A pilot was dead, and the camouflage paint had made the U-2 more dangerous, not more stealthy. Bissell knew he needed to act fast. He was losing control of the U-2 spy plane program and everything he had created at Area 51. His next idea, part genius and part hubris, was to petition the president for an entirely new spy plane. The CIA needed a better, faster, more technologically advanced aircraft that would break scientific barriers and trick Soviet radars into thinking it wasn’t there. This new spy plane Bissell had in mind would fly higher than ninety thousand feet and have stealth features built in from pencil to plane. Bissell was taking a major gamble with his billion-dollar request. Bringing an entirely new black budget spy plane program to the president’s attention at a time when the president was upset with the results of the previous work done at Area 51 was either madness or brilliance, depending on one’s point of view. But just as Richard Bissell began presenting plans for his radical and ambitious new project to the president, a national security crisis overwhelmed the country. On October 4, 1957, the Soviets launched the world’s first satellite, a 184-pound silver orb called Sputnik 1. This was the secret that Sergei Korolev had been working on at Area 51’s Communist doppelg?nger, NII-88.
At first, the White House tried to downplay the fact that the Soviets had beat the Americans into space. Eisenhower, at his country home in Pennsylvania for the weekend, didn’t immediately comment on the event. But the following morning, the New York Times ran a headline of half-inch-high capital letters across all six columns, a spot historically reserved for the declarations of war.
SOVIET FIRES EARTH SATELLITE INTO SPACE; IT IS CIRCLING THE GLOBE AT 18,000 MPH; SPHERE TRACKED IN 4 CROSSINGS OVER U.S.
A satellite launch meant the Russians now had a rocket with enough propulsion and guidance to hit a target anywhere in the world. So much for the Paperclips Wernher Von Braun and Ernst Steinhoff being the most competent rocket scientists in the world. “As it beeped in the sky, Sputnik 1 created a crisis of confidence that swept the country like a windblown forest fire,” Eisenhower’s science adviser James Killian later recalled. British reporters at the Guardian warned, “We must be prepared to be told [by Russia] what the other side of the moon looks like.” French journalists homed in on America’s “disillusion and bitter[ness]” at the crushing space-race defeat. The French underscored America’s scientific shame. “The Americans have little experience with humiliation in the technical domain,” read the article in Le Figaro. Because members of the public had no idea about the CIA’s U-2 spy plane program, they believed that with Sputnik, the Russians could now learn all of America’s secrets, while America remained in the dark about theirs. For twenty-one days, Sputnik circled the Earth at a speed of 18,000 mph until its radio signal finally faded and died.
In deciding the best course of action, the president turned back to his science advisers. In the month following Sputnik, a new position was created for James Killian—special assistant to the president for science and technology—and for the next two years Killian would meet with the president almost every day. This became a defining moment for Richard Bissell. For as depressing as his Area 51 prospects had seemed only a month before, the news of Sputnik was, ironically for the CIA, a harbinger of good news. James Killian adored Richard Bissell; they’d been friends for over a decade. Immediately after the Russians launched Sputnik, Killian and Bissell found themselves working closely together again. Only this time, they weren’t teaching economics to university students. The two men would work hand in glove to launch America’s most formidable top secret billion-dollar spy plane, to be built and test-flown at Area 51. Advancing science and technology for military purposes was now at the very top of the president’s list of priorities. With James Killian on his side, Bissell inadvertently found himself in the extraordinary position of getting almost whatever he wanted from the president of the United States. And as long as what Richard Bissell built at Area 51 could humiliate the Russians and show them who was boss, this included a bottomless budget, infinite manpower, total secrecy, and ultimate control.
CHAPTER SIX
Atomic Accidents
Richard Bissell once said that setting up Area 51 inside a nuclear testing facility kept the curiosity-seekers at bay. With Operation Plumbbob, a 1957 atomic test series that involved thirty consecutive nuclear explosions, he got more than he bargained for. With the arms race in full swing, the Department of Defense had decided it was just a matter of time before an airplane transporting an atomic bomb would crash on American soil, unleashing a radioactive disaster the likes of which the world had never seen. In the twenty-first century, this kind of weapon would be referred to as a dirty bomb.