Reconnaissance Missions 31 May-15 August 1967, 22 Sept. 1967, Central Intelligence Agency, 1. Declassified in August 2007.
12. first attempted shoot-down: Robarge, Archangel, 36.
13. when he was involved in a midair crash: interview with Hervey Stockman; also from Conversations with Hervey Stockman (not numbered) in a section called “Mid-air collision.”
14. to find U.S. airmen who’d gone down: Interview with Frank Murray.
15. “I hope they try something because we are looking for a fight”: Karnow, Vietnam, 514.
16. it was on an espionage mission: CIA Top Secret [Redacted], 24 January 1968, Memorandum: Chronology of Events Concerning the
Seizure of the USS Pueblo, 8 pages.
17. two MiG-21 fighter jets appeared on the scene: Ibid., 3.
18. The captain considered sinking his ship: Bamford, Body of Secrets, 259.
19. 90 percent of the documents survived: Ibid., 305.
20. Pentagon began secretly preparing for war: Department of Defense, Top Secret Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, January 25, 1968.
21. pinpointed the Pueblo’s exact location: TOP SECRET TRINE OXCART, BYE-1330/68 Figure 9; a map of Weeks’s flight is noted as Mission BX-6847, 26 January 1968, figure 5.
22. he told his fellow pilots about the problems: Interviews with Frank Murray, Ken Collins.
23. very few individuals had any idea: In fact, for forty years, Frank Murray believed he had located the USS Pueblo because, in a bizarre twist, the CIA told him he did. Only in 2007, when the CIA declassified the official documents on the Oxcart program, was Jack Weeks’s true role in the crisis finally revealed. Murray’s other mission remains classified.
24. “So we had to abandon any plans to hit them with airpower”: Rich, Skunk Works, 44. This is in a section of Rich’s book written by Walt W. Rostow, President Johnson’s national security adviser from 1966 to 1968.
25. Murray was assigned to fly Oxcart’s second mission over North Korea: TOP SECRET TRINE OXCART, BYE-1330/68 figure 7. Mission BX-6853, 19 February 1968.
26. a U.S. federal judge determined: Wilber, “Hell Hath a Jury.” 27. There were beautiful sunsets to watch: Interview with Ken
Collins.
28. collectively flown twenty-nine missions: Robarge, Archangel, 35. The pilots were put on alert to fly a total of fifty-eight. Of the twentynine, twenty-four were over North Vietnam, two were over Cambodia, Laos, and the DMZ, and three were over North Korea.
29. “using our jamming systems on the bird”: Interview with Frank Murray. The Pentagon was also using Oxcart photographs to identify potential targets for U.S. Air Force air strikes. TOP SECRET CHESS RUFF TRINE Oxcart BYE-44232/67.
30. The Blackbirds were arriving on Kadena to take Oxcart’s place: Interviews with Ken Collins and Tony Bevacqua. The SR-71 began arriving in March of 1968.
31. “reaffirmed the original decision to end the A-12 program”: Helms Memorandum to Paul Nitze (DOD) and Horning, “Considerations Affecting OXCART Program Phase Out,” 18 April 1968.
32. Jack Weeks became ill: Interview with Ken Collins. 33. After Bevacqua had left Groom Lake: Interview with Tony
Bevacqua.
34. mission on July 26, 1968: This was the first time an SR-71 was fired upon by an SA-2. With Bevacqua, in the backseat, was reconnaissance systems officer Jerry Crew.
www.blackbirds.net/sr71/sr-crew-photos/ (accessed December 29, 2010).
35. The 1129th Special Activities Squadron had reached its end: The Oxcart program lasted just over ten years, from its inception as a drawing on a piece of paper called A-1, in 1957, to termination in June of 1968. Lockheed produced fifteen A-12 Oxcarts, three YF-12As, and thirty-one SR-71 Blackbirds. The CIA’s John Parangosky wrote in summation, “The 49 supersonic aircraft had completed more than 7,300 flights, with 17,000 hours in the air. Over 2,400 hours had been above Mach 3. Five OXCART were lost in accidents; two pilots were killed, and two had narrow escapes. In addition, two F-101 chase
planes were lost with their Air Force pilots during OXCART testing phase.”
36. The CIA held a special secret ceremony at Area 51: Interviews with Ken Collins, Frank Murray, Colonel Slater, and Jack Layton. Vice Admiral Rufus L. Taylor, deputy director of Central Intelligence, presented the CIA Intelligence Star for Valor to Kenneth S. Collins, Ronald L. Layton, Francis J. Murray, Dennis B. Sullivan, and Mele Vojvodich. Jack W. Weeks’s award was accepted by his widow, Sharlene Weeks. The United States Air Force Legion of Merit was presented to Colonel Hugh Slater and his deputy, Colonel Maynard N. Amundson.
37. The men moved on: Interviews with Ken Collins, Colonel Slater, Frank Murray, Charlie Trapp, Roger Andersen.
Interviews: T. D. Barnes, Doris Barnes, Tony Landis, Peter Merlin, Colonel Slater, Frank Murray, Roger Andersen, Grace Weismann (Joe Walker’s widow)
1. Iraqi air force colonel named Munir Redfa: Uzi Mahnaimi, “Stolen Iraqi Jet Helped Israel Win Six-Day War,” Sunday Times of London, June 3, 2007.
2. “Turn back immediately”: Geller, Inside the Israeli Secret Service. I use information from chapter 3, “Stealing a Soviet MiG.”
3. Redfa flew over Turkey: Obituary, “Major-General Meir Amit,” Telegraph, July 22, 2009.
4. Amit sat down with the Israeli air force: Ibid.
5. James Jesus Angleton: Helms, A Look Over My Shoulder, 275. “Jim’s interest in Israel was of exceptional value… To my knowledge, only Israel has ever dedicated a monument to a foreign intelligence officer.” Angleton worked as “the Agency’s liaison with the FBI… The best of Angleton’s operational work is still classified and in my view should remain so.”
6. Agency’s most enigmatic and bellicose spies: Author visit to CIA spy museum, CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia.
7. “wilderness of mirrors”: Helms, A Look Over My Shoulder, 277. The phrase has become synonymous with Angleton’s thinking and most notably included Angleton’s belief that the split between the Soviet Union and China was not real. According to Helms, Angleton’s “conviction that the Sino-Soviet split was mirage created by Soviet deception experts [was] interesting but simply not true.”
8. when they worked in the OSS counterintelligence unit, X-2: Ibid., chapter 28, “Beyond X-2.”
9. Helms’s status with President Johnson: Weiner, Legacy of
Ashes, 319.
10. But what didn’t make the news: Interviews with Colonel Slater, Frank Murray, T. D. Barnes.
11. Doris was reading the classified: Interview with Doris Barnes. 12. Beatty, Nevada, was one strange town: Details about Beatty in the 1960s come from interviews with Doris Barnes and T. D. Barnes.
13. “Daddy’s spaceship!”: Interviews with the Barnes’s two daughters, who wish to remain anonymous.
14. where the X-15 could land if need be: Interview with Peter Merlin; Barnes, “NASA X-15 Program,” 1.
15. Barnes got on the radio channel: The dates and data regarding X-15 mission flights can be found in Jenkins, Hypersonics Before the Shuttle. This story of the missing audiotape comes from Barnes.
16. a catastrophic midair collision occurred: I tell the story as Barnes related it to me. Another account appears in Donald Mallick’s The Smell of Kerosene, 132-35. Mallick was assigned the helicopter mission to locate Walker’s crash site.
17. reverse engineering Colonel Redfa’s MiG: Interview with Barnes.
18. Test pilots flew a total of 102 MiG missions: Barnes, “Exploitation of MiGs at Area 51, Project Have Doughnut,” http://area51specialprojects.com/migs_area51.html; Tolip, “Black Ops: American Pilots Flying Russian Aircraft During the Cold War,” MilitaryHeat.com, October 4, 2007.
19. gave birth to the Top Gun fighter-pilot school: Interview with Barnes.
20. The scales had tipped: Wilcox, Scream of Eagles, 76–77.
Interviews: Richard Mingus, T. D. Barnes, Troy Wade, Darwin Morgan, Milton M. Klein, Harold B. Finger
