NYU and Columbia University's IDA-Pentagon Connection--Part 5

IDA Jason Division-Developed Automated Battlefield Sensors

IDA’s 1960-1968 Jason Division Weapons Research Work

When Columbia was an institutional member of IDA, and Columbia Trustee Burden and Columbia President Kirk sat on IDA’s Executive Committee approving Vietnam War-related weapons technology development and evaluation projects, IDA’s Advanced Research Project Division (later renamed Research and Engineering Support Division) and IDA’s Jason Division of U.S. university professors also performed weapons research for the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency [ARPA], that was later renamed “DARPA.” As the July 1979 de-classified IDA study recalled:

“ARPA…was formally established by DoD Directive on Feb. 7, 1958. ARPA provided the SecDef with his own operating arm in R&D…IDA entered into a separate DoD contract to support ARPA on March 15, 1958. The IDA professional staff members working with WSEG continued as before, designated as members of the Weapons Systems Evaluation Division of IDA, and a separate Advanced Research Projects Division was organized for ARPA…”

One of weapons research projects that ARPA worked on after “IDA entered into a separate DoD contract to support ARPA” in 1958 was a secret “anticrop warfare research” program that led to the development and spraying of poisonous Agent Orange in Vietnam during the 1960s. As Annie Jacobsen recalled in her 2015 book, The Pentagon’s Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America’s Top Secret Military Research Agency: 

“…The weapon would become known to the world as Agent Orange…Agent Orange was a hideous toxin…William Godel was in charge of running the program for ARPA.

“At Fort Detrick, in Maryland, ARPA ran a toxicology branch where it worked on chemical weapons-related programs…On July 17, 1961, Godel met with the Vietnam Task Force to brief its members on what was then a highly declassified defoliation program, and to discuss the next steps…The classified program would be called `anticrop warfare research.’…The first mission to spray herbicides on the jungles of Vietnam occurred on Aug. 10, 1961…The defoliation tests were closely watched at the Pentagon….On Nov. 30, 1961, President Kennedy approved the chemical defoliation program in Vietnam…Between 2.1 million and 4.8 million Vietnamese were directly exposed to Agent Orange…”

The Pentagon’s Brain book also described how IDA’s Jason Division of U.S. university professors was established and began to do weapons research for ARPA/DARPA around the same time that Columbia University became an institutional member of IDA:

“…Murph Goldberger had been a key player in Project 137 at Fort McNair. At the time he was working as a professor of physics at Princeton University…After Project 137 ended, Goldberger returned to Princeton, where he soon got an idea…Goldberger decided to run the idea by a…physicist Charles H. Townes…Townes had recently taken a leave of absence from his position as professor at Columbia University to serve as vice-president of the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA),…In the early ARPA years, the salaries of ARPA directors and program managers were paid through IDA. Townes thought Goldberger’s idea of a defense consulting group was excellent…The group’s first meeting took place at IDA headquarters in Virginia on Dec. 17, 1959…Three weeks later, on Jan. 1, 1960…the group became an official entity…Over the course of the next 55 years, the Jason group would impact ARPA, and later DARPA, with greater significance than any other scientific advisory group. In April 1960, each member of Jason was granted a clearance of top secret or above…”

Former Columbia U. Professor/IDA VP Charles Townes

The same book recalled some of the weapons research technology development work that was done for ARPA/DARPA by IDA’s Jason division in the 1960s:

“…In the early 1960s, during the Vietnam War, DARPA began developing unmanned aerial drones. It took three decades to arm the first drone, which then appeared on the battlefield in Afghanistan in October 2001. By the time the public knew about drone warfare, U.S. drone technology had advanced by multiple generations…For the second summer study in 1961, the Jason scientists met in Maine, on the Bowdoin College campus…The scientists…considered another highly classified program. This one involved the concept of directed energy…Directed energy weapons were well worth research and developing, they decided, and ARPA moved forward with Project Seesaw—its first directed energy weapons program…

“…In the summer of 1964, ARPA asked the Jasons to conduct a formal study on Vietnam…This was not the first time the Jasons examined what Goldberger called `the Vietnam problem.’…The Jasons wrote a report titled `Working Paper on Internal Warfare.’ It has never been declassified but is referred to in an unclassified report for the Naval Air Development Center as involving a `tactical sensor system program.’ The information in this report—the Jasons’ seminal idea of using `tactical sensors’ on the battlefield in a counter-insurgency war—would soon become central to the war effort…

“The Jason scientists were expanding their work and commitment to the Vietnam War…ARPA doubled the Jasons’ annual budget, from $250,000 to $500,000, roughly $3.7 million in 2015…At least 3 studies the Jasons performed during this time remain classified as of 2015; they are believed to be titled `Working Paper on Internal Warfare, Vietnam,’ `Night Vision for Counter-insurgents,’ and `A Study of Data Related to Viet Cong/North Vietnamese Logistics and Manpower…’…” 

Former Princeton U. Professor/IDA Jason Division Memger Murph Goldberger

The U.S. university professors working as part-time consultants for IDA’s Jason Division also began developing the automated electronic battlefield weapons technology that was first utilized by the U.S. war machine in Indochina in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As The Pentagon’s Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America’s Top Secret Military Research Agency noted:

“The electronic fence idea was born in the summer of 1966…The Defense Department was desperately seeking new ways to win the Vietnam War…The electronic fence had two faces, one public and one classified. The program that the public was told about was a physical fence or barrier that was being constructed by the Pentagon…But the secret fence the Jason scientists were to design required no soldiers to keep guard. Instead, high-technology sensors would be covertly implanted…

“The Jasons produced a classified study called `Air-Supported Infiltration Barrier’…The barrier would be constructed of the most advanced sensors available in the United States…Jason scientist [and Columbia University Professor and then-Director of Columbia’s IBM Watson Laboratory] Richard Garwin…held a seminar on the SADEYE cluster bomb and other munitions that would be most effective when accompanying the sensors…”

Columbia U. IBM Watson Lab Director/Jason Division Member Garwin (on left)

(part 5 of August 2018 article originally posted on ZNet website)