joined the Agency in late January 1954; however, his first association with the Agency came in 1953 when he worked as a contractor. On July 26, 1954, Eisenhower authorized Killian to recruit a panel of experts to study what a U-2-type aircraft might accomplish. The group was called the Technological Capabilities Panel. In August, the idea was formally presented to Bissell. Ibid., 30.
12. a secret CIA test facility: There are several accounts of who went to Groom Lake with Bissell on that historic first trip. I compile mine from Bissell’s memoir and my interviews with Lockheed test pilot Ray Goudey.
13. Goudey had shuttled atomic scientists: Interview with Ray Goudey.
14. “I recommended to Eisenhower”: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 102-3.
15. the tents would blow away: Interview with Ray Goudey. 16. to defend against rattlesnakes: Interview with Edward Lovick. 17. The same variable occurred: Interview with Tony Bevacqua. 18. a lot of time in a recliner: Interview with Ray Goudey.
19. Bob Murphy’s job: Interviews with Bob Murphy. The U-2 engine was a P-37 specially designed by Connecticut engine maker Pratt and Whitney.
20. Mr. B., as he was known to the men: Interview with Edward Lovick.
21. Hank Meierdierck: The stories of Hank Meierdierck, the man who trained the U-2 pilots at Area 51, were relayed to me by his friends from the old days at the Ranch as well as from his personal papers, which were made available to me by his wife, Millie Meierdierck.
22. “unconventional way”: Killian, Sputnik, Scientists and Eisenhower, 82. Killian wrote, “Eisenhower approved the development of the U-2 system, but he stipulated that it should be handled in an unconditional way so that it would not become entangled in the bureaucracy of the Defense Department or troubled by rivalries among the services.” Also see Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 95.
23. hidden from Congress: Top Secret Memorandum of Conference with the President 0810, 24 November 1954. “Authorization was sought from the President to go ahead on a program to produce thirty, special high performance aircraft at a cost of about $35 million. The President approved this action. Mr. Allen Dulles indicated that his organization could not finance this whole sum without drawing attention to it, and it was agreed that Defense would seek to carry a substantial part of the financing.” From the Eisenhower Archives, DDE’s Papers as President, Ann Whitman Diary Series, Box 3, ACW Diary, November 1954.
24. stand-alone organization: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 105. Bissell wrote, “To preserve the secrecy and expeditiousness that Eisenhower and Allen Dulles insisted on, I argued for removing the U-2 project from the agency’s organizational chart and setting it up as a stand-alone organization. As a result, the entire project became the most compartmented and self-contained activity within the agency.”
25. five-page brief: Eisenhower was uniquely invested in Area 51 because the success of the U-2 program, which came to be during his administration, was critical to the nation’s security.
26. the Air Force was almost entirely left out: As recalled by General Leo Geary, Bissell’s Air Force deputy, in an interview with Jonathan Lewis, tape recording, Chevy Chase, MD, 11 February 1994; Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 100.
27. LeMay was, understandably, enraged: “Eventually President Eisenhower settled the dispute.” Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 60; Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 109.
28. the president’s decision: “I want this whole thing to be a civilian operation,” the president wrote. “If uniformed personnel of the armed services of the United States fly over Russia, it is an act of war — legally — and I don’t want any part of it.’” From Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 60.
29. Bob Murphy would often chat with George Pappas: Interview with Bob Murphy.
30. Had Pappas been just thirty feet higher: From Hank Meierdierck’s personal papers; Meierdierck located the crash remains from a U-2 he took out on a search mission.
31. the CIA acknowledged the plane crash in 2002: As part of a tribute given by the U.S. Forest Service. The CIA did not, however, acknowledge that the aircraft was traveling to Area 51; also see Kyril Plaskon, Silent Heroes.
32. security systems for Air Force One: EG&G, a Division of URS, Albuquerque Operations Web site. “EG&G has provided security systems for U.S. Government facilities: Department of Energy Headquarters, U.S. Bureau of Engraving, Presidential AF-1 Hangar Complex, Rocky Flats [nuclear weapons production facility in Colorado], Tooele [Utah, Army Depot for WMD].”
Interviews: Lieutenant Colonel Tony Bevacqua, Edward Lovick, Ray Goudey, Al O’Donnell, Jim Freedman, Wayne Pendleton, T. D. Barnes
1. Area 51, reports of UFO sightings: Haines, “CIA’s Role,” 73.
2. U-2 look like a fiery flying cross: Interview with Tony Bevacqua; the wingspan is 103 feet and the fuselage is 63 feet.
3. the crash at Roswell occurred: Hereafter, when I refer to the “crash at Roswell,” I am referring to an aircraft, not a balloon, as has also been written. While there was a balloon-borne radar-reflector project going on at White Sands in the summer of 1947, this is not what crashed at Roswell. To learn about that project and the balloon theory put forth by one of its participants, Charles B. Moore, see Saler, Ziegler, and Moore, UFO Crash at Roswell.
4. Project Sign: U.S. Air Force Air Materiel Command, “Unidentified Aerial Objects; Project SIGN”; Haines, “CIA’s Role,” 68.
5. Project Grudge: U.S. Air Force, Project Grudge and Blue Book, Reports 1-12. Since the declassification of Projects Saucer, Sign, Grudge, Twinkle, and Blue Book, which began incrementally in the 1970s, the collection is housed in the National Archives; see http://www.archives.gov/foia/ufos.html.
6. disliked technology in general: Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 17, “High altitude reconnaissance of the Soviet Union did not fit well into Allen Dulles’s perception of the proper role of an intelligence agency. He tended to favor the classical form of espionage, which relied on agents rather than technology.” Allen Dulles’s predilection to work with former Nazis has become more obvious and more troubling as time goes by and Paperclip files are slowly declassified. The last line in Dulles’s three-page CIA biography, “Secret Security Information: Subject Allen W. Dulles 7/2-127,” reads:
“At any rate, the American policy in the postwar period as regards [to] Germany has been directly and deeply influenced by MR. DULLES. He has a greater trust in the Germans than he has, for instance, in the French and the Italians.”
7. The UFO division was placed: Office Memorandum, United States Government, To: Acting Assistant Director for Scientific Intelligence, From: Todos Odarenko, Chief, Physics and Electronics Division, SI, Subject, Current Status of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOB) Projects, 17 December 1953.
8. Walter Bedell Smith: Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 4, 87, 122, 131.
9. included the flying disc retrieved at Roswell: This is my defensible speculation based on interviews with the EG&G engineer and my understanding of Bedell Smith’s role, particularly with James Forrestal, secretary of the Navy during the war and the nation’s first secretary of defense, who committed suicide on May 22, 1949.
10. Bedell Smith was the ambassador to the Soviet Union: CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, Directors and Deputy Directors of Central Intelligence, Walter Smith, General, U.S. Army.
11. Governors Island, New York: National Archives Records Administration, RG 338, Box 27, G-2 Section, Headquarters First Army, Governors Island, New York, 4, New York, Case Files.
12. summarily rejected the idea that UFOs: There are several CIA documents, declassified starting in 1996, that I base my interpretation of General Bedell Smith’s attitude toward UFOs on during his tenure at CIA. All quotes come from these documents: Central Intelligence Agency, Washington 25, D.C. Office of the Director, ER-3-2809, Memorandum to Director, Psychology Strategy Board, Subject Flying Saucers, 2 pages, signed Walter B. Smith Director, undated; Memorandum for file OSI, Meeting of OSI Advisory Group on UFO, January 14 through 17, 1953, 3 pages; Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects 14–17 January 1953, Evidence Presented, 2 pages; CIA Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects,
Comments and Suggestions of UFO Panel, 19 pages; Minutes of Branch Chief’s Meeting of 11 August 1952, 3 pages; Memorandum for Director of Central Intelligence, From Deputy Director, Intelligence, Subject Flying Saucers, Dated September 7, 1952, 5 pages.
13. flying discs appeared in many different forms of art: http://www.crystalinks.com/ufohistory.html.
14. like the boy who cried wolf: Memo, CIA Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects,
