The Wizards of Langley (42 page)

The satellite photos provided data that enabled NPIC’s analysts to determine the validity of reports that Unit 3, adjacent to the damaged Unit 4, was affected by a meltdown or fire. From further satellite photos, a federal task force concluded on May 3 that the other Chernobyl reactors were not at risk. Lee M. Thomas, head of the task force, announced that on the basis of the photos, “we see no problems with the other units.”
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NPIC undoubtedly continued to monitor the cleanup, examining KH- 11 images of the Mi-8 helicopters (with lead shields on their floors). The helicopters flew hundreds of missions day after day, dropping sacks of sand through the broken roof of the reactor from heights of more than 650 feet. Workers then sealed the roof shut with tons of lead pellets, which rolled into whatever cracks remained between the sandbags.
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On January 24, 1985, about fifteen months before the Chernobyl accident, the space shuttle orbiter
Discovery
was launched on the first secret mission in fifteen shuttle flights, carrying another product of OD&E’s efforts. Earlier
that week, Brig. Gen. Richard F. Abel, the Air Force director of public affairs, warned reporters not to speculate about the payload and threatened that the Department of Defense was ready to launch an investigation in the event of any unwelcome stories.
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But times had changed dramatically since Air Force representatives could get away with telling reporters (as they did for the first CANYON launch) that they wouldn’t want to know the nature of the payload. They certainly did, and the warning did not stop the
Washington Post
from revealing that the secret payload was a new SIGINT spacecraft. The spacecraft had been developed under the code name MAGNUM, but that name had been changed to ORION by the time of launch. Most important to the U.S. intelligence community was that the shuttle’s military astronauts were able to release the satellite safely into space, so that the rocket attached to it could place it in its proper geosynchronous orbit.
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The spacecraft, which weighed about 6,000 pounds, was apparently placed in orbit over Borneo. It was reported to have two huge parabolic antennae, one for intercepting communications and telemetry signals and the other for relaying the signals to the ground station at Pine Gap, Australia. ORION was the successor to the RHYOLITE/AQUACADE program, and an improvement both on RHYOLITE and ARGUS, its intended successor. Compared with RHYOLITE, it could pick up lower-powered signals, such as “turned-down” telemetry signals, intercept a wider range of frequencies, and due to its bigger transmitting antenna focus its signal more sharply to its ground station. In addition to intercepting signals never intended for U.S. intelligence analysts, it apparently also received data from emplaced sensors in the Soviet Union and elsewhere.
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In 1985, not long after celebrating the successful launch of ORION, Robert Kohler, the former KENNAN program head who in March 1982 succeeded Bernie Lubarsky as chief of the Office of Development and Engineering (i.e., NRO Program B), found himself in a battle with the Air Force and the NRO over the plans for the next SIGINT satellite program.

A native of Rochester, New York, Kohler had considered the snowiest city in the United States no place to live. He graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology, married, and left town in about a week, refusing to interview at the Rochester-based Xerox and Kodak corporations. His first exposure to space reconnaissance was as head of the photo science technology department at Itek in Boston, where he worked on the CORONA program. In 1967, he joined the CIA for what he expected would be a few years of government service before returning to Itek.
When time came to return, he decided to stay at the agency because he was “having too much fun.”
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Kohler was certainly not one to avoid a battle when he believed someone else was headed down the wrong path. The Air Force Office of Special Projects (NRO Program A) and its director, Ralph Jacobson, was proposing that the follow-on to ORION be a far bigger system, which they believed was necessary to cope with a new type of Soviet microwave signal.
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Kohler thought it was feasible to take the system then in operation and modify each successive satellite, never spending too much money at any one time. He also believed that NRO director Pete Aldridge felt that with a budget squeeze on the horizon, it might be his last chance to get approval for a major new initiative. In addition, according to Kohler, the CIA’s Program B had continually bested the Air Force’s Program A during Aldridge’s tenure, and Aldridge wanted to give Program A a victory.
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Kohler’s position as head of development and engineering was somewhat different from those of his predecessors in earlier eras. When Kohler took the job, John McMahon, then deputy director of central intelligence, told him he should act as if he worked for the director of the NRO—unless he believed that DCI William Casey was not being adequately served by the NRO director. In 1985, Kohler felt that caveat applied—particularly when Aldridge did not present Kohler’s alternative to Casey.
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Made aware of the differences, Casey asked to hear from both Air Force and CIA elements of the NRO. Two critical meetings followed involving Casey and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. McMahon asked to see the briefing Aldridge was planning to give and told the NRO director that it should not contain a recommendation. But at the first meeting, Weinberger asked Aldridge for his recommendation and got it. Casey demurred making a decision then, telling Weinberger that he had not had an opportunity to study the options. When Casey was briefed by the NRO Staff, he found they omitted the Program B option. Again he refused to make a decision.
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The following Monday morning, Kohler drafted and sent a four-page memo to Casey through Hineman. According to Kohler, he faced opposition not only from Aldridge but also from the CIA’s Executive Director, former DS&T associate deputy director James Taylor, who wanted Casey to accept Aldridge’s option. The memo laid out the NRO briefing as well as what was omitted and invited a decision. Instead of a decision, Kohler got a call that night from Casey, telling him he wanted to see him the next day.
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Casey, according to Kohler, “had ignored the DS&T for the first four and a half years of his tenure.” The next day, he asked the development
and engineering chief to tell him how signal recognition worked. After ten minutes, Casey walked over and opened the door to McMahon’s adjacent office and asked his deputy to join them. They talked for several hours, with Kohler addressing the issue of the intelligence value per dollar from each of the proposed SIGINT systems, using different scenarios constructed by the intelligence directorate.
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The presentation convinced Casey to consider the Program B proposal. He transmitted a sanitized version of Kohler’s memo to Aldridge, PFIAB chairman Anne Armstrong, and two technical people on the board—John Foster and Bud Wheelon. Kohler then heard from McMahon, who told him to expect a call from NRO deputy director Jimmie Hill, who would arrange for him to brief Anne Armstrong. When twenty-four hours went by without the call, Kohler called McMahon, who then sent him to La Jolla, California, to see the PFIAB chairman.
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Wheelon later recalled first speaking to Casey on his way from Denver to Aspen to attend an Aspen Institute summer study meeting, apparently sometime after Kohler left the agency in August 1985. He considered it “an unwelcome assignment,” which couldn’t do the Hughes company any good, but he agreed to meet with Aldridge and some of his staff at a motel near the Aspen airport. Wheelon examined the issue, relying on Hughes official Harold Rosen as technical backup.
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Wheelon concluded that extensive improvements suggested by Program A were not necessary—that its staff had missed two key technical points—and that the CIA proposal to stay with the same basic system and same contractor (TRW) made the most sense. He spoke to Jacobson about the matter, and the Program A head accepted his analysis.
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Two years later, it seemed Kohler’s effort had been wasted. Casey had approved the Program B alternative, but he died in 1987. Robert Gates became the acting DCI, and although he had supported the program as chairman of the Intelligence Producers Council, he decided to sacrifice the program to budgetary requirements. But the program’s death would be only temporary.
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In 1985, Kohler was succeeded by Julian Caballero, who would remain as office director until fall 1993.
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A system on the drawing board when he assumed command was one dedicated to controlling and relaying data for the entire reconnaissance fleet. The proposed system, originally code-named IRIDIUM and then KODIAK, would have consisted of four geo
synchronous satellites, with one satellite in view of the Washington-area downlinks at Ft. Belvoir and Ft. Meade. That satellite would have been capable of downlinking the information in such a narrow beam as to make it virtually immune to interception. The other three satellites, in addition to their control functions, would be able to receive data from reconnaissance satellites and then transmit the data to the downlink satellite or, via a laser crosslink, to another satellite that would then transmit the information to the downlink satellite. Because of funding limitations, the proposal was killed in 1987. Funding for KODIAK would have required cuts in the Strategic Defense Initiative budget that the administration was unwilling to make.
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Beginning in 1984, in an attempt to get part of the job accomplished at no cost to the intelligence community, Aldridge pushed for development of a laser crosslink, rather than a radio crosslink, for the Defense Support Program infrared launch detection satellites operated by the Air Force. As part of a modernization program, the Air Force planned to deploy satellites with crosslinks, eliminating the need for ground stations. Former OD&E chief Bernard Lubarsky, who worked for TRW after leaving the CIA in 1982, later recalled that the DSP contractor recommended the use of radio crosslinks to the Air Force for DSP. According to several individuals who worked on the DSP program for another contractor, radio crosslinks would have accomplished the mission for DSP. But Aldridge pushed for the laser crosslinks, figuring that once developed they could then be used on a system such as KODIAK.
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But although the Air Force contracted with McDonnell-Douglas to develop such a crosslink, the program had one problem after another until it was finally canceled in the early 1990s.
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However, as with OD&E’s proposed SIGINT satellite system, KODIAK’s death would be only temporary.

On November 22, 1985, the FBI ended the espionage career of Larry Wu- Tai Chin. Chin began his employment with the U.S. government in 1943 with the U.S. Army Liaison Mission in China. In 1948, he worked as an interpreter in the U.S. consulate in Shanghai and two years later took a job as a secretary-interpreter at the U.S. embassy in Hong Kong. During the Korean War, Chin interviewed Chinese prisoners captured by U.S. and Korean troops.
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He began monitoring Chinese radio broadcasts in 1952 for the Foreign Broadcast Information Service’s Okinawa unit. In 1961, he moved to Santa Rosa, California, where he continued to work for FBIS. From
1970 until his retirement in 1981, Chin worked as an analyst in the FBIS office in northern Virginia and also served as the FBIS document control officer.
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Chin’s career as a spy may have begun in the early 1940s, when he apparently received espionage training while still a student in college. In 1952, Chinese intelligence agents paid him $2,000 for having located Chinese POWs in Korea. He also provided Chinese agents with information on the intelligence being sought from Chinese prisoners by U.S. and Korean intelligence officers. Regular meetings in Hong Kong between Chin and his PRC controllers began in 1967. Between 1976 and 1982, Chin met four times with a courier for Chinese intelligence, “Mr. Lee,” at a shopping mall near Toronto International Airport. Speaking in Cantonese, Chin handed over undeveloped film of classified documents from FBIS.
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The information Chin provided led the PRC to pay him several hundred thousand dollars over a thirty-year career. Although the FBIS is best known for its translation of the public broadcasts of foreign nations (and less known for its translations of the broadcasts of clandestine and black radios), the service’s analysts also used classified intelligence reports to help assess the significance of foreign broadcasts. Further, Chin’s skill as an interpreter and his long tenure gave him access to a great deal of highly classified data. Thus, Chin “was more than a guy . . . listening to People’s Republic of China broadcasts and translating People’s Daily.” According to testimony given at his indictment, Chin “reviewed, translated and analyzed classified documents from covert and overt human and technical collection sources which went into the West’s assessment of Chinese strategic, military, economic, scientific and technical capabilities and intentions,” and in 1979 he passed on that assessment to “Mr. Lee.”
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Chin continued his intelligence activities on behalf of China into the 1980s. In 1981, he met with the vice-minister of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security in Hong Kong and Macao. In February 1982, he traveled to Beijing, where high government officials honored him with a banquet, told him he had been promoted to Deputy Bureau Chief in the MPS, and awarded him $50,000. As late as February 1985 he met Chinese officials in Hong Kong.
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