Vince Houghton - Nuking the Moon - And Other Intelligence Schemes and Military Plots Left on the Drawing Board

The best covert actiontends to be covert . I know that sounds like a truism. But there is covert, and then there’s COVERT. Let me break this down. Say you are at war with country X, and you secretly infiltrate a team deep inside enemy territory to blow up a bridge. That’s technically covert action. Your team snuck in and wreaked havoc—but there is no question that it was your guys that did the damage. Sure, they covertly made their way in and out of the war zone, but they made a hell of a lot of noise along the way.

Now let’s look at scenario number two. You aren’t technically at war with another nation, but you are worried they are developing a nuclear weapons program that could shift the balance of power in an important region. As a response, you set up a covert action to slow down their technological progress. Maybe (hypothetically, of course) you insert a computer worm into the systems that control one aspect of this technological development. Perhaps that worm (let’s call it Snuxnet—just pulling a name out of thin air…) does its job, and your rival’s nuclear weapons program is set back several years. No one knows who was behind this cyber attack, but there are few countries that have the means, motive, and opportunity to pull this off. And you are one of them. You have what’s known as “plausible deniability,” and the mission resides safely within the defined parameters of a covert action, but it could be better…

The perfect covert action takes place when your target doesn’t even know he was the victim of an attack. When he assumes natural causes were the result of his bad fortune. When he isn’t looking for someone to blame. Someone to punish. Someone to kill.

Stanley Lovell’s mission was to execute the perfect covert action: a germ warfare attack against the Germans in North Africa without their knowing what hit them. This was more than a desire to be sneaky. It was important to the Allies to maintain the moral high ground in the war, and to prevent the Germans from retaliating with their own biological attack.

One key aspect would be to employ a less-than-lethal strain of biological agent. The idea wasn’t to kill all the Germans in the region—just to make them all wish they were dead. Hordes of sick soldiers might be chalked up to just bad luck; thousands of dead Germans, and someone is going to be asking questions. Imagine the worst stomach flu you’ve ever had… then multiply that by an order of magnitude. According to Lovell, the germ cocktail OSS created contained “an assortment of bacteria from tularemia and psittacosis to all the pests known to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” This would bring the German war machine in Spanish Morocco to a standstill. And when the troops came back, they’d be significantly demoralized.

Lovell set out to finalize his plans. His research of the region had uncovered several important facts:

1. There were more goats than people in Morocco.

2. Moroccan goats pooped. A lot.

3. There were also a ridiculous number of flies in North Africa. In the summer, they were everywhere in Spanish Morocco.

4. North African flies were particularly pesky. They flocked to the moisture from the eyes, noses, and mouths of humans.

5. Flies regurgitate what they’ve previously eaten when new food comes their way.

Each of these independently is a random fact. But taken together they crafted a recipe for a perfect germ warfare operation. If Lovell could lace the poop with biotoxins, the flies would provide the perfect vector to incapacitate the German army in Spanish Morocco.

But how do you guarantee the flies will be attracted to your particular brand of biotoxin-laced goat poop? The OSS wasn’t going to leave this up to chance—Lovell had the answer. They would manufacture a synthetic variant of goat poop, with a pull so powerful that it would never fail to bring the flies home to roost (to mix about five metaphors). The chemical attractant was apparently so powerful it would wake North African flies out of hibernation . It’s like the sweet aroma of a local bakery, a newborn baby, or freshly cut grass—but with poop.

The only challenge that remained was to figure out how to deliver the synthetic goat poop to Spanish Morocco without being observed—to keep the covert in the covert action. After some brainstorming, Lovell decided that the only way to secretly introduce their concoction into the region was via airdrop.

It was then that one member of Lovell’s team spoke up and identified a major kink in this plan. Most of the houses in Spanish Morocco have flat roofs. A whole lot of the goat poop would end up dropped on the roofs, and unless the OSS was also planning on developing a new genetically engineered variant of flying goat, it would be hard to explain how the poop got on the roof. Lovell pondered this problem, but had to concede this was a valid point. He finally responded, “The orders are to take out Spanish Morocco when ordered to do so, and if we do there’ll be mighty few people inspecting rooftops.” He, too, had a valid point.

Fortunately, the progress of the war intervened before Lovell could test his theory—and his synthetic poop. In the midst of development and testing, the OSS learned that the Germans were completely pulling their troops out of Spanish Morocco and redeploying them to the Eastern Front, to reinforce the effort to capture the Soviet city of Stalingrad. Hitler’s ill-fated obsession with taking the city named after his nemesis saved the OSS, and by extension the United States, from being the only nation in the European Theater of World War II to resort to biological warfare.

AND THEN WHAT?

To witness the legacy of Stanley Lovell and the OSS Research & Development unit, one only needs to turn back to chapter 1 of this book. The CIA’s Technical Services Division/Office of Technical Service is a direct descendant of OSS/R&D, and their official documents identify Lovell as their founding father. Of course, Stanley Lovell was responsible for more than Operation Capricious. He was a prolific leader whose team invented all sorts of useful technology and weapons to help the Allies win the war. In fact, the OSS built twenty-five different weapons that saw use during the war, from silenced pistols, to limpet mines, to “Beano grenades” shaped like baseballs—so that red-blooded American boys could throw them more naturally—to “Aunt Jemima,” an explosive powder packaged in Chinese flour bags. They also developed tools and techniques that resistance fighters, guerrillas, and saboteurs used to blow the hell out of the Germans and the Japanese. Much in the same way, TSD/OTS invented, tested, and built hundreds of gadgets to help CIA fight the Cold War, and continue to invent, test, and build helpful technologies today.

But if you want to read about those, you bought the wrong book.

What do Eleanor Roosevelt, the guy who invented napalm, a renowned psychologist who believed animals possess consciousness, and a dentist have in common?

Na-na na-na na-na na-na, Na-na na-na na-na na-na—BAT BOMBS!

(I’m pretty sure I’m going to get sued for that. But it was worth it.)

During World War I,President Woodrow Wilson created the Naval Consulting Board and appointed Thomas Edison as its chairman. This makes a lot of sense, since the NCB was supposed to be the premier institution for the analysis of new technologies during the war—who else would you want leading it other than the nation’s greatest inventor? The NCB consisted entirely of engineers, save for a single scientist—a physicist. When asked why he had chosen the scientist for the board, Edison told Wilson, “We might have one mathematical fellow in case we have to calculate something out.”