The Secret Genesis of Area 51 Read online

  The Soviet Union refused an offer to participate in Truman’s Marshall Plan and blocked the benefits to the Eastern Bloc countries, East Germany and Poland. Soviet premier Joseph Stalin ordered the blockade of all land routes from West Germany to Berlin to starve out the French, British and American forces from the city. He wanted it all. The Soviet Union severed all land and water connections to halt all rail and barge traffic to and from Berlin with the intent of starving the German people. The three Western powers responded by launching the Berlin airlift to supply the citizens of Berlin. The airlift lasted for more than a year, during which time hundreds of American, British and French cargo planes ferried 2.3 million tons of provisions from Western Europe. A plane took off or landed in West Berlin every thirty seconds, making nearly 300,000 flights in all.

  Meanwhile, Russia remained entrenched in the Far East, where the Soviet’s Communist Information Bureau was calling for the withdrawal of foreign soldiers from Korea and calling for free elections in each of the two administrations and unification of the peninsula.

  THE FORMATION OF THE CIA

  In 1947, when the Central Intelligence Agency came into existence to replace the Central Intelligence Group, little did it realize that in less than a decade, it would undertake overhead reconnaissance over the Soviet Union, modeling after the Nazis with their brutal military conquests against their neighboring countries.

  Twenty months after the January 1946 forming of the Central Intelligence Group, under the National Security Act of 1947, the Soviet Union posed a greater threat to the United States than ever. Paranoia about the Soviet threat deepened in June 1947 when a United States Air Force Project Mogul balloon crashed on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico. The location of the wreckage created a sequence of events triggered when the public information officer at Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release stating that personnel from the field’s 509th Operations Group had recovered a “flying disc” and that a UFO (unidentified flying object) had crashed on a ranch near Roswell.

  Paranoia erupted as UFO sightings occurred throughout the world. Ordinary American citizens saw flying saucers and feared the Russians had joined with extraterrestrial invaders. The incident went viral when early on Tuesday, July 8, the Roswell Army Air Force issued a press release that was immediately picked up by numerous news outlets. The release stated:

  The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff’s office of Chaves County. The flying object landed on a ranch near Roswell sometime last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher stored the disc until he could contact the sheriff’s office, who in turn notified Maj. Jesse A. Marcel of the 509th Bomb Group Intelligence Office. The action was immediately taken, and the disc was picked up at the rancher’s home. It was inspected at the Roswell Army Air Field and subsequently loaned by Major Marcel to higher headquarters.

  The unidentified flying object paranoia extended all the way to President Truman, who almost immediately ordered the United States Air Force separated from the Army Air Corps. The Roswell incident remains today the world’s most famous, most exhaustively investigated and most thoroughly debunked UFO claim ever.

  The United States and its allies had much more to fear: the spread of communism and the growing Soviet Union threat. But first, Truman had his internal political battles to contend with, which were brought on by his disbanding the National Intelligence Authority and the Central Intelligence Group. When he signed the National Security Act of 1947 to establish the National Security Council (NSC), he reactivated the old World War II Office of Strategic Services to become the modern-day Central Intelligence Agency.

  Secretary of State James Byrnes took the position that an organization such as the Central Intelligence Agency should be responsible to him—that he should be in control of all intelligence. The army and the navy, on the other hand, strongly objected, each maintaining that every department required its independent intelligence. They considered a central intelligence organization a threat to their prerogatives and a competitor for resources. They wanted the CIA’s role to be to pool information that each agency contributed to it. That was not to be.

  The National Security Act provided new offices that included the secretary of defense, Department of the Army, Department of the Navy and Department of the Air Force, along with other departments and agencies of the government concerned with national security. The president feared Donovan might foster a movement to establish a super body controlling all intelligence. Thus, he fought against the organized information of the Office of Strategic Services when the United States most needed the knowledge it provided. Nonetheless, he shouldered the CIA with the nation’s survival when he asked the CIA to focus on Russia to determine the kind and number of strategic weapons the Soviet Union had. It meant them having to know how the Soviet Union intended to use them.

  THE COMMUNIST SCARE

  The CIA saw the entire world in turmoil. On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union added to the world’s fear of communism when it tested its first atomic bomb, known to Americans as Joe 1. Suddenly, the communist Soviet Union ranked as the world’s second nuclear power and an adversarial contender against the United States in a nuclear arms race. The minute hand of the symbolic Doomsday Clock had inched closer to midnight in its countdown to a global catastrophe as the world moved closer to a nuclear war.

  In the United States, the Red Scare ran rabid, with Senator Joseph McCarthy naming numerous American celebrities as members of the Communist Party. He relentlessly pushed through and became the chairman of the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate as he widened his scope to investigate dissenters. He continued for over two years, relentlessly questioning numerous government departments to the point that McCarthyism caused panic with his witch hunts and fear of communism, exasperated by Mao Zedong declaring the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, adding a quarter of the world’s population to the communist camp.

  One could easily compare the Soviet spread of communism to German’s Nazi movement. Any notion of world peace faded and war alliances ceased when the Soviet Union in effect formed an imaginary boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas. The split became the Iron Curtain blocking the Soviet Union and its satellite states from open contact with the West and non-Soviet-controlled areas. The east side of the Iron Curtain contained the countries connected to or influenced by the Soviet Union. On either side of the Iron Curtain, states developed their own international economic and military alliances. The western countries had no idea what was occurring on the Soviet aspect of this imaginary wall that started as a symbolized effort and became watchtowers overlooking a barrier marked by posts and signs, a strip of land with dog patrols. Barbedwire fences soon appeared, followed by rumors of the Soviet Union’s intent to erect an actual wall in Berlin to separate the city.

  While the world was watching the Soviet Union in Europe, in 1948, Russian inserted its influence in the Far East by proclaiming the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea the legitimate government of all Korea and propping Kim Il-sung up as prime minister. In communist China, the American consul and his staff were virtual hostages in Mukden. The calamitous prospect of war with the Soviet Union now included China.

  Amid the war drums, the saber rattling and the swirling clouds of war, the Central Intelligence Agency, only three years old, lacked the resources to gain the intelligence needed as World War III with Russia and China appeared inevitable. Through all of this, the CIA maintained its focus on Moscow while elsewhere, the Republic of China severed diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom and diplomatically recognized Vietnam as independent from France.

  Within four years of World War II ending, the Soviet Union had the states of Eastern Europe effectively curtained off from the outside world and was carrying
out with utmost secrecy the expansion of all Soviet strategic capabilities—its bomber forces, ballistic missiles, submarine forces and nuclear weapons plants. The Soviet air defense system was unknown for determining U.S. retaliatory policies, rendering the entire panoply of U.S. intelligence tradecraft ineffective against the Soviet Bloc.

  The Soviet empire bullied and intimidated its enemies and victims as it sought a proxy war with the United States. Every May Day, the first day of May, it flaunted its increasing strategic capabilities, creating the perception that it vastly overshadowed the United States’ role in the military world. The entire U.S. military establishment went on alert in response to the USSR intimidating the world by parading a massive number of troops along with its latest war machines, aircraft and missiles for all to see. The USSR secrecy about its actual strength made it impossible for the United States to establish retaliatory measures.

  The Soviet Bloc borders curtailed U.S. HUMINT covert human intelligence activities, costing the CIA the loss of its intelligence gathering by telephone, telegraph and radiotelephone. The CIA found its entire panoply of intelligence tradecraft ineffective at a time when rumors concerning the large bomber forces of the Soviet Union shocked Washington. At almost all levels, the U.S. government realized the need to seek information on Soviet strategic forces and their strategic capabilities.

  The Cold War continued, with the Soviet Union at every chance opposing the United States, whether as a proxy enemy combatant or as an adversary at the United Nations. Whatever the United States wanted or did, the Soviet Union opposed. When the Soviet Union acquired the atomic bomb in 1949, President Harry S. Truman responded by establishing a nationwide emergency radio broadcast alert system to warn the citizens of an invasion and to prevent enemy planes using radio transmitters as navigation aids for direction finding in a real attack.

  The government established nuclear bunkers for high-ranking public officials, and critical military facilities began operating inside mountains. Throughout America, citizens built fallout shelters in their cities and their backyards. The shelters were identified by ominous placarded yellow and black trefoil radiation warning signs. American cities conducted civil air raid drills to the warbling sounds of civil defense klaxons. American schools performed duck and cover drills, where students took cover beneath their school desks in prone-like positions with eyes protected from the blinding light of the nuclear fireball.

  President Truman was focused on the Soviet Union in Europe when he announced his intent to withdraw all remaining American forces from South Korea by June 1949. Stalin was waiting in the shadows when the commander of KMAG (Korean Military Advisory Group), General William Lynn Roberts, voiced utmost confidence in the ROK (Republic of Korea) army when he boasted of defending against a North Korean invasion as mere “target practice.”

  American schoolchildren practicing a duck and cover drill for protection from a feared Soviet atomic bomb attack. Wikipedia.

  Stalin saw the situation differently. Once the Americans left, he could take South Korea without getting the Soviet Union embroiled in a war with the United States. Less than a year later, Secretary of State Dean Acheson confirmed Stalin’s view when Acheson failed to include Korea in his outline of the strategic Asian Defense Perimeter. The American soldiers were entirely withdrawn from Korea, showing the American military strategists focusing more on Europe and the Soviet Union than East Asia.

  Military deception, using strategic, political and diplomatic means, was a critical element of Russia’s geopolitical ambitions. The Soviet doctrine was never admitting your true intentions and denying your activities. Use all means, both political and military, to maintain an edge of a surprise for the Soviet Union military forces. The Soviets kept the Americans guessing through the repertoire of deceit, disguise and psychological warfare doctrine the Soviet Union used in the Battle of Stalingrad. While the United States focused on what the Soviets were hiding behind the Iron Curtain, the Red Army was eyeing the American weakness in the Far East.

  Thus, the nation’s Central Intelligence was still in its infancy when in 1951, two years later, the United States was back at war, another shooting war. Some called it the Korean War, an undeclared war with North Korea and China.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE WAR THAT WASN’T

  GETTING THROUGH THE IRON CURTAIN

  The Korean War was a proxy war with the Soviet Union that confirmed America’s fear of the United States being on Russia’s list of countries to conquer. Rather than call it a war with Russia, American president Harry Truman called the war a police action.

  The Soviets were right about the timing and the American military weakness in the Far East. The Americans did not intervene to stop the communist victory in China during the Chinese civil war. Now, in the spring of 1950, President Truman’s withdrawal of all American troops from South Korea had left the South Koreans with no tanks, anti-tank weapons or heavy artillery—no means of stopping an attack from the north. The United States wasn’t even looking to see what the Soviet Union was doing north of the thirty-eighth parallel. When the United States did exclude Korea from its outline of the strategic Asian Defense Perimeter, Stalin saw this as the Americans discarding South Korea—as a signal of the United States having no will to fight in the Far East.

  Consequently, on Sunday, June 25, 1950, the Soviet Union and China ignited the inevitable proxy war with the pro-western Republic when the communist North Korean People’s Forces, supported by Soviet-supplied tanks, heavy artillery and aircraft, poured seventy-five thousand strong across the thirty-eighth parallel to invade the Republic of South Korea.

  For the second time, a surprise Pearl Harbor–like attack had caught the United States unprepared. However, this time, the action occurred in Korea, with North Korean soldiers doing the fighting. President Truman had his second war and the Central Intelligence Agency its first.

  When Secretary of State Dean Acheson notified President Harry Truman at his home in Independence, Missouri, of the invasion, Truman reacted by instructing Acheson to contact the United Nations to seek a resolution condemning the attack and offering aid to assist South Korea. Meanwhile, two days later, the South Korean forces sacked Seoul. In five days, the South Korean forces of ninety-five thousand men were down to fewer than twenty-two thousand.

  THE KOREAN WAR INTELLIGENCE CONTROVERSY

  By all appearances, the North Korean attack caught the Truman administration, the U.S. Army’s Far East Command under General Douglas A. MacArthur and the fledgling CIA by surprise. The surprise attack sparked a persistent controversy about whether the agency warned U.S. policymakers that North Korea would attack its southern neighbor. Despite the agency having encountered insurmountable obstacles as the army, navy, Atomic Energy Commission and others refused to share information that they considered exclusive prerogatives and usurped responsibilities, the CIA would have to dispel widely held assertions that it had committed a serious intelligence breach.

  The new CIA had only five thousand employees worldwide, counting at the time of the invasion the components it inherited from the Central Intelligence Group. Only one thousand of them were analysts, and only three were employed as operations officers in Korea. In the three years before the Korean War, the Joint Research and Development Board formed by the secretaries of war and the navy had stymied and blocked attempts to staff the Central Intelligence Agency, which prevented the agency obtaining any useful intelligence.

  Nonetheless, contrary to what historians would write for many decades, CIA analysts frequently reported happenings in Korea during the prewar years. Admittedly, the CIA reports were from a perspective that highlighted the Soviet Union’s involvement rather than local Korean events. Through all the Soviet smokescreens of deceit, the CIA saw anything beyond routine as Soviet mischief-making and proxy-sponsored “tests” of American resolve.

  The CIA analysts never counted on the Soviet Union, still recovering from World War II, orchestrating a monolithic communist
movement worldwide to stamp out freedom. Thus, the CIA never expected the invasion of South Korea that marked the first military action of the Cold War. Barring a Soviet decision for global war, such action did not make sense. Nonetheless, three years after its creation, the CIA found itself unexpectedly involved and had to scramble to find and train personnel to conduct an array of espionage and covert operations unilaterally and in support of U.S. Armed Forces taking part in the UN coalition.

  Stalin had stated his intent to Truman and the Allies even before they withdrew America’s support of South Korea, yet the CIA received the blame for the lack of intelligence causing the war. The Truman administration and critics of the CIA conveniently forgot how only six months earlier, Secretary of State Dean Acheson had failed to include Korea in his outline of the strategic Asian Defense Perimeter. Nor did they give the agency’s Office of Research and Reports credit for dire predictions about the possibility of some regional crises from 1947 through 1950. Understandably, in a world menaced by communists everywhere, the CIA’s reporting on Korea did not stand out either in intelligence publications or the minds of policymakers. All eyes focused on Moscow, the Kremlin, East Germany—wherever there was a spread of communism.

  At the time, America viewed the communist movements around the world as Kremlin-controlled. Therefore, events in Korea seemed to be just one of many fronts in the Cold War. North Korean activity was closely interrelated with other Soviet-induced crises but not of any greater or lesser importance. Everyone was, at the time, focused on the security of Europe against the Soviet Union. The Soviet strategy of deceit worked.