The Wizards of Langley (25 page)

On June 5, 1967, twelve days before China’s first detonation of a hydrogen bomb, Spike Chuang departed from Ban Takhli, Thailand, and flew a U-2 on a 3,700 mile, 9-hour round-trip flight, taking the plane and its cameras over the Chinese test site at Lop Nur. Captain Tom Hwang Lung Pei’s flight, which began at Taoyuan, Taiwan, was considerably shorter, ending when an SA-2 hit his aircraft while it was over Chuh-sien.
²⁶
In addition to photographing Lop Nur, U-2s continued dropping sensors in the vicinity of the nuclear test site. A May 7, 1967, mission, also flown by Spike Chuang, involved dropping the fifteen-foot-long TOBASCO pod. Among the functions of an August 31 mission, flown by Bill Chang, was to interrogate the pod, possibly because of problems in relaying the
data through a satellite. The mission required Chang to loiter in the vicinity of the pod for about ten minutes.
²⁷

In mid-1968, OSA deployed the first of the new generation of U-2s, the U-2R, to Taoyuan. The new plane was capable of carrying out long-duration SIGINT missions as well as acquiring valuable imagery through use of a new generation of Long-Range Oblique Photography (LOROP) cameras, which could photograph targets many miles to the side of the aircraft. The main camera, which had been designed with the requirements of technical intelligence analysts in mind, could distinguish objects smaller than four inches.
²⁸

To permit longer missions, fuel capacity was dramatically increased, with fuel tanks carried within the aircraft as well as on the wings. The plane also carried more sophisticated navigational aids. A typical U-2R mission might involve sensors weighing 3,000 pounds, a fuel load of 12,250 pounds, and flight time of seven and a half hours (most of it spent above 70,000 feet). A U-2R carrying its maximum fuel load of 18,500 pounds could fly a fifteen-hour mission.
²⁹

The next year, the question arose as to how much longer the agency would be operating U-2s. In March 1969, John McLucas became Under Secretary of the Air Force and Director of the NRO. He concluded early in his tenure that aerial reconnaissance operations could be handled solely by the Air Force and outside of the NRO.
³⁰

Aside from McLucas’s desire to remove the NRO from aerial operations, there was budgetary pressure, and the view that a single manager should be assigned to direct U-2 operations. If only one agency was going to handle the U-2, it would have to be the Air Force. By early December, Deputy Secretary of Defense David Packard had discussed the possibility with Richard Helms. The day before, Packard had instructed McLucas to prepare a plan to consolidate all U-2 operations under the Strategic Air Command. Packard noted that Helms agreed to consider such a plan, but that final agreement as to substance and timing had yet to be obtained.
³¹

Those memos marked the beginning of the end for CIA operation of the plane it had brought into being, but the end would not be immediate. On Christmas Day, a memo written by Brig. Gen. Donald H. Ross, who had replaced Paul Bacalis as head of OSA in July 1968, noted that “We have just received word President has reviewed IDEALIST program, including TACKLE arrangements, and has concurred in need for continuation of program.” In early August 1970, in anticipation of a breach in the
Egypt, President Nixon ordered periodic overflights.
³²
National security adviser Henry Kissinger asked the Air Force to provide U-2 coverage of the Suez Canal, after discovering that satellite imagery was inadequate to discover gun emplacements and jeeps. But the Air Force said it couldn’t move quickly enough—that it would take several weeks to move a U-2 detachment from Del Rio, Texas, to the Middle East.
³³

At a meeting of the NSC, Helms told his audience that the CIA U-2 detachment at Edwards (Detachment G) could deploy aircraft to the region and begin operations over the Suez Canal within a week. The flights began somewhat later than the CIA wished because of problems in acquiring a base from which to launch the missions. Apparently, Italy, Greece, and Spain refused to permit U-2 missions from their territory, while the United States had to “beg” the United Kingdom to permit flights from its base at Akrotiri on Cyprus.
³⁴

From August 9 through November 10, 1970, after which the Air Force assumed responsibility, CIA U-2s flew twenty-nine missions over the cease-fire zone as part of Project EVEN STEVEN. It also conducted a dozen ELINT missions. The CIA missions did reveal a breach of the cease-fire—Egypt’s construction of new missile sites near the Suez Canal, which would place at risk Israeli aircraft flying over Sinai’s east bank to defend the Bar-Lev line from an amphibious assault. Talks between Israel and Egypt occurred during and after the CIA’s monitoring, although not without interruption. Relations improved after Egyptian strongman Gamal Abdel Nasser died on September 28, 1970, and was replaced by Anwar Sadat, who extended the cease-fire and eased tensions.
³⁵

The CIA’s U-2 effort would extend deep into Carl Duckett’s stint as deputy director, but the OXCART project would become the world’s most advanced anachronism after fewer than ten operational missions. The CIA was lucky that it reaped even that much benefit from its considerable investment. The Air Force had used the OXCART as the basis for its look-alike SR-71, originally designated the RS-71 (RS for Reconnaissance Strike) until President Johnson inverted the two letters during the 1964 campaign. The existence of an Air Force SR-71 fleet would then be used to justify termination of the OXCART effort.

In November 1965, the Bureau of the Budget had circulated a memo expressing concern about the costs of the OXCART and SR-71 programs. It questioned the total number of planes as well as the necessity for a separate CIA fleet
and recommended phasing out the OXCART program by September 1966 as well as halting further SR-71 procurement. OSA director Jack Ledford suggested that the Budget office’s proposal would “deny the United States Government a non-military capability to conduct aerial reconnaissance of denied areas . . . in the years ahead.”
³⁶

There was also opposition outside the CIA. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara rejected the recommendation, presumably because the SR-71 would not be operational by September 1966. In July 1966, at the suggestion of the Budget Bureau, a study group, consisting of the CIA’s John Parangosky, C. W. Fischer of the Bureau of the Budget, and Herbert Bennington of the Defense Department, was established to look for ways to reduce the costs associated with the two programs. The group was requested to consider five alternatives, which it transformed into three options—maintain both planes; mothball the A-12s and share the SR-71s between the CIA and Air Force; and mothball the A-12s by January 1968 (assuming SR-71 readiness by September 1967) and turn the mission over to SAC. From the CIA’s perspective, the Bureau of the Budget, and in particular one of its staff members, W. R. Thomas, had one specific outcome in mind—termination of the OXCART program.
³⁷

That belief undoubtedly only increased the urgency OSA felt to give the A-12s a chance to demonstrate their value. During 1966, the CIA proposed to the 303 Committee that OXCART aircraft be deployed to Okinawa and fly reconnaissance missions over North Vietnam or China or both. All such proposals were rejected. The CIA, Joint Chiefs, and the PFIAB favored such operations, but they were opposed by McNamara, Vance, and Under Secretary of State U. Alexis Johnson—who felt that improved intelligence was not so urgently needed as to justify the political risks of basing the planes on Okinawa and the almost certain disclosures that would follow. They also preferred to preserve the nominal cloak of secrecy around the A-12 until events required its use—although the existence of an A-12 type plane, the SR-71, had been acknowledged by President Johnson.
³⁸

On December 12, 1966, Deputy Defense Secretary Vance, Bureau of the Budget chief Charles Schultze, Helms, and presidential science adviser Donald Hornig met to consider the alternatives. Over Helms’s objection, they suggested terminating the OXCART program, leading the DCI to request that the Air Force share the SR-71 fleet. Helms asked Duckett to prepare a letter to the President stating the CIA’s reasons for wishing to continue the OXCART effort.
³⁹

Four days later, Schultze handed Helms a memo for the President requesting a decision either to turn part of the Air Force SR-71 fleet over to the CIA or to terminate the OXCART program entirely. Helms, having just received new information that he believed demonstrated the A-12’s superiority, asked for another meeting after January 1 to review the data and requested that the memo to the President be withheld pending the meeting’s outcome. Helms believed that the SR-71 could not match the photographic coverage provided by the A-12—since only one of the three SR-71 cameras, its Operational Objective System, was working near specification. It could photograph only a swath twenty-eight miles wide with a maximum resolution of twenty-eight to thirty inches when the target was directly underneath (at nadir).
⁴⁰

In contrast, the A-12’s Type I camera could photograph a seventy-two-mile swath with a maximum resolution of twelve to eighteen inches at nadir. Oblique images had a resolution of fifty-four inches. Thus, the A-12 camera covered over twice as much territory, with better resolution. In addition, the A-12 could fly 2,000 to 5,000 feet higher and was faster, with a maximum speed of Mach 3.1.
⁴¹

On December 27, a memo from deputy director of central intelligence Vice Adm. Rufus Taylor to national security adviser Walter Rostow noted that the memo that had been received the day before on the SR-71/ OXCART issue “did not quite fully reflect Helms’ opinion.” Taylor noted that the SR-71 could not yet be considered interchangeable with the OXCART, because the OXCART had been fully operational for a year and demonstrated greater performance than the SR-71, “which has not yet achieved operational capability.” In spite of Helms’s request for delay, the Bureau of the Budget memorandum was submitted to President Johnson. On December 28, he approved the mothballing of the OXCART fleet and its phaseout by January 1968.
⁴²

The CIA had to develop a schedule for the phaseout of the A-12, an effort it code-named SCOPE COTTON. The agency informed Vance on January 10, 1967, that the A-12s would gradually be placed in storage, with the process to be completed by the end of January 1968. In May, the Deputy Defense Secretary directed that SR-71s would assume responsibility for Cuban overflights by July 1, 1967, and for Southeast Asian over-flights by December 1, 1967. Until those capabilities were developed, OXCART was to remain on call, capable of conducting overflights of Southeast Asia (on a fifteen-day notice) and of Cuba (seven-day notice).
⁴³

In the midst of planning for termination of the program, the CIA continued advocating that an A-12 be employed for a special mission targeted on the Soviet Union.
In May 1967, the 303 Committee received a CIA proposal to employ an OXCART, in conjunction with a U-2 carrying ELINT gear, to solve the mystery of the Tallinn system.
⁴⁴
Although the CIA, Navy, and State Department had concluded that the system was airdefense oriented and had little ABM capability, the Defense Intelligence Agency and Army Intelligence suggested that considerable uncertainty remained, while Air Force Intelligence chief Jack Thomas argued that the Tallinn system “probably was designed for and now possesses an area anti-ballistic missile . . . capability.”
⁴⁵

Photointerpreters insisted that twelve-to-eighteen-inch-resolution imagery was needed to determine the size of the missile, the antenna pattern, and configuration of the engagement radars associated with the Tallinn system. Unfortunately, attempts to photograph it using the high-resolution GAMBIT satellite had been defeated by cloud cover. In addition, ELINT analysts needed data about the Tallinn radars, but there were no U.S. intercept sites that could monitor emanations when the radars were being tested. The Soviets also never operated the radars in tracking and lock-on modes, preventing analysts from determining the frequency or other performance characteristics of the radars.
⁴⁶

To settle the question, the Office of Special Activities suggested a mission that would employ the OXCART’s high-resolution camera along with a U-2 flying a peripheral ELINT mission. The highly classified proposal had an unclassified designation—Project SCOPE LOGIC—and a classified code name—Project UPWIND.
⁴⁷

OSA proposed flying an OXCART from the United States to the Baltic Sea, where it would rendezvous with a U-2. The A-12 would fly north of Norway and then turn south along the Soviet-Finnish border. Shortly before Leningrad, it would head west-southwest down the Baltic Sea, skirt the coasts of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and East Germany, and then head west, returning to the United States. The entire flight would cover 11,000 miles, take eight hours and thirty-eight minutes, and require four aerial refuelings.
⁴⁸

Although the OXCART would not intrude into Soviet airspace, it would appear to Soviet radar network operators to be headed directly over Leningrad. OSA hoped that the OXCART’s journey would provoke Soviet air defense personnel to activate the Tallinn system radars in order to track the aircraft. As the OXCART made its dash down the Baltic, its Type I camera would be filming the entire south coast, including Tallinn. If CIA analysts were correct and the system was designed to counter high-altitude aircraft at long ranges, then OXCART would be in jeopardy during its
dash down the Baltic. However, the weapons experts in the Office of Scientific Intelligence believed that the A-12’s speed and electronic countermeasures would protect it from standard Soviet SAM installations. The more vulnerable U-2 would be flying farther out to sea, beyond the range of the SAMs. CIA and Defense Department officials supported the proposal, but Secretary of State Dean Rusk strongly opposed it, and the 303 Committee never forwarded the proposal to Johnson.
⁴⁹