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bigtree

(85,915 posts)
Mon Apr 29, 2013, 12:53 PM Apr 2013

CIA Planting Plutonium-Powered Spy Device Atop the Himalayas? What Could Go Wrong?

from Wired:



Somewhere on this mountain, Nanda Devi, a CIA surveillance device is buried. Photo: Michael Scalet/Flickr


Inside the CIA Mission to Haul Plutonium Up the Himalayas

It was 1965, and the Pentagon and CIA were worried. The Vietnam War was beginning to ramp up. The People’s Republic of China had recently conducted its first nuclear test, but intelligence was limited. Chinese missile tests were being conducted at a secretive facility a few hundred miles north of the Himalayan mountains, but intelligence estimates for the missiles’ range — and compatibility with nuclear warheads — was unclear. The mountain range blocked ground-based sensors, which could have picked up the missiles’ radio telemetry signals. Worse, Pakistan had just kicked out America’s spy planes, and precision satellite imagery was still primitive.

There was another option. Two years prior, the first successful American expedition to the summit of Mount Everest had completed its trip with a small team of Sherpa guides. Gen. Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay, the Air Force’s top officer and who secured some funding for the 1963 expedition, wanted to know if the mountaineers would go back.

“Le May was wondering if these hardy Sherpa people — who had worked in support of the 1963 expedition — and the members themselves might be interested in participating in a clandestine operation,” Broughton Coburn, author of the book The Vast Unknown: America’s First Ascent of Everest, tells Danger Room. Their job: carry a plutonium-powered generator — known as a SNAP unit — and a sensor device to a Himalayan peak high enough to secure a direct line of sight to where China’s missiles were flying. Once at a suitable summit, the team would assemble the device and aim it towards China.

But the expedition ran into several problems. Everest was out of the question, as the mountain bordered China, leaving a surveillance device vulnerable to being discovered by a potential Chinese summit attempt. Nanda Devi, a 25,645-foot mountain within Indian territory was picked instead with the cooperation of Indian intelligence. However, the expedition was forced to abandon a summit attempt under heavy snowfall and declining oxygen levels. “They stashed the equipment in a crevice and anchored it with the expectation they would return the following spring, carry it to the summit and piece it together to make it operational,” Coburn says . . .


read more: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/04/cia-himalayan-spies/?cid=co7547414


The first American team to ascend Everest, several of whom would go on to mountaineer for the CIA. Dave Dingman, kneeling on left, was one of them. Photo: Courtesy of Marie Abercrombie

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CIA Planting Plutonium-Powered Spy Device Atop the Himalayas? What Could Go Wrong? (Original Post) bigtree Apr 2013 OP
Here's a Wiki on such power generators: MineralMan Apr 2013 #1
As far as I know, all of those power generators MineralMan Apr 2013 #2
We've always heard much about Soviet radioactive messes... hunter Apr 2013 #3

MineralMan

(146,189 posts)
2. As far as I know, all of those power generators
Mon Apr 29, 2013, 01:25 PM
Apr 2013

that use plutonium use plutonium238, which is useless for nuclear weapons, and primarily emits alpha radiation. If it's buried in a landslide, it will do no harm. Nuclear weapon use plutonium239, a fissile isotope.

hunter

(38,263 posts)
3. We've always heard much about Soviet radioactive messes...
Mon Apr 29, 2013, 01:43 PM
Apr 2013

... but little about our own.

Mind you, Soviet methods of accounting for these things may have been sloppier, and they may have been under more pressure to "get the job done" ignoring safety, but both sides in the Cold War had and still have a lot of dirty radioactive secrets.


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