Scavenging for Intelligence: The U.S. Government’s Secret Search for Foreign Objects during the Cold War

The MiG-15 was a capable fighter during the Korean War. High on the priority list of enemy material to be collected and analyzed, U.S. forces salvaged a few parts from a crashed aircraft in April 1951. Another opportunity arose when one crashed off the west coast of North Korea in early July 1951. U.S., British, and South Korean forces participated in a salvage operation that recovered almost the entire aircraft. In both cases, the material was quickly shipped to the Air Technical Intelligence Center in Dayton, Ohio, for analysis.

An Air Technical Intelligence Center report on the MiG-15 engine and other parts collected in April 1951 which was reproduced in a Far East Air Force intelligence publication.

An article discussing the intelligence from exploitation of the two MiG-15s, Yak-9 (a World War II fighter), Yak-11 (a trainer), and an IL-10 (a World War II ground attack aircraft) on their materials, manufacturing methods, and rubber and plastic components.

The Central Intelligence Bulletin was a CIA publication first published in the early 1950s and distributed to high-level officials. The Danish government was not permitting flight tests of a Polish MiG-15 which landed in Denmark for unknown reasons. Illustrating the diplomatic sensitivities involved in many exploitation projects, it insisted that the covert examination of the aircraft by British and U.S. personnel be completed within five days.

The Intelligence Advisory Committee submitted periodic reports to the National Security Council on the foreign intelligence program. Section VII details the progress and deficiencies in S&T intelligence on Soviet conventional armaments, guided missiles, biological and chemical warfare programs, and basic R&D. Section XII discusses collection, including of foreign materials and equipment.

This document details the background to the formation of the Sovmat Staff in July 1950 to acquire and analyze Soviet material for purposes of S&T intelligence, its operations and successes through January 1952, the disputes with the military members of the Joint Soviet Materials Intelligence Committee under the original Scientific Intelligence Committee, and their eventual resolution in the newly established Joint Materiel Intelligence Agency.

This Office of Research and Reports memo stated that it relied on the Sovmat Program as a source of economic information but believed the Sovmat Program was falling short of its potential in several important respects.

Among other things, this report stated that in the two years in question the Sovmat Staff acquired 1,815 items, of which 922 were analyzed (about 45% in U.S. government facilities and the remainder in private sector facilities). The services acquired 2,398 items during this period, but there is no breakdown of how many were analyzed. There is no information available on what any of the items were. In contrast to earlier years, the coordination between the CIA and DoD at the Joint Technical Intelligence Subcommittee was good.

This joint product of the Intelligence Advisory Committee’s Scientific Intelligence Committee, Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee, and Guided Missile Intelligence Committee was prepared to advance the Priority National Intelligence Objectives approved by the Intelligence Advisory Committee and set forth in DCID 1/3. The highest priority objectives concerned Soviet nuclear weapons and the bombers, guided missiles, and submarines to deliver them.

The CIA’s S&T intelligence research and production program was centered in the Office of Scientific Research at this time. This excerpt contains the introduction and table of contents to the planned FY 1959 program, much of which addressed the priorities in Document No. 8 above. Other parts of the program contributed to National Intelligence Surveys, National Intelligence Estimates, and supported the electronic intelligence collection effort.

This directive established the Scientific Intelligence Committee under the new U.S. Intelligence Board. It replaced the Scientific Estimates Committee and was charged with developing and coordinating the S&T intelligence activities throughout the intelligence community. The directive eliminated the limitations on the CIA’s area of responsibility and the prohibition on generating intelligence reports. 

In FY 1960, the Sovmat Staff acquired 423 items and published 98 intelligence reports, while the three services acquired 1,232 items. The leading Soviet items collected were electronic equipment and then scientific and biological samples. One growing source of objects were those obtained by U.S. scientists visiting Soviet scientific institutes. There were also an increasing number of items acquired from Communist China.

This directive updated the assignment to the DIA of overall management and guidance of DoD’s S&T intelligence program.

This is a draft U.S. Intelligence Board response to the S&T intelligence portion of the October 1961 President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board’s report to President Kennedy. Intelligence on the Sino-Soviet Bloc’s basic scientific and technical capabilities was satisfactory but there were some gaps. Lack of translation capacity prevented the increased exploitation of the growing amount of open scientific literature and the development of machines for translation was required. With respect to foreign material exploitation, more items needed to be acquired and the actual analysis of many items needed to be accelerated.

The enclosure describes the results of the examination by the U.S. Navy of subminiature tubes used in certain radio equipment.

This article describes the planning and execution of an operation to examine a Lunik spacecraft in an unnamed foreign county while on a tour of Soviet industrial articles and space vehicles, as well as some of the intelligence derived therefrom. Dino Brugioni stated that the country was Mexico in his Eyes in the Sky: Eisenhower, the CIA, and Cold War Aerial Espionage.

In the early 1960s the Soviets began testing intercontinental ballistic missiles to a mid-Pacific impact area. It deployed ships to acquire the telemetry and other data from the reentry vehicles to assess their performance. The United States also deployed ships and aircraft with various sensors to the area in an attempt to learn their dimensions, configurations, and performance characteristics. The United States was also developing a deep-sea vehicle under Project SAND DOLLAR to locate and recover the reentry vehicles or their pieces from the ocean floor for technical analysis.

This memo requested the Secretary of Defense provide $100,000 to the DIA for the acquisition of a Soviet Minsk-2 computer arranged through the CIA’s Sovmat Staff. 

SA-2 surface-to-air missiles were a deadly threat to U.S. and allied aircraft. This entry on the missile was from the Scientific Intelligence Digest, a periodic publication of the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence. As best as can be determined, the intelligence community had not yet obtained any components of the system for exploitation and the information came from other sources.

The MI-8 HIP entered service around 1960 as both a transport helicopter and gunship. In this memo, the DIA Director informed the Army that it would not be exploiting the helicopter and instead it should instruct the CIA to ship the aircraft to Holloman AFB.

The President’s Daily Brief was the highest level intelligence publication of the CIA and was only distributed to the president and a few advisors. The YAK-28 Firebar which had crashed in West Berlin and had been salvaged for exploitation entered service in the mid-1960s as an all-weather interceptor.

Information given by the CIA to the DoD on the SA-2 contributed to the development of countermeasures which had reduced aircraft losses over North Vietnam. Nevertheless, there was still a very high priority requirement to acquire additional technical data, particularly concerning the system’s FAN SONG radars.

Notwithstanding the exploitation of SA-2 missile guidance antennas just obtained by the CIA and ongoing collection efforts against certain other key components, there were still many technical details of the system that remained unknown.

The Ghanaian Army had received substantial ground forces equipment from the USSR and was now making it available to the United States. While the DIA would oversee the exploitation, the CIA was interested in certain small arms and ammunition for use in operations and the Army the same for training purposes. 

This internal CIA memo listed the major components of the SA-2 missile that still needed to be obtained for exploitation. 

The Israelis captured an enormous amount of Soviet equipment in the Six-Day War which the DoD sought to exploit. While the CIA was taking the lead in negotiating with the Israelis on access, the DIA was coordinating the DoD’s plans for examination and analysis.

From 1962-1970, royalist forces backed by Saudi Arabia and Jordan fought republican forces backed by Egypt and the USSR. Among the weapons used by the republican forces were Soviet chemical agents. Such agents were high on the DIA’s Foreign Material Requirements Listing, and the DIA prepared a Specific Intelligence Collection Request to obtain them.

The U.S. technical exploitation project for this material was designated MEXPO. Working through CIA channels and coordinating with the State Department, U.S. personnel had gained access to lower priority items in Israel, but had not yet gained access to high priority ones such as SA-2 components. 

U.S. personnel had finally gained access to the SA-2 components in Israel, but the Israelis were resisting their removal to the United States for the time being. However, the FAN SONG computer and radar vans had been so severely damaged that their exploitation was impossible. There was still a high priority requirement to bring a complete SA-2 system or its major electronic components to the United States for analysis and testing.

With the assistance of the CIA, DoD technical personnel had been granted access to all the captured equipment. Phase A exploitation of many of the items in Israel by joint U.S./Israeli teams had been completed, and the Phase A exploitation of the remaining items in Israel was to be completed in 1968. Phase B, the joint exploitation of certain equipment in the United States, and Phase C, the gift or sale to the United States of certain material, had not been scheduled yet.

Earlier that month, CIA, DoD, and Israeli Intelligence Service representatives met at CIA headquarters on Project MEXPO. The memorandum forwarded with this memo is not in the file. 

In contrast to the good cooperation between the CIA and DoD in other areas of foreign material exploitation, the two organizations could not agree on a division of responsibilities with respect to foreign space debris which had returned to Earth. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 provided in part that space debris which landed on Earth was the property of the launching nation and that such debris be returned to that country. The treaty finally gave the State Department the leverage to forge a government-wide policy on the exploitation of foreign space debris. The CIA, DoD, and National Aeronautics and Space Administration quickly agreed to the State Department proposal contained in this memo.

The Soviet Atoll was a copy of the U.S. AIM-9B Sidewinder. Many North Vietnamese MiGs carried them but they had limited success against U.S. aircraft. This U.S. Air Force Foreign Technology Division publication set forth the plan for the continuing exploitation of an Atoll fuze.

This DIA report, based in part on foreign material exploitation reports, detailed the metals, ceramics, and composite materials used in the three types of vehicles.

The new government-wide procedures adopted in 1967 on acquiring foreign space debris for exploitation were implemented in the case of unidentified fragments that fell in Nepal and which were not claimed by any country.

Nepal gave permission to the United States to examine the debris in Nepal. The team reported that it could not determine the country of origin and would have to examine it in the United States to identify the country of origin.

Because of Nepalese concerns about mutilating the debris, an agreement was reached that a fragment could be taken to the United States if it were returned without noticeable damage.

By early 1972, the exploitation of the fragment was completed and it was being returned with little or no change in appearance.

This is a DIA response to an inquiry from the Office of the Secretary of Defense concerning any correlation between the age of Soviet aircraft and in-flight failures. The inquiry was apparently triggered by a crash of a Bear maritime patrol plane off the Canadian coast in August 1976.

MiG-25s entered service in the late 1960s. In August 1976, a Soviet pilot defected and flew one to Japan. The United States debriefed the pilot and granted him asylum. The USSR demanded the immediate return of the aircraft, which the Japanese government agreed to but only after the examination by U.S. and Japanese exploitation teams was completed.

U.S. allies sought access to the results of the exploitation of the MiG-25. This memo contains the DIA’s recommendations as to exactly what data should be released to what countries.

This CIA Directorate of Intelligence report set forth the results of the examination of several Soviet weapons systems, including two aircraft, four surface-to-air missile systems, and five articles of ground force equipment. Although the source of the equipment is unknown, it was probably Egypt.

The F-6 was the Chinese version of the MiG-19 and entered service in the 1960s. In July 1977, a Chinese pilot defected and flew his F-6/MiG-19 to Taiwan. Joint teams exploited the aircraft under Project HAVE BOAT, and the Republic of China offered certain components which could be brought back to the United States for additional examination.

A joint DIA-CIA project codenamed MOP RACK sought to acquire eight Soviet military articles, each of which was assigned to one of the three services for exploitation. 

Somalia invaded Ethiopia in 1977-1978 to reclaim the Ogaden region. With extensive Soviet and Cuban support, Ethiopia successfully fought off the attack. The two MiGs discussed in this memo probably crashed in Somalia in that conflict.

The Soviets had supported Somalia for many years until its 1977 invasion of Ethiopia, at which time it began backing Ethiopia. The support had included extensive military equipment, which the United States was now exploiting under Project GREEN ECHO.

The Israelis captured many weapons in its 1982 invasion of Lebanon. In this memo, the CIA requested the assistance of the Secretary of Defense in acquiring shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile systems, mines, and grenades to supply insurgencies the United States was supporting.

Earlier efforts to acquire weapons apparently were not completely successful and this led to another request to the Secretary of Defense for assistance in this regard.