the directorate but had suspended action. He promised to “move ahead with additional changes” that would give the research directorate “expanded responsibilities.”
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Ten days later, Scoville submitted his resignation. Not long after Scov-ille departed, McCone decided to offer his position to Albert Wheelon, who had just returned from an overseas trip. Just a year before, Wheelon had replaced Scoville as head of OSI and was now being asked to succeed him a second time.
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Wheelon’s year at the helm of OSI was his first inside the CIA, although it was not his first contact. The Illinois-born, California-raised, Wheelon had received a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Stanford, a school he chose after it became clear to him that West Point was “not interested in those with eyeglasses.” Stanford was followed by MIT, where he shared an office with future Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann, described in one study of twentieth-century physics as someone “who gave a rich new layer of meaning to the term ‘brash.’” The same term would also be applied to Wheelon. After receiving a doctorate in physics in 1952, he worked on guided missiles at the Douglas Aircraft Company and then in 1953 joined the technical staff of Ramo-Woolridge (which would become Thompson- Ramo-Woolridge in 1958 and then TRW). In 1960, he was appointed director of the company’s Radio Physics Laboratory, which focused on guidance systems for long-range ballistic missiles and satellites.
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As a by-product of his work for TRW, Wheelon published an impressive number of scientific papers, which appeared in prestigious journals such as
The Physical Review
and
Journal of Applied Physics
. One group of papers, bearing titles such as “Spectrum of Turbulent Fluctuations Produced by Convective Mixing of Gradients” and “Radio-Wave Scattering by Tropospheric Irregularities,” focused on a phenomenon known as electromagnetic scintillation—the impact of the atmosphere on light, radio, and other electromagnetic signals, a topic of significance to missile guidance. A second group dealt with satellites and missiles and bore equally technical titles, such as “Oblateness Perturbation of Elliptical Satellite Orbits.”
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His work on U.S. missile systems first brought him to the attention of the CIA. In summer 1957, a U-2 had photographed the Tyuratam ICBM and satellite launching complex. In an attempt to extract more information from those photographs, the CIA and Air Force sought help from individuals involved in U.S. missile programs who might notice things in the photography that others would not. Air Force Ballistic Missile Division chief Bernard Schriever appealed to Simon Ramo, the “R” in TRW, to provide a member of his technical staff. When complications arose with the first two TRW candidates, Wheelon was next in line. He, along with Army missile specialist Carl Duckett, became part of the JAM SESSION program. Many years later, Wheelon would recall that “it was my introduction to intelligence. I found it fascinating.”
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Between 1960 and 1962, as part of project EARSHOT, Wheelon also helped to decipher the meaning of the telemetry transmitted by Soviet missiles during their test flights and by Soviet satellites that were being orbited at regular intervals. The Army and Air Force had been intercepting the data but needed assistance in making sense of it. The EARSHOT group was soon able to identify the different telemetry channels, calibrate them, and draw some conclusions about the missiles. Through his work on JAM SESSION and EARSHOT, Wheelon came to the attention of Bissell, Scoville, and Robert Amory, the Deputy Director for Intelligence. When Scoville became DD/R, he recruited Wheelon to assume the helm at OSI. With Killian and other key officials urging him to accept, Wheelon packed up and headed to Washington.
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At OSI, the brash Wheelon was not inhibited by the fact that he was only thirty-three years old and OSI staffers had to adjust to their new boss. Some, Wheelon felt, had become accustomed to being administrators rather than making technical judgments themselves. He sought to
make OSI staffers more self-confident to give them more equal footing in their interactions with technical consultants. He believed some staffers’ talents were being wasted. When he discovered that Sayre Stevens (later Deputy Director for Intelligence during the Carter administration) had been assigned to study Soviet windmills, he canceled the assignment and reassigned him to study Soviet air defenses. Some people considered themselves tenured professors, free to spend part of their day playing bridge at the faculty club. Wheelon, who with his wife and children still in California would stay at the office until 10 p.m., “began to press people hard.” One division chief soon left for a job at the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).
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At the upper levels of the agency, Wheelon’s work received favorable reviews. In late February 1963, deputy director Marshall Carter sent a two-paragraph memo to McCone noting that “I have been singularly impressed over the past months by the calm, unruffled, quietly analytical, and remarkably astute manner in which Bud Wheelon approaches all problems. . . . He is one our finest assets.” Carter urged the DCI to “bring him into the family circle at every opportunity and to utilize him as a source of basic judgement . . . in areas which trouble you.”
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But despite his willingness to take charge at OSI and his awareness of Carter’s favorable view, Wheelon was taken aback by McCone’s offer of the DD/R job. At the time, he was considering returning to California after just a year at CIA. His California house remained unsold. Also, he was “personally discouraged.” He had come to Washington expecting to work for Scoville or Amory, both of whom were gone from the agency, and not Ray Cline. The two did not “hit it off very well,” Wheelon later recalled. Cline, Wheelon felt, was more interested in making OSI a “team player” than in improving its performance. Further, he was well aware of the frustrations Scoville had suffered and believed that the position, as constituted, was a no-win situation. He declined the job, telling McCone, “We should not just screw another light bulb into a shorted-out socket.”
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Wheelon did suggest that he could perform a service for the agency by tracking down Scoville and speaking to him about his reasons for leaving and what needed to be done. Wheelon journeyed to Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where Scoville was attending a conference. After arriving midmorning, Wheelon spent two or three hours with Scoville before returning to Washington that evening.
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The theme Wheelon detected in Scoville’s comments was that Scoville felt McCone had consistently undermined him. The former deputy direc
tor talked about how Killian, Land, and McCone had assured him of his mandate, which was to include TSD, and how its deputy chief, Edward Giller, had become his deputy in anticipation of the transfer—only to have McCone yield when Helms objected. Scoville also noted how Mc- Cone similarly backed down in the face of Cline’s unwillingness to part with OSI. As a result, Scoville began to question McCone’s determination as well as his word.
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But those events alone did not cause Scoville’s departure. The decisive factor, the former DDR told Wheelon, was McCone’s unwillingness to fight the Pentagon over reconnaissance issues. Every time there was a dispute between him and the DNRO (whether Charyk or McMillan), the DCI, Scoville charged, either preemptively surrendered or promised to back him and then folded in negotiations with Gilpatric. Since he didn’t know how to work in such an environment, he had to leave.
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The next day, Wheelon reported to McCone and deputy DCI Marshall Carter. Diplomatically, he told the two of Scoville’s disappointment with regard to TSD and OSI, without stressing the issue of broken promises. The two senior intelligence officials were also apprised of Scoville’s belief that the Air Force was moving to phase out the CIA’s role in satellite reconnaissance. The question of the CIA’s function in that activity was the key issue, Wheelon told McCone and his deputy.
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When asked what he thought the CIA should do, Wheelon reminded McCone that when he, McCone, had been head of the Atomic Energy Commission, the Air Force had demanded creation of a second national laboratory to speed development of the H-bomb, and that creation of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory did produce that result. Wheelon then advanced the thesis that the only thing more important than nuclear weapon design was good intelligence about the Soviet Union, and that the only means of obtaining it was through overhead reconnaissance. The partnership with the Air Force was over, Wheelon continued, and “you must know it.” Since there was no place for the CIA in the Air Force’s plans, the alternatives were either to withdraw from the field or become the Livermore to the Air Force’s Los Alamos.
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Wheelon also told McCone that the stage was set for the rapid dissolution of the research directorate. That was one path McCone could have taken. But, having been convinced of the crucial role of reconnaissance, and possibly concerned about the reaction of Killian and Land if, rather than strengthening the CIA’s science and technology mandate, he abolished it, McCone decided on another course. In a second meeting with
Wheelon, either that day or the next, McCone again offered Wheelon the job, reminding him of the commitment he had made in 1962 to stay at CIA for at least three years. With McCone pledging complete support, as well as agreeing to rechristen the directorate the Directorate of Science and Technology (to emphasize the concept of the directorate managing all CIA scientific endeavors) and to accept the PFIAB’s March 1963 recommendations as the directorate’s new charter, Wheelon accepted.
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The change became official on August 5, when a memo from deputy DCI Marshall Carter announced the retitling of the directorate, along with the transfer of two components from the intelligence and support directorates to the science and technology directorate. The following day Wheelon held a meeting with several hundred members of his new directorate. Carter was also present and made an appeal for bureaucratic “peace and harmony.”
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Jack Ledford, who served under both Scoville and Wheelon, later described Scoville as brilliant. But Wheelon was also brilliant and had “three times the energy level” of his predecessor. He was also very aggressive, fast-moving, and able to “analyze a problem, take it apart, and put it together with a solution better than any man I’ve ever seen,” Ledford recalled. Scov-ille reminded his OSA chief of a Harvard or Stanford physics professor, whereas Wheelon was a “go-get-’em type” who “understood infighting in Washington very well.”
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Wheelon’s skill at waging bureaucratic battles would be one factor in making the Directorate of Science and Technology (DS&T) the organization that Land and Killian had envisioned.