memorandum from J.C. Franklin, manager Oak Ridge Operations to Carroll L. Wilson, General Manager Re: Medical Policy, 2–3; located circa 1995 by Clinton staff.
42. “medical papers on human administration experiments done to date”: Ibid.
43. “reworded or deleted”: October 8, 1947, Memorandum to Advisory Board on Medical and Biology Re: Medical Policy, 8; located
circa 1995 by Clinton staff.
44. In 2011 there are an estimated 1.8 billion Internet users: According to Miniwatts Marketing Group.
45. Deny Ignorance: Interview with AboveTopSecret CEO Bill Irvine.
46. the New World Order conspiracy theory: Wikipedia has an interesting overview of New World conspiracy theories, with bibliography.
Interviews: Richard Mingus, Ed Lovick, Bob Murphy, T. D. Barnes, Gene Poteat, Peter Merlin, Harry Martin, Millie Meierdierck, Dr. Wheelon, Joe Behne
1. most sensational near catastrophes: Interview with Richard Mingus. Interview with Joe Behne.
2. a mock helicopter attack: The details of the mock helicopter attack remain classified. Darwin Morgan, spokesman for the NNSA, Nevada Site Office, would neither confirm nor deny the event. Both Mingus and Behne were able to discuss this event with me because the details of the helicopter attack were only ever relayed to them secondhand. Their jobs had to do with the nuclear bomb going down the hole. In other words, while both men were privy to the security scare, neither man was ever officially briefed on the mock attack.
3. The bomb, one of eighteen: U.S. Department of Energy, United States Nuclear Tests, July 1945 through September 1992, 14.
4. five-man security response team: Interview with Mingus. This is one of the rare security stories from the secret base. Mingus tells it because the procedure is now obsolete.
5. Quick conversation with Joe Behne: Interview with Joe Behne.
6. With astounding lack of foresight, Wackenhut Security: Interview with Richard Mingus. Interview with Joe Behne.
7. using slide rules and calculators: Interview with Ed Lovick. 8. “roughly the size of a ball bearing”: Interview with Lovick and
specifically “based on 15GhHz radar, 08 wavelength.”
9. The man in charge of engineering, fabrication, and assembly: Interviews with Bob Murphy.
10. at Groom Lake to drop bombs: Barnes points out that some bombs were dropped close in to the dry lake bed at Area 51.
11. to use a preexisting, little-known bombing range: Johnson, “Tonopah Test Range Outpost of Sandia National Laboratories,” Sandia Report SAND96-0375 UC-700 March 1996, U.S. DOE Contract DE-AC04- 94AL85000.
12. the Chicago of the West: State Historic Preservation Office, Beatty, Center of the Gold Railroads, “Chicago of the West,” Nevada Historical Marker 173.
13. “secret testing [that] could be conducted safely and securely”: Johnson, “Tonopah Test Range Outpost of Sandia National Laboratories,” 8.
14. would quote Saint Paul of Tarsus: Ibid., 9.
15. Operation Roller Coaster, three dirty bomb tests: Ibid., 47; Operation Roller Coaster Sites, TTR SAFER Plan, Section 2.0. Map here; NVO-171 Environmental Plutonium on the Nevada Test Site and Environs, June 1977, 35.
16. construction for an F-117 Nighthawk support facility: Interview with Peter Merlin.
17. grow their hair long and to grow beards: Interview with Richard Mingus, who lived there.
18. test flights of the F-117: Crickmore, Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk, 4. Major Al Whitley became the first operational pilot to fly the Nighthawk in October of that year.
19. Lieutenant General Robert M. Bond: U.S. Air Force official Web site, biography.
20. men like General James “Jimmy” Doolittle: Interview with Harry Martin.
21. “There was some debate about whether the general”: Barnes had left Area 51 by this time; this is a secondhand story. Having been
involved in the MiG program since its inception, Barnes was privy to information about Bond but was never formally briefed.
22. were the general’s last words: Transcript reads: 10:17:50 a.m., Bond: “How far to the turn?” 10:17:53 a.m. Ground control: “Turn now, right 20.” Bond responds with two clicks. At 10:18:02 a.m. Bond: “I’m out of control. I’m out of…” At 10:18:23 a.m. Bond: “I’ve got to get out, I’m out of control.”
23. Fred Hoffman, a military writer: Hoffman, “Allies Help Pentagon Obtain Soviet Arms,” Associated Press, May 7, 1984.
24. at Area 51 and Area 52 for eleven years: Johnson, “Tonopah Test Range Outpost of Sandia National Laboratories,” 79. The first flight of Have Blue was December 1, 1977, by Bill Park at 7:00 p.m. as noted in Crickmore, Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk.
25. Code-named Aquiline: Hank Meierdierck’s personal papers; interview with Jim Freedman; interview with Millie Meierdierck, who had the only known mock-up of the drone sitting on the bar in her home.
26. original purpose of Aquiline: Interview with Gene Poteat.
27. Cold War Soviet hydrofoil named Ekranopian: James May, “Riding the Caspian Sea Monster,” BBC News magazine, September 27, 2008.
28. Jim Freedman to assist him on the Aquiline drone: Interview with Jim Freedman.
29. ninety-nine million dollars over budget: Hank Meierdierck’s personal papers.
30. Project Ornithopter: Richelson, Wizards of Langley, 148.
31. Project Insectothopter: Seen by the author at the CIA museum, located inside CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
32. “Acoustic Kitty”: Richelson, Wizards of Langley, 147.
33. sensor drones to detect WMD signatures: Interview with Dr. Wheelon.
34. Early efforts had been made using U-2 pilots: Interview with Tony Bevacqua, who flew “sniffer” missions in U-2s for the U.S. Air Force. The Black Cat pilots flew some of these dangerous missions, per my interview with Colonel Slater.
35. Operation Tobasco, risked exposure: Richelson, Wizards of Langley, 93–94.
36. did considerable damage to the Agency’s reputation: Marks, Search for the “Manchurian Candidate,” 220. Marks’s entire chapter 12, “The Search for Truth,” is a particularly searing portrait of how the CIA was perceived during this time.
37. “probable biological warfare research”: CIA Top Secret, Biological Warfare, USSR: Additional Rumors of an Accident at the Biological Warfare Institute in Sverdlovsk. Dated October 15, 1979. Declassified 6/10/96.
38. Hellfire missiles: Lockheed makes the Hellfire, which is an acronym for its original design: helicopter- launched, fire-and-forget.
39. his name was Osama bin Laden: Coll, Ghost Wars, 533: “While hovering over Tarnak Farm outside Kandahar, the Predator photographed a man who appeared to be bin Laden.”
Chapter Twenty-one: Revelation
Interviews: T. D. Barnes, Colonel Leghorn, Hervey Stockman, Gerald Posner, Stephen Younger, John Pike, Gene Poteat, EG&G engineer, David Myhra
1. engineers and aerodynamicists had concerns: Interview with Barnes. This is educated speculation; Barnes did not work on the drone project. Coll also writes about this.
2. targeted assassination by a U.S. intelligence agency was illegal: December 4, 1981, President Ronald Reagan Executive Order 12333.
3. State Department gave the go-ahead: Coll, Ghost Wars, 539.
4. CIA and the Air Force teamed up for an unusual building project: Ibid., 534. “The Air Force ought to pay for the Afghan operation, CIA officers believed, in part because the Pentagon was learning more about the drone’s capabilities in a month than they could in a half a year of sterile testing in Nevada… Having seen the images of bin Laden walking toward the mosque at Tarnak, Black was now a vocal advocate of affixing missiles to the drone.”
