Area 51_ An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base - Annie Jacobsen [229]
29. it was not in Frank Murray’s character: Interview with Colonel Slater.
30. In 2005 NSA admitted: Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 276–80.
31. Robert McNamara performing an about-face regarding Oxcart: Robarge, Archangel, 31.
32. supplying surface-to-air missile systems: Helms Memorandum to the 303 Committee, OXCART Reconnaissance of North Vietnam, with Attachment, 15 May 1967.
33. set up around Hanoi: Interview with Tony Bevacqua; photographs from Bevacqua’s personal collection.
Chapter Fifteen: The Ultimate Boys’ Club
Interviews: Ken Collins, Colonel Slater, Frank Murray, Fred White, Charlie Trapp, William “Bill” Weaver, Brigadier General Raymond L. Haupt
1. shaken from their beds: Interview with Ken Collins. A moratorium on testing meant that the Titania bomb, exploded on October 30, 1958, was the last nuclear bomb fired at the Nevada Test Site for a period of nearly three years. In August of 1961, the Russians announced they were resuming testing and conducted thirty-one nuclear tests over the next three months, including the fifty-eight-megaton Tsar Bomba, the largest bomb ever exploded. In response, Kennedy had the AEC resume testing at the Nevada Test Site; interview with Al O’Donnell.
2. The incident has never been declassified: Interview with Collins.
3. the less you knew, the better: A sentiment unanimously shared by all CIA and USAF pilots interviewed.
4. No radio, almost no TV: Interviews with Slater, Murray, Collins.
5. “like an incubus”: Helms, A Look Over My Shoulder, 309.
6. “The only sin in espionage is getting caught”: David Robarge, “Richard Helms.”
7. Helms would be recruited by the Office of Strategic Services: Helms, A Look Over My Shoulder, 31.
8. a seafood run to Westover Air Force Base: Interview with Colonel Slater.
9. MKULTRA files destroyed: The authority on this subject is John Marks, a former State Department analyst and staff assistant to the intelligence director. In June of 1977, Marks obtained access to part of seven boxes of MKULTRA, the only ones allegedly not lost and consisting mostly of financial records. In his book The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, Marks wrote that shortly before leaving the CIA, “Helms presided over a wholesale destruction of documents and tapes—presumably to minimize information that might later be used against him,” 219.
10. front page of the New York Times: According to Colonel Slater.
11. Slater and General Ledford would be asked: No. 303 National Security Action Memorandum, June 2, 1964; Top Secret, From the Director of Central Intelligence, Memorandum for the 303 Committee, 22 March 1966.
12. “McNamara was delaying finding a mission”: Interview with Dr. Wheelon.
13. if a CIA spy plane were to get shot down: CIA Memorandum, “Reactions to a possible US Course of Action,” 17 March 1966; “OXCART Development Summary and Progress,” 1 October 1966–31 December 1966.
14. The majority voted against deployment: Robarge, Archangel, 33.
15. Slater now wanted it reduced by nearly 30 percent: Interview with Colonel Slater.
16. Park had flown over all four corners of America: John Parangosky, deputy for technology, OSA, wrote in summation of Park’s flight: “An impressive demonstration of the OXCART capability occurred on 21 December 1966 when Lockheed test pilot Bill Park flew 10,198 statute miles in six hours. The aircraft left the test area in Nevada and flew northward over Yellowstone National Park, thence eastward to Bismarck, North Dakota, and on to Duluth, Minnesota. It then turned south and passed Atlanta en route to Tampa, Florida, then northwest to Portland, Oregon, then southwest to Nevada. Again the flight turned eastward, passing Denver and St. Louis. Turning around at Knoxville, Tennessee, it passed Memphis in the home stretch back to Nevada. This flight established a record unapproachable by any other aircraft; it began at about the same time a typical government employee starts his work day and ended two hours before his quitting