From: "Mario Profaca" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: January 26, 2007 4:15:36 PM PST
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [SPY NEWS] How the CIA captured an A-12 Blackbird
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07026/757100-51.stm
How the CIA captured an A-12 Blackbird
Friday, January 26, 2007
By Jonathan Karp, The Wall Street Journal
The Central Intelligence Agency is closing in on a high-value
landscaping target: a 1960s spy plane called the A-12 Blackbird.
The CIA plans to mount the once-secret, 102-foot-long supersonic plane
on a pole at its Langley, Va., headquarters in time for the agency's
60th anniversary in September. The jet chosen for the mission is a
particularly well-preserved specimen that has been at the Minnesota
Air Guard Museum, next to the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, since
1991.
Even though a moving crew began the 10-day process of dismantling the
spy plane this week, volunteers who painstakingly restored it at their
own expense are continuing to oppose what they consider a hijacking.
Their pleas for mercy, backed by the governor and entire Minnesota
congressional delegation, have fallen on deaf ears.
"Possession is nine-tenths of the law, so until they drag it away with
me screaming, we have a chance," said James Goodall, an aviation buff
and retired Minnesota National Guardsman who salvaged the plane and
led efforts to preserve it.
The A-12 Blackbird, retired in 1968, was the forerunner to the
better-known SR-71 Blackbird. The stealthy A-12 is one of the fastest
aircraft ever made, capable of flying at more than three times the
speed of sound and at the edge of space. The plane originated as part
of a CIA program code-named "Oxcart." Of the 15 A-12s built by
Lockheed Martin Corp.'s famed Skunk Works advanced projects unit, nine
remain. One is on display at an Air Force base, and the others are at
museums around the country.
Mr. Goodall and his supporters don't question the right of the Air
Force, which controls these decommissioned warplanes, to reclaim an
A-12 and lend it to the CIA as an oversize lawn ornament inside the
agency compound. Instead, their two-month dogfight has been aimed at
getting the Air Force to justify removing the Minnesota museum's crown
jewel while three A-12s sit in Alabama, including one that has been
neglected since suffering hurricane damage. Another is parked on the
USS Intrepid aircraft carrier, a floating Manhattan museum that will
be closed until late next year because of renovation work across the
Hudson River.
The CIA, whose headquarters isn't open to the public, had no role in
selecting which plane it would receive. The Air Force says the
Minnesota Air National Guard doesn't have a historical connection to
the A-12, and though the Minnesotans have taken good care of their
A-12, the volunteer-run museum doesn't meet the Air Force's current
legal requirements for its museums. For one thing, it doesn't have a
salaried director. After reviewing all nine A-12s, "The only one that
didn't have a legitimate rationale for its location was Minnesota's,"
said Terry Aitken, senior curator at the National Museum of the U.S.
Air Force.
That logic outrages Mr. Goodall, 61 years old, who spent 20 years in
the Minnesota Air National Guard and his entire adult life smitten
with the A-12. He says he became an "airplane nut" at age 5 when he
saw a squadron of B-36 bombers flying over San Francisco Bay. He first
glimpsed a Blackbird as an 18-year-old Air Force recruit at Edwards
Air Force Base in California. It was March 10, 1964, and "it affected
me forever," he says.
Over the years, Mr. Goodall became an expert, writing five books on
the supersonic plane. He built a rapport with Ben Rich, who developed
the Blackbird for Lockheed and eventually ran Skunk Works. Mr. Goodall
says he got a tip from Mr. Rich in 1989 that the Blackbird program
would be canceled. "If anyone can scrounge one, you can," he says the
late Mr. Rich told him.
At the time, Mr. Goodall was the staff historian for the 133rd Airlift
Wing of the Minnesota Air National Guard. He hatched a scheme to
rescue an A-12 from the scrapheap in Palmdale, Calif. In 1990,
Minnesota's congressional delegation backed the Air Guard museum's
request, citing the fact that companies in Minnesota supplied key
Blackbird components and that some Blackbird pilots hailed from the
state.
The Air Force was happy to unload the A-12 to avoid a costly process
of destroying the asbestos-packed plane. Once the Air Force museum
agreed to the loan, Mr. Goodall arranged for two massive cargo planes
from the New York Air National Guard to haul the Blackbird in pieces
from California. He persuaded a local hotel to put up the flight and
moving crews free of charge for 10 days. "The Air Force estimated the
move would cost $500,000. I got it done for $27,000. That makes me the
deal-of-the-century guy," Mr. Goodall says.
Back in St. Paul, he marshaled volunteers and corporate donations for
restoration work. He then spent years -- and thousands of his own
dollars, he says -- scrounging for cockpit instruments, at one point
swapping a prized ejection seat from his private collection to get a
supersonic speedometer known as a Mach meter.
All was well until last November, when the museum got a letter from
Mr. Aitken, the Air Force museum curator, invoking a provision of the
loan agreement that allows the Air Force to reclaim its plane by
giving 60 days' notice. The only reason Mr. Aitken cited for the
decision was the need to "satisfy current exhibit requirements."
Distressed local Air Guard commanders appealed to save the A-12,
calling it a "labor of love." Mr. Aitken replied that the plane didn't
conform to the air park's primary mission, which is to commemorate the
state guard wing's history, and said it would be better suited at the
CIA. Mr. Goodall, who is now retired in Seattle but returns to the
Twin Cities occasionally to visit his beloved Blackbird, energized the
opposition movement by urging guardsmen and the museum's civilian
nonprofit foundation to enlist Minnesota and national politicians. He
also mobilized support from former A-12 pilots.
Mr. Goodall's plea: If the Air Force wants a plane to commemorate the
CIA's pioneering past, it should take one that actually flew in
combat. Minnesota's plane never saw action. The A-12 in Birmingham,
Ala., on the other hand, photographed North Vietnamese surface-to-air
missile sites in 1967, later sustained flak damage, and flew over
North Korea on a spy mission in 1968 after the North Koreans captured
the USS Pueblo, claiming the Navy ship had strayed into its
territorial waters.
Some Minnesotans are upset that the Air Force gave short notice and
didn't offer to discuss its A-12 plans. "This is a museum, a
community, not a war game," said Mark Ness, vice chairman of the
museum foundation and a retired Air National Guard brigadier general.
Mr. Goodall knew the odds were long. The Air Force has plucked other
planes despite local resistance, including a B-36 bomber taken from
Fort Worth, Texas, and the celebrated World War II B-17, the Memphis
Belle, from its namesake city in Tennessee.
Even as another joint appeal from Minnesota's congressional delegation
was delivered to the Air Force secretary Friday, the Air Force museum
told guardsmen in Minneapolis-St. Paul to prepare for the movers.
The Minnesota museum's supporters have retained a former state supreme
court justice as their lawyer, but as the moving crew continued to
unbolt the A-12's wings Thursday, they had yet to decide whether to
seek a court injunction against the move. Mr. Goodall, who refers to
the plane as "my A-12," has made his own unilateral sortie. He has
removed some cockpit instruments he had donated. "No one will see them
anyway if the plane is on a pole," he says. "I'll be damned if the CIA
... will get their hands on these."
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