Douglas Mackiernan
Encyclopedia
Douglas Seymour Mackiernan (April 25, 1913–April 29, 1950) was the first officer of the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) to be killed in the line of duty. He worked as a cryptographer for the United States Air Force (USAF) and was then posted to China
, as an Air Force Meteorologist during World War II. By 1947, he had quit the Air Force and was employed as a covert intelligence officer by the CIA. As a cover for that work he was assigned the position of Vice-Consul for the US State Department at the consulate in Ürümqi (Tihwa), in Sinkiang in the North West corner of China—modern Xinjiang
. There his scientific talents (he dropped out of MIT after his freshman year) were employed in espionage. Until 2002, the CIA successfully hid the fact that Mackiernan was America's first atomic spy; Mackiernan's collection of atomic intelligence about the USSR's first atomic bomb (tested just across the border at the Semipalatinsk Test Site
, Kazakhstan) was first revealed by the journalist Thomas Laird, but only confirmed by the CIA in 2008.
In the fall of 1949, Mackiernan led a party of five (including the two men who would survive the trip: Vasili Zvansov and Frank Bessac
) out of Ürümqi. They first spent time with nomadic Kazakhs and then traveled on to Tibet, by horseback and camel, en route to India. Mackiernan was shot dead by Tibetan border guards while crossing the Chinese frontier into Tibet; the US Government failed to request permission, in a timely fashion, from the Tibetan Government for the Mackiernan party to enter Tibet. The Tibetan guards had standing orders in the tense spring of 1950, to shoot all foreigners who attempted to enter Tibet. Mackiernan and his party were dressed as Kazakhs; the Kazakhs and Tibetans were traditional enemies who raided each other across the border.
Because he was the first CIA officer operating under diplomatic cover as a State Department employee to be killed, the CIA had not yet established procedures about pensions; ultimately his wife and children were denied a CIA pension. In 1950, Peggy Mackiernan was awarded a small pension by the State Department, much smaller than her pension would have been if she had received the CIA pension that was due to her. It was only in 2000, that the first star on the CIA's Wall of Honor
was acknowledged to belong to Mackiernan in a secret memorial ceremony with Mackiernan's wife and family present at the CIA's Langley, Virginia
, headquarters. When Mackiernan's atomic intelligence work was revealed by a journalist in 2002, it was disputed by CIA employees; however, in 2006, his name was listed in the CIA's Book of Honor and in 2008 his employment by the CIA and his work in atomic intelligence was officially and publicly acknowledged by CIA Director Michael Hayden.
and explorer. As a child, the young Mackiernan learned English, Spanish, French, and German. He was the oldest of five brothers: Duncan, Angus, Malcolm, and Stuart. His family later moved to Stoughton, Massachusetts
, where he worked at his father's filling station business and he and his brothers became amateur radio
operators. Mackiernan spent one year at MIT as a physics major in 1932, then dropped out and became a research assistant at the university. He served as a major in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, first as a cryptanalysis
officer in 1942 in Washington, DC, then as a meteorological officer in Alaska
and from November 1943, until the end of the war in Ürümqi, the capital of Sinkiang (Xinjiang
) Province. In February 1947, Mackiernan missed the adventure of the war and applied to the State Department for a position as a consular clerk at his former location in China. He was eagerly accepted, and by May he was on his way back. He soon found himself recruited for, and ideally suited to, espionage work.
's Republic of China
were defeated by those of Mao Zedong
's Chinese Communist Party during the spring and summer of 1949. On July 29, 1949, Secretary of State Dean Acheson
ordered the US consulate at Ürümqi, Sinkiang Province, to be closed. Mackiernan was ordered to stay behind, officially to destroy consular records and equipment and covertly to continue atomic intelligence activities. On August 10, 1949, Mackiernan sent a classified, coded message to Secretary of State Acheson where he acknowledged that he was operating the long range atomic explosion detection equipment. By the middle of September, the forces of Chiang Kai-shek had switched sides, without a fight, and Communist troops were due to enter Ürümqi at any point. Also the Soviets had just completed their first atomic test in nearby Kazakhstan, on August 29, 1949. Mackiernan's work was now finished. Though it was still possible for Mackiernan to have flown out of Ürümqi on a regularly scheduled flight; Mackiernan, and the CIA, chose a different path: through Tibet to India.
Mackiernan may have feared that he would be arrested if he had tried to travel through Communist China, as were other US Consuls during that period. By then Mackiernan's work as an espionage agent was known to the Chinese Communist Party. Whatever his motivation, on September 25, 1949, Mackiernan sent his last telegram, stating that provincial officials had accepted Chinese communist authority, and the communist army was about to enter the city.
Two days later Mackiernan and a Fulbright scholar, Frank Bessac (whom other CIA employees of the period have described as a CIA contract agent, though Bessac denies it), drove out of the main gates of Ürümqi with their gear, which included machine guns, grenades, radios, gold bullion, navigation equipment, and survival supplies. The guards checked Mackiernan's passport and let him through. They met up with three anti-communist White Russian
allies, and then rode out to spend more than a month with the Kazakh leader Osman Bator. Mackiernan left gold and a radio with Bator, who was seen by the Chinese as a rebel taking US support; Bator saw himself as a man fighting for the independence of his people.
After a month with Bator, the Mackiernan party embarked on a difficult journey by horseback and camel across 1,000 miles of Taklimakan desert, traveling south-southwest by night towards the Himalayas. Mackiernan carefully recorded positions and landmarks, and radioed their progress to Washington. Records of the radio transcripts have not been released by the CIA or State Department. Mackiernan's log, with additions by Bessac after Mackiernan's death, was declassified in the 1990s, though some alleged that the document had been heavily doctored. By late November, the party reached the 10,000 ft "foothills" of the Himalayas, where they spent the winter with Hussein Taiji of the Kazakhs.
In March, the small group struggled over the mountains, and then trekked across the vast uninhabited Changtang on the Tibetan plateau
. They arrived at the first Tibetan outpost on April 29, 1950. Mackiernan sent Bessac over to talk with the Tibetans who were camped nearby. The rest of the party set up tents behind a slight hill. Bessac heard shots and running over the hill, he saw that Mackiernan and two White movement
employees, Leonid and Stefan, were dead. Vasili Zvansov was badly wounded. The Tibetan guards realized that they had made a tragic mistake only five days later when they met a group of couriers from the Dalai Lama
with a message of safe conduct for the group: the American government had delayed sending its request for permission for the Mackiernan party for so long that it was impossible for the Tibetan government to act in time. On June 11, 1950, Bessac and Zvansov finally reached Lhasa
just weeks before the beginning of the Korean War
.
Mackiernan's death (as a State Department official) was subsequently reported by the New York Times on July 29, 1950. His work as a CIA agent was first written about in one chapter of a book by Ted Gup, in 2001—without any mention of his work as an atomic intelligence agent. In 2003, Thomas Laird wrote an entire book about Mackiernan's work, and revealed details of Mackiernan's atomic intelligence work for the first time. Mackiernan's CIA employment was not acknowledged by the CIA until 2006, when his name was revealed in the CIA's Book of Honor. However his work as an agent, and his atomic intelligence, was not fully recognized by the CIA until then-CIA Director Michael Hayden described Mackiernan's work during a speech in October 2008.
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
(CIA) to be killed in the line of duty. He worked as a cryptographer for the United States Air Force (USAF) and was then posted to China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, as an Air Force Meteorologist during World War II. By 1947, he had quit the Air Force and was employed as a covert intelligence officer by the CIA. As a cover for that work he was assigned the position of Vice-Consul for the US State Department at the consulate in Ürümqi (Tihwa), in Sinkiang in the North West corner of China—modern Xinjiang
Xinjiang
Xinjiang is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. It is the largest Chinese administrative division and spans over 1.6 million km2...
. There his scientific talents (he dropped out of MIT after his freshman year) were employed in espionage. Until 2002, the CIA successfully hid the fact that Mackiernan was America's first atomic spy; Mackiernan's collection of atomic intelligence about the USSR's first atomic bomb (tested just across the border at the Semipalatinsk Test Site
Semipalatinsk Test Site
The Semipalatinsk Test Site was the primary testing venue for the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons. It is located on the steppe in northeast Kazakhstan , south of the valley of the Irtysh River...
, Kazakhstan) was first revealed by the journalist Thomas Laird, but only confirmed by the CIA in 2008.
In the fall of 1949, Mackiernan led a party of five (including the two men who would survive the trip: Vasili Zvansov and Frank Bessac
Frank Bessac
Francis Bagnall Bessac was an American anthropologist who spent much of his life teaching the subject at the University of Montana, where he was appointed to the faculty in 1965...
) out of Ürümqi. They first spent time with nomadic Kazakhs and then traveled on to Tibet, by horseback and camel, en route to India. Mackiernan was shot dead by Tibetan border guards while crossing the Chinese frontier into Tibet; the US Government failed to request permission, in a timely fashion, from the Tibetan Government for the Mackiernan party to enter Tibet. The Tibetan guards had standing orders in the tense spring of 1950, to shoot all foreigners who attempted to enter Tibet. Mackiernan and his party were dressed as Kazakhs; the Kazakhs and Tibetans were traditional enemies who raided each other across the border.
Because he was the first CIA officer operating under diplomatic cover as a State Department employee to be killed, the CIA had not yet established procedures about pensions; ultimately his wife and children were denied a CIA pension. In 1950, Peggy Mackiernan was awarded a small pension by the State Department, much smaller than her pension would have been if she had received the CIA pension that was due to her. It was only in 2000, that the first star on the CIA's Wall of Honor
CIA Memorial Wall
The Memorial Wall is a memorial at the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It honors CIA employees who died in the line of service.-Memorial:...
was acknowledged to belong to Mackiernan in a secret memorial ceremony with Mackiernan's wife and family present at the CIA's Langley, Virginia
Langley, Virginia
Langley is an unincorporated community in the census-designated place of McLean in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States.The community was essentially absorbed into McLean many years ago, although there is still a Langley High School...
, headquarters. When Mackiernan's atomic intelligence work was revealed by a journalist in 2002, it was disputed by CIA employees; however, in 2006, his name was listed in the CIA's Book of Honor and in 2008 his employment by the CIA and his work in atomic intelligence was officially and publicly acknowledged by CIA Director Michael Hayden.
Early life and career
Mackiernan was born in Mexico City, Mexico, to an adventurous father who had been a whalerWhaler
A whaler is a specialized ship, designed for whaling, the catching and/or processing of whales. The former included the whale catcher, a steam or diesel-driven vessel with a harpoon gun mounted at its bows. The latter included such vessels as the sail or steam-driven whaleship of the 16th to early...
and explorer. As a child, the young Mackiernan learned English, Spanish, French, and German. He was the oldest of five brothers: Duncan, Angus, Malcolm, and Stuart. His family later moved to Stoughton, Massachusetts
Stoughton, Massachusetts
Stoughton is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 26,962 at the 2010 census. The town is located approximately from Boston, from Providence, and from Cape Cod.-History:...
, where he worked at his father's filling station business and he and his brothers became amateur radio
Amateur radio
Amateur radio is the use of designated radio frequency spectrum for purposes of private recreation, non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, and emergency communication...
operators. Mackiernan spent one year at MIT as a physics major in 1932, then dropped out and became a research assistant at the university. He served as a major in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, first as a cryptanalysis
Cryptanalysis
Cryptanalysis is the study of methods for obtaining the meaning of encrypted information, without access to the secret information that is normally required to do so. Typically, this involves knowing how the system works and finding a secret key...
officer in 1942 in Washington, DC, then as a meteorological officer in Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
and from November 1943, until the end of the war in Ürümqi, the capital of Sinkiang (Xinjiang
Xinjiang
Xinjiang is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. It is the largest Chinese administrative division and spans over 1.6 million km2...
) Province. In February 1947, Mackiernan missed the adventure of the war and applied to the State Department for a position as a consular clerk at his former location in China. He was eagerly accepted, and by May he was on his way back. He soon found himself recruited for, and ideally suited to, espionage work.
Final CIA mission
The armies of Chiang Kai-shekChiang Kai-shek
Chiang Kai-shek was a political and military leader of 20th century China. He is known as Jiǎng Jièshí or Jiǎng Zhōngzhèng in Mandarin....
's Republic of China
Republic of China
The Republic of China , commonly known as Taiwan , is a unitary sovereign state located in East Asia. Originally based in mainland China, the Republic of China currently governs the island of Taiwan , which forms over 99% of its current territory, as well as Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu and other minor...
were defeated by those of Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
's Chinese Communist Party during the spring and summer of 1949. On July 29, 1949, Secretary of State Dean Acheson
Dean Acheson
Dean Gooderham Acheson was an American statesman and lawyer. As United States Secretary of State in the administration of President Harry S. Truman from 1949 to 1953, he played a central role in defining American foreign policy during the Cold War...
ordered the US consulate at Ürümqi, Sinkiang Province, to be closed. Mackiernan was ordered to stay behind, officially to destroy consular records and equipment and covertly to continue atomic intelligence activities. On August 10, 1949, Mackiernan sent a classified, coded message to Secretary of State Acheson where he acknowledged that he was operating the long range atomic explosion detection equipment. By the middle of September, the forces of Chiang Kai-shek had switched sides, without a fight, and Communist troops were due to enter Ürümqi at any point. Also the Soviets had just completed their first atomic test in nearby Kazakhstan, on August 29, 1949. Mackiernan's work was now finished. Though it was still possible for Mackiernan to have flown out of Ürümqi on a regularly scheduled flight; Mackiernan, and the CIA, chose a different path: through Tibet to India.
Mackiernan may have feared that he would be arrested if he had tried to travel through Communist China, as were other US Consuls during that period. By then Mackiernan's work as an espionage agent was known to the Chinese Communist Party. Whatever his motivation, on September 25, 1949, Mackiernan sent his last telegram, stating that provincial officials had accepted Chinese communist authority, and the communist army was about to enter the city.
Two days later Mackiernan and a Fulbright scholar, Frank Bessac (whom other CIA employees of the period have described as a CIA contract agent, though Bessac denies it), drove out of the main gates of Ürümqi with their gear, which included machine guns, grenades, radios, gold bullion, navigation equipment, and survival supplies. The guards checked Mackiernan's passport and let him through. They met up with three anti-communist White Russian
White movement
The White movement and its military arm the White Army - known as the White Guard or the Whites - was a loose confederation of Anti-Communist forces.The movement comprised one of the politico-military Russian forces who fought...
allies, and then rode out to spend more than a month with the Kazakh leader Osman Bator. Mackiernan left gold and a radio with Bator, who was seen by the Chinese as a rebel taking US support; Bator saw himself as a man fighting for the independence of his people.
After a month with Bator, the Mackiernan party embarked on a difficult journey by horseback and camel across 1,000 miles of Taklimakan desert, traveling south-southwest by night towards the Himalayas. Mackiernan carefully recorded positions and landmarks, and radioed their progress to Washington. Records of the radio transcripts have not been released by the CIA or State Department. Mackiernan's log, with additions by Bessac after Mackiernan's death, was declassified in the 1990s, though some alleged that the document had been heavily doctored. By late November, the party reached the 10,000 ft "foothills" of the Himalayas, where they spent the winter with Hussein Taiji of the Kazakhs.
In March, the small group struggled over the mountains, and then trekked across the vast uninhabited Changtang on the Tibetan plateau
Tibetan Plateau
The Tibetan Plateau , also known as the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau is a vast, elevated plateau in Central Asia covering most of the Tibet Autonomous Region and Qinghai, in addition to smaller portions of western Sichuan, southwestern Gansu, and northern Yunnan in Western China and Ladakh in...
. They arrived at the first Tibetan outpost on April 29, 1950. Mackiernan sent Bessac over to talk with the Tibetans who were camped nearby. The rest of the party set up tents behind a slight hill. Bessac heard shots and running over the hill, he saw that Mackiernan and two White movement
White Russian
White Russian may refer to:* White Russian , an alcoholic beverage* White movement members during the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1923* A White émigré from the Russian Civil War...
employees, Leonid and Stefan, were dead. Vasili Zvansov was badly wounded. The Tibetan guards realized that they had made a tragic mistake only five days later when they met a group of couriers from the Dalai Lama
Dalai Lama
The Dalai Lama is a high lama in the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" branch of Tibetan Buddhism. The name is a combination of the Mongolian word далай meaning "Ocean" and the Tibetan word bla-ma meaning "teacher"...
with a message of safe conduct for the group: the American government had delayed sending its request for permission for the Mackiernan party for so long that it was impossible for the Tibetan government to act in time. On June 11, 1950, Bessac and Zvansov finally reached Lhasa
Lhasa
Lhasa is the administrative capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region in the People's Republic of China and the second most populous city on the Tibetan Plateau, after Xining. At an altitude of , Lhasa is one of the highest cities in the world...
just weeks before the beginning of the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
.
Mackiernan's death (as a State Department official) was subsequently reported by the New York Times on July 29, 1950. His work as a CIA agent was first written about in one chapter of a book by Ted Gup, in 2001—without any mention of his work as an atomic intelligence agent. In 2003, Thomas Laird wrote an entire book about Mackiernan's work, and revealed details of Mackiernan's atomic intelligence work for the first time. Mackiernan's CIA employment was not acknowledged by the CIA until 2006, when his name was revealed in the CIA's Book of Honor. However his work as an agent, and his atomic intelligence, was not fully recognized by the CIA until then-CIA Director Michael Hayden described Mackiernan's work during a speech in October 2008.
External links
- Website for the book Into Tibet with sample chapter
- "The First Atomic Spy" from MIT's Technology Review, January, 2001
- "Star Agents" by Ted Gup, from The Washington PostThe Washington PostThe Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, September 7, 1997 - Miscellaneous collected information on Mackiernan