working in Russia, and the information gleaned from the returnees was considerable. It included technical data on Russian advances in radio technology, electronics, and armaments design. But to the CIA’s great frustration, when it came to NII-88, the repatriated German scientists claimed to have no clear idea about what was really going on there. It seemed that NII-88, like Area 51, worked with strict need-to-know protocols, and the German scientists hadn’t been cleared with a need-to-know. All the Germans could tell the CIA agents debriefing them was that Moscow’s top scientists and engineers were developing something there that was highly classified. Unlike in America, where German rocket scientists were put in charge of America’s most classified missile program at White Sands Missile Range, German scientists in Russia had been relegated to the second tier. With no hard facts about the extraordinary technological enterprise that was under way at NII-88, the CIA was left guessing. The speculation was that the Russians were developing intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, that could reach the United States by traveling over the top of the world.
The missile threat needed to be addressed, and fast. By 1956 Americans were constantly being reminded about this foreboding Red menace by the media. A January 1956 issue of Time magazine made Soviet missile technology its big story. The cover featured a drawing of an anthropomorphic rocket, complete with eyeballs and a brain, carrying a nuclear bomb and bearing down on a major U.S. city. The magazine’s analysts declared that in a little more than five years, Russians would be winning the arms race. The editors went so far as to prophesize a nuclear strike on the Pacific Ocean that would send a “cloud of radioactive death drift[ing] downwind” over America. Making the threat seem worse was the fact that there was no end to the confidence and bravado projected by the Soviet premier. “We’re making missiles like sausages,” Nikita Khrushchev declared on TV. If Russia succeeded in making these ICBMs, as was feared, then Russia really could place a nuclear warhead in the missile’s nose and strike anywhere in the United States. “I am quite sure that we shall have very soon a guided missile with a hydrogen-bomb warhead which would hit any point in the world,” Khrushchev boasted shortly after the Time magazine article appeared.
While the Soviets were concentrating efforts on advancing missile technology, the powerful General LeMay had convinced the Joint Chiefs of Staff that long-range bombers were a far better way for America to go to war. LeMay was not shy about expressing his disdain for missiles; he brazenly opposed them. LeMay’s top research- anddevelopment commander, General Thomas S. Power, told Pentagon officials that missiles “cannot cope with contingencies” the way bomber pilots could. Another one of LeMay’s generals, Clarence S. Irvine, stated, “I don’t know how you show… teeth with a missile.” While the Joint Chiefs were deciding whether it was better to build up America’s arsenal with missiles or bombers, the nuclear warheads continued to roll off the production lines at Sandia, in New Mexico, with astonishing speed. Ten years earlier, in 1946, the U.S. nuclear stockpile had totaled two. In 1955, that stockpile had risen to 2,280 nuclear bombs. The reason for LeMay’s opposition to the missile programs was obvious: if the Pentagon started pumping more money into missiles that could carry nuclear warheads, LeMay’s bombers would lose importance. As it was, he was already losing money and men to the overhead reconnaissance nonsense being spearheaded by the CIA’s Richard Bissell over at Area 51.
In early 1956, the Air Force retaliated against Khrushchev’s war of words with the kind of response General Curtis LeMay knew best: threat, intimidation, and force. LeMay scrambled nearly a thousand B47 bombers in a simulated attack on Russia using bomber planes that were capable of carrying nuclear bombs. Air Force pilots took off from air bases in Alaska and Greenland, charged over the Arctic, and flew to the very edge of Soviet borders before U-turning and racing home. This must have been a terrifying experience for the Soviets, who had no idea that LeMay’s bombers were planning on turning around. Further provoking them, on March 21, 1956, LeMay’s bomber pilots began flying top secret missions as part of Operation Home Run, classified until 2001. From Thule Air Force Base in Greenland, LeMay sent modified versions of America’s fastest bomber, the B-47, over the Arctic Circle and into Russia’s Siberian tundra to spy. The purpose was to probe for electronic intelligence, or ELINT, seeing how Soviet radar worked by forcing Soviet radars to turn on. Once the Soviets started tracking LeMay’s bombers, technicians gathered the ELINT to decipher back home. Asked later about these dangerous provocations, LeMay remarked, “With a bit more luck, we could have started World War III.”
Sam Pizzo worked as a navigator during the SAC espionage operation, planning flights over nuclear facilities, missile sites, naval installations, and radar sites. The 156 missions took place from March 21 to May 10, 1956, where the Russian landscape meets the Arctic Ocean, which made for total darkness twenty-four hours a day. The temperature outside varied between ?35 degrees and ?70 degrees Fahrenheit. Sam Pizzo recalls those Cold War missions: “Ambarchik, Tiksi, Novaya Zemlya, these were the territories we covered. This was the real deal. Our missions were not twelve miles off the coastline, to study electromagnetic wave propagation [as was reported]. We went in.” An undetermined number of pilots were shot down. Several were believed to have survived their bailouts, only to be taken prisoner and thrown into the Russian gulags. Everyone knew that suffering a gulag imprisonment was a fate worse than death. The missions were so top secret, Pizzo explained, that very few people at Thule had any idea where the pilots were flying. As a navigator, Pizzo was among the elite group who charted the pilots’ paths. Flying over the Arctic required a very specific expertise in navigation, a different skill set than was used anywhere else on the globe. At the top of the world, the magnetic field fluctuates radically, which means compasses simply do not work. Instead, navigators like Sam Pizzo used celestial shots of the North Star and drew maps accordingly. This was a skill that Pizzo would later use when he was recruited for work at Area 51.
As Operation Home Run continued, the CIA worried that General LeMay’s aggressive missions were a national security threat. “Soviet leaders may have become convinced that the U.S. actually has intentions of military aggression in the near future,” a nervous CIA panel warned the president in the winter of 1956. And President Eisenhower’s science advisers told him that flying U-2s over Russia could not wait. The Agency’s Russian nuclear weapons expert Herbert Miller, the man who accompanied Bissell on that first scouting trip to Area 51, explained that no other program “can so quickly bring so much vital information at so little risk and so little cost.”
The CIA planned to have the first U-2 flights photograph the facilities where the Agency believed Russia was building its bombers, missiles, nuclear warheads, and surface-to-air missiles. And the U-2 pilots would seek out the location of the elusive facility called NII-88. Having completed pilot training at Area 51, four pilot detachments were ready to go, fully prepared to penetrate deep into denied Soviet territory. There, they would be able to photograph half of the Soviet Union’s 6.5-million-square-mile landmass. But it had to happen fast.
President Eisenhower was gravely concerned. “I fear if one of these planes gets shot down [we run] the risk of starting a nuclear war,” he wrote in his White House journal. Richard Bissell promised the president that there was no chance of shooting down the U-2 and very little chance of tracking it. Besides, if the U-2 did get shot down, Bissell said, it would most likely disintegrate on impact with the ground, killing the pilot and destroying the airplane.
The Moscow air show on June 24, 1956, foreshadowed the breaking of promises made to the president. In a show of ceremony, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev invited air force generals from twenty-eight foreign delegations, including General Nathan Twining, the U.S. Air Force chief of staff. For all the fanfare and bravado of the bombers and fighter jets sweeping across the skies, the more significant event occurred a few hours later, at a wooden picnic table in Gorky Park. There, General Twining and the leaders of the British and French delegations sat and listened to Khrushchev deliver a long-winded speech. Partway through, the Soviet premier raised his vodka glass and made a toast “in defense of peace.” Years later, retired Russian colonel Alexander Orlov related what happened next: “In the midst of his toast [Khrushchev] turned to General Twining and said, ‘Today we showed you our aircraft. But would you like a look at our missiles?’”
Shocked by the offer, General Twining said, “Yes.” Khrushchev shot back, “First show us your aircraft and stop sending intruders into our airspace.” Khrushchev was referring to the bombers sent over the Arctic Circle by General LeMay. “We will shoot down uninvited guests. We will get all of your [airplanes]. They are flying coffins!”
It was a terribly awkward moment underscored by the mercurial Soviet leader’s abrupt shift in tone, from applauding peace to talking about shooting down American airplanes. General Twining had been set up for a confrontation. Things got worse when Khrushchev looked around the picnic table for reactions and saw a U.S. military attachй pouring his drink under a bush. “Here I am speaking about peace and friendship, but what does your military attachй do?” Khrushchev shouted at Ambassador Charles Bohlen, then demanded that the attachй drink a penalty toast. Once the man had swallowed his vodka, he got up and quickly left the picnic. If Khrushchev thought the Americans were trying to insult him in the park, he would be even more enraged two weeks later when he learned the CIA had sent a U-2 directly over the Kremlin to take photographs of the house in which Nikita Khrushchev slept.
