Collection of interesting reads : SPIES ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD ---CIA’s lost plutonium in the Himalayas: Radioactive for centuries

http://www.damninteresting.com/spies-on-the-roof-of-the-world/

http://www.dianuke.org/lost-plutonium-himalaya-radioactive/

This story should serve to remind us, that when it comes to things nuclear, we can not leave it to our policy makers who can not even think of consequences over their own lifetimes. The relationship between China and US, and the very existence of such political maps could change in a matter of decades, but radioactive contamination stays for centuries. Nuclear safety, whether in case of nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, space missions carrying nuclear devices or Depleted Uranium, has to be thought keeping in view the irreparable, large-scale and long-term consequences of radiation.

In 1965, a CIA team lost a four pound plutonium-powered device at Nanda Devi peak which it was trying to install to spy on China’s nuclear tests. That expedition retreated in the face of bad weather, leaving the device in Himalayas. They returned in the next spring to find the device, but failed. The Nanda Devi Sanctuary supplies water to the Ganges River, and there were fears that the four pounds of plutonium in the device could escape into the watershed. Those fears were been confirmed in 2005 when traces of Plutonium-235 was found.

In the closing weeks of 1964, the US Central Intelligence Agency was gripped by anxiety in the wake of troubling news. On October 16th, a great mushroom cloud had been spotted towering over the remote Chinese missile-testing range at Lop Nur. All evidence had indicated that Chinese scientists were at least a year away from squeezing the destructive secrets from the mighty atom, but this bombshell underscored the agency's dangerously feeble espionage efforts in the Far East.

Details regarding the twenty-two kiloton device were scarce, but the US regarded the development as an unwelcome wrinkle in the already precarious Cold War. Officials from India were also distressed, having felt the business end of China's military during a recent border dispute. In the interest of self-preservation, the two nations made a secret pact to combine their China-watching efforts. Photo reconnaissance satellites were still too primitive for practical spying, and high-flying surveillance planes were too conspicuous, but there was one alternative vantage point. The intelligence agencies hatched a nefarious scheme to keep a sharp eye on China's weapons tests from atop India's Nanda Devi, one of the tallest mountains of the imposing Himalayan mountain range. It offered an unobstructed view of China's distant test site, assuming one could manage to hoist a sufficiently powerful electronic eye to its summit.

Several months after the Chinese nuclear test, a young doctor at the University of Washington Hospital in Seattle was doing his rounds when he heard his name paged over the intercom. Upon his arrival at the front lobby, he was confronted by an sinister-looking man clad in dark glasses and a trench coat.

"Robert Schaller?" The enigmatic visitor pulled back the flap of his coat to reveal something inside. Jutting from an inner pocket was an airline ticket. "How would you like to go to the Himalayas?" the man inquired.

The CIA, he explained, was seeking a physician with experience in electronics and mountain-climbing, a combination of requirements which produced relatively few candidates. Schaller satisfied all of the criteria, having become obsessed with climbing over the previous few years. In exchange for his service and silence, the agency offered $1,000 per month; a considerable stipend at the time. Unable to resist the generous salary, the once-in-a-lifetime mountaineering opportunity, and the prospect of patriotic employment, he hastily agreed. His training was scheduled to begin almost immediately.

Over time Dr. Schaller's colleagues at the hospital grew curious regarding his recent rash of conspicuous absences. He often returned having lost a few pounds and gained a few injuries, but when pressed for an explanation he was evasive. His official cover story was that he was being trained as a scientist-astronaut, but he declined to elaborate. The true nature of his outings was a closely guarded secret, withheld even from his own family.

Each training mission began by venturing into a canvas tunnel which led to an airplane with blacked-out windows. Often Schaller traveled with an assortment of citizen-spy companions, including Tom Frost, a climber famed for his Yosemite exploits; and expedition leader Captain Mohan Singh Kohli, a mountaineer renowned for his Everest expeditions. Many of the others were unfamiliar to Schaller, but he reasoned that they were scientists or professors, considering their knowledge of nuclear technology. Over a period of months he and the other operatives became acquainted with the subtleties of leaping from helicopters, demolishing targets with plastic explosives, and handling the experimental atomic-powered hardware which was developed specifically for their mission. Also, to prepare for the climb ahead, the men were required to repeatedly drag the equipment up the formidable cliffs of Alaska.

In the fall of 1965, a year after the first Chinese nuclear bomb test, the crew of clandestine climbers assembled at the Sanctuary, a natural fortress of Himalayan mountain peaks which surrounded their objective: Nanda Devi. Previously only six souls had managed to summit the 25,000-foot behemoth-- known by the locals as "the Goddess"-- and of those six only three had survived the dangerous descent. Captain Kohli and his crew anticipated an even more complicated climb owing to the heavy surveillance package they were required to heft up the mountain with them. But nonetheless Schaller and his mountaineering compatriots were eager to embark on the historic ascent.

Together the dozen climbers and Sherpas slowly scaled the side of the Goddess. By day the extra equipment hindered their upward progress, but by night the atomic contraption provided a pocket of warmth for the adventurers. Nestled within the forty-pound generator was sufficient plutonium to power the surveillance package for a thousand years, thereby providing the US and India with uninterrupted observation of Chinese nuclear bombs and Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) tests.

For several days the crew clambered up the face of Nanda Devi as Dr. Schaller cataloged the journey with his camera and diaries. The gaggle of makeshift secret agents crossed the crevasse-riddled glaciers with the help of steel-spiked shoes and ice axes, gradually making their way to High Camp-- the last stop before the summit. The Goddess' perilous peak stood a mere 1,000 feet above them. But as the team settled in, the sky around Nanda Devi grew dark and restless. The frigid air mingled with moisture, and the stew swiftly thickened into a surly autumn blizzard.

Faced with the threat of being whisked away by the atmospheric tantrum, expedition leader Captain Kohli concluded that the team must turn back, postponing the mission until the spring climbing season. Kohli ordered that the surveillance package be lashed to the mountainside, much to the surprise and chagrin of his fellow climbers. He reasoned that the team could reacquire the equipment on the next ascent rather than hauling it up the mountain again. The team secured the antenna, two transceiver sets, and nuclear generator on a rocky outcropping, then hastily fled from the detestable weather.

The team returned the following spring, planning to retrieve their nuclear parcel and tote it the remaining distance to the mountain top. When they reached High Camp, Dr. Schaller and his comrades sought out the crag which had cradled their abandoned equipment throughout the winter. Their stash, however, was nowhere to be seen. A quick survey of the scene suggested that the stone ledge had been sheared from the mountainside by an avalanche, presumably embedding the generator and its seven cigar-shaped plutonium rods deep into the ice fields below. Met with this alarming discovery, the CIA operatives presumably embedded their breakfasts into their pants.

No one could be certain what would become of the core in the glacier's clutches, but there was cause for great concern. There were two equally alarming prospects: the nuclear fuel might fall into the wrong hands, leading to any number of diabolical designs; or the slab of migrating ice might slowly grind the plutonium into a paste and deposit it into the Sanctuary melt waters, shuttling the four pounds of radioactive material into the vital Ganges River.

For the next two years, the CIA sent scores of Geiger-counter-carrying climbers and specially-outfitted helicopters to comb the ice fields for any trace of the powerplant. Meanwhile, Schaller and his team scaled a neighboring mountain and successfully installed a similar explosion-observing, missile-monitoring apparatus. They then joined the search efforts to locate the misplaced plutonium, but aside from a few Geiger-counter clicks, there was not a trace to be found. The prolonged search did, however, afford Schaller the opportunity to finally summit the elusive Nanda Devi; he stole away from High Camp during the pre-dawn hours for an unauthorized climb. Ever the documentarian, Schaller snapped a photo of himself at the summit for posterity.

As the final Himalayan expedition drew to a close, the team's official government operative asked to borrow Schaller's photographs and journals to help him file the mission report. Dr. Schaller happily complied, but after several months the documents remained unreturned. His subsequent requests for the materials were rebuffed, the CIA citing the need for security. Additionally, the doctor was awarded the Intelligence Medal of Merit for his contributions, but the two agents who presented the medal in a private ceremony were not allowed to leave the medal with him. Even today, decades after the espionage operations, Schaller's requests for his documents are met with letters stating that "the CIA can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence of records responsive to your request."

Dr. Schaller's marriage, strained by the secrecy of the covert missions, finally collapsed after thirteen years. But he went on to establish himself as a brilliant pediatric surgeon at a Children's hospital in Seattle. He remained silent regarding the clandestine climbing operations until 2005, when the expedition leader Captain Kohli released a book detailing their shared Himalayan adventures.

To the best of Dr. Schaller's knowledge, the Central Intelligence Agency never managed to reacquire their missing nuclear appliance. But a water sample from the Sanctuary in 2005 showed troubling hints of plutonium-239, an isotope which does not occur naturally. Years, decades, or centuries from now, the corpse of the rogue generator may yet rise from its icy grave and exact a radioactive revenge upon humanity. However, the CIA can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence of a disaster approximating the aforementioned depiction.

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http://www.dianuke.org/lost-plutonium-himalaya-radioactive/

Legacy of CIA Himalayan Operation Could Imperil Millions

Courtesy: The Progressive

Talk about harebrained schemes.

The CIA has had its share of dimwitted operations (the plot to make Castro’s beard fall off comes to mind), but an expedition to plant a nuclear-powered sensor on a 25,000-foot-plus mountain in the Himalayas is in a league of its own. The aim of putting the plutonium-run device on Nanda Devi (which feeds the Ganges river) in 1965 was to track nuclear and missile tests in China. The operation was a collaboration between the U.S. and Indian intelligence agencies, thus putting a wrinkle into the notion that the United States and India were consistently on opposing sides during the Cold War.

None other than General Curtis LeMay ( a character so over the top that he was the inspiration for Jack. D. Ripper and/or Buck Turgidson in “Dr. Strangelove”) approved the mission on the U.S. end, and the U.S. team did a practice run on Mt. McKinley. Notwithstanding the training and background of the climbers (who were expert mountaineers, not run-of-the-mill intelligence operatives), the Nanda Devi expedition encountered a lot of trouble. Due to adverse weather conditions, the group had to be airlifted after abandoning the device at a campsite, with the hope that people could come back and plant the sensor in the right place.

How the CIA Lost a Plutonium Battery

This was not to be. A follow-up trek discovered, much to the team members’ dismay, that the device was missing. Subsequent U.S.-India expeditions mounted to locate and secure the apparatus ended in utter disappointment. (The joint leader of the expedition, M.S. Kohli, has co-authored a book, “Spies in the Himalayas,” on the whole affair. The Tribune, an Indian newspaper, carried an interview with him in 2003.)

Mountaineer and journalist Pete Takeda has a recent book out on the subject. He was surprised by “the audacity of the CIA and the Indian government in trying to execute this thing,” he told The Denver Post earlier this month. “What amazed me most was that people I knew and respected —a generation of the best climbers—were involved in this and that the CIA really thought they could pull this off. I don’t think they fully knew what they were asking these climbers to do.”

Takeda quotes one of the climbers, Jim McCarthy, who asserts that the team members were fatally harmed by the radioactivity in the apparatus. “It’s McCarthy’s claim he got testicular cancer from the device,” Takeda says. “He’s convinced all the Sherpas died from their exposure to the device.”

The story was first made public decades ago, in 1978 by Howard Kohn in Outside magazine. The then-Indian Prime Minister, Morarji Desai, had to make a statement to the Indian parliament revealing the details of the mission and denying that the lost equipment posed any health hazards. An official Indian scientific committee supported his claim.

But the device—and its potential for killing legions due to the contamination of an entire river system and ecosphere—has been back in the news recently due to two reasons.

Takeda’s book, “An Eye At the Top of the World,” came out some months ago. To write the book, Takeda and his team ascended an adjacent peak (the Indian government denied permission to climb Nanda Devi), nearly killing themselves in the process. They came back to the United States with river sediment samples from the area. In March this year, the Boston-based Chemical Data Corporation analyzed the samples and detected plutonium 239, as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports. (Takeda has a recent posting up on his website about a scientist who claims to have found no evidence of plutonium in the sample that Takeda subsequently sent him, further complicating matters.)

The second person to throw the spotlight on the issue has been Yoichi Shimatsu, a Japanese journalist and filmmaker who has made a documentary about the misuse of science in the Himalayas. Shimatsu warned last month about the consequences if the plutonium in the device ever leaks from its casing.

“Though the Indian government says there is little danger of the plutonium breaking out of its protective sheath, Shimatsu says the menace can’t be ruled out and once that happens, the waters of the Ganges, one of Asia’s biggest and most sacred rivers, will be poisoned,” reports the Hindustan Times.

Shimatsu is urging the international community to launch joint expeditions to locate the device, with the cost being borne by the countries responsible—the United States and India.

“I think it could and should be found,” affirms Takeda in his Denver Post interview. “It would settle the whole matter and it’s a piece of Cold War history, and it would mitigate the potential notion that plutonium is leaking and is a health hazard. But it would cost millions of dollars.”

The chances of an environmental calamity seem low at the moment. But given the ecological catastrophe—and the massive radiation poisoning—that could be caused by the puerile spy games that the CIA and India played, it’d be best to err on the side of caution and hunt for the device. The Cold War took too many casualties, and that toll doesn’t need to be increased.