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)

How Columbia and Barnard Antiwar Students Protested Against Columbia University's IDA-Jason Project Connection In 1972

Civilian Casualties and Columbia University's IDA Jason Project 1960s Work

Thousands of Indochinese civilians may have been killed as a direct result of the weapons technology development war research work that was done by IDA and its Jason Division during the period when Columbia University was an institutional member of IDA. As the book The Air War In Indochina by Cornell University’s Air War Study Group revealed in 1972:

“The figures show that during the intense phase of the North Vietnam bombing, 100,000 to 200,000 tons of munitions per year were dropped. This bombing inflicted 25,000 to 50,000 casualties per year, 80 percent of whom were civilians…

“Indochina…has…become the laboratory for the evolution of the electronic battlefield…

“For the period from 1965 to April 1971, the estimate of civilian casualties in South Vietnam is 1,050,000 including 325,000 deaths…
“…Special electronic techniques for improving nighttime interdiction has been under development by the U.S. Air Force through a project named IGLOO WHITE. Initial operation of some of the components began in December 1967, and since that time a whole family of electronic devices has come into being…Sensors are implanted on the ground or suspended in the foliage by air drop…Aircraft overhead receive electronic messages from them and relay the information to a central computer control station. Strike aircraft are then directed to the designated area.

“…American scientists and engineers—civilians as well as those working for the Department of Defense—have been deeply involved in the development of the electronic battlefield.”

Neither the Columbia University Administration nor the Pentagon has ever released much information on the number of Indochinese civilians who were killed or wounded as a direct result of the IDA and Jason Division weapons research work that Columbia University institutionally-sponsored in the 1960s. But at least 250,000 Indochinese civilians apparently lived near the “Ho Chi Minh Trail” area that the electronic battlefield developed by the Jason Division of Columbia’s IDA initially targeted in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Columbia University's IDA Jason Project 1960s Work: Part 15

Columbia University Watson IBM Labs Director and Columbia Professor Richard Garwin who, as an IDA Jason Division Consultant, helped develop electronic battlefield technology in 1966-1968 period that prolonged Vietnam War is pictured in top photo. 

By 1968, the electronic battlefield technology that Columbia’s IDA Jason Division had developed was being used in South Vietnam in the Battle of Khe Sanh. And, on Sat. Feb. 3, 1968, Columbia University Professor and Director of Columbia’s Watson IBM Labs Richard Garwin “traveled to Vietnam” with Henry Kendall and several other scientists “to check on the operation of the electronic barrier,” according to The Jasons by Ann Finkbeiner. 

Columbia University Watson IBM Labs building of  1950s and 1960s at  612 West 115th Street in Manhattan.

The same book also observed:

“The sensors allowed such accurate detection of the enemy at night, in fog, behind hills, and in the jungle, that attacks on the enemy could be remote—that is, only artillery or air strikes—and would need no soldiers.

“…The electronic barrier turned into the electronic battlefield, the modern method for carrying out nonnuclear warfare, in particular on the urban battlefield…The relay to which the sensor talks is now a UAV, an unmanned aerial vehicle like the Predator or the Global Hawk, used in both Gulf wars and in Afghanistan…The responders are now bombs that are guided by lasers…”

Columbia University's IDA Jason Project 1960s Work: Part 14

A “Status Report on Jason-East Project No. 2” of Columbia’s IDA was then sent to IDA President Taylor, IDA Vice-President Ruina and Harvard University Graduate School of Public Administration Associate Dean Kaysen on July 19, 1967, which reported the following:

“By the end of last summer, a group of Jason-East members had submitted a report to Secretary McNamara concerning certain communication problems in Southeast Asia. You are all familiar enough with the specifics of this problem, so I will leave them out of the present memorandum. The Group consisted of

Robert Duffy, Colonel, USAF (DDR&E)
Giulio Fermi, IDA
Peter Freck, IDA
Waulter Hausz, GE-Temp
A.G. Hill, M.I.T.
Norman Taylor, A.D. Little
George Wheeler, BTL

The report and its recommendations were accepted by the Secretary and by Mr. McNaughton (ISA) and Dr. Foster (DDR&E), accepted with some reservations by NSA, and received most enthusiastically by the Army Security Agency and its commander, Maj. Gen. Denholm, who immediately decided to do the job on behalf of Gen. Westmoreland, whose blessings they quickly received.

“In the manner of things pentagonal, the Air Force felt that it should have been chosen as the operating agency, and the ensuing fuss caused some delays in the project, but not by more than 2-3 months.

“Gen. Denholm managed to have assigned to ASA a number of Navy P2V’s, of which 5 have been completely refurbished, including the addition of two jet engines, and fitted with the proper electronic gear.

“These five aircraft were refitted by the Convair Division of General Dynamics at San Diego and for the past month have been undergoing operational field testing in the environs of Fort Huachuca. The performance of General Dynamics in this aircraft modification was an outstanding piece of work.

“Even more outstanding was organization within ASA, mostly under Lt. Col. Patrick Ulmen, in the organization of the entire project, in selling it to the Army, the Joint Chiefs, and COMUS MCVEE, and in the operational tests in and near Fort Huachuca, which were extremely worthy.

“Colonel Duffy, Dr. Wheeler and the writer observed some of these tests and the final special equipment early this month.

“It is now thought likely that the equipment and, more importantly, the men to go with it, will be in a full state of readiness in Southeast Asia in early July.

“Occasionally things happen.”

Columbia University's IDA Jason Project 1960s Work: Part 12

VO-67 was employed during the "Igloo White" program to drop sensors during the Vietnam War.

At the same time that Hill’s Jason-East Project No. 2 group of Columbia’s IDA was working with the U.S. Army Electronic Command at Fort Monmouth to develop the electronic battlefield weapons technology for use in Indochina, other members of IDA’s Jason Division were working with the Pentagon’s Defense Communications Planning Group to develop the other components required for Defense Secretary McNamara’s proposed electronic barrier project in Indochina. As The Jasons by Ann Finkbeiner recalled:

“The task force was called the Defense Communications Planning Group, or DCPG…Its adjunct Scientific Advisory Committee included…a reasonable fraction of Jasons: Richard Garwin, Murph Goldberger, Val Fitch, Gordon MacDonald, Henry Kendall, Charles Townes, Bill Nierenberg, Hal Lewis, and probably others; Kistiakowsky was the committee’s chairman. It reported directly to McNamara.”

One of the members of this Scientific Advisory Committee to the Defense Communications Planning Group in 1966-67 was Columbia University Professor and the Director of Columbia University’s Watson IBM Lab, Richard Garwin. Another member of this Scientific Advisory Committee was former Columbia University Professor of Physics Charles Townes.

For secrecy reasons, the “Defense Communications Planning Group’ that Columbia Professor Garwin worked with changed its name on June 13, 1967 to “Illinois City.” For secrecy reasons, it again changed its name in July 1967 to “Dye Marker.” Then, in September 1967, the Pentagon and IDA Jason Division-conceived air-supported sensor barrier project’s code-name was again changed; this time to “Muscle Shoals.” By June 1968, the electronic barrier project code-name had been changed yet another time, to “IGLOO WHITE.”

Columbia University's IDA Jason Project 1960s Work: Part 11

U.S. Army Electronics Command/s Fort Monmouth, NJ facility (where secret 1966 Jason Summer Study-developed weapons equipment was delivered in October 1966.)

By October 14, 1966, the initial equipment that the Jason East Project No. 2 group of Columbia’s IDA had developed, for the Pentagon’s electronic battlefield in Indochina, had been delivered to the U.S. Army Electronics Command at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey. The Jersey firm that produced and shipped the equipment that the Jason Division members had designed was Squires-Sanders, Inc.. MIT Professor Hill then wrote an Oct. 20, 1966 letter to Laurance Rockefeller (who also sat on the IDA board of trustees between Columbia University Trustee Burden and Columbia University President Grayson Kirk in the 1960s) which stated:

“Dear Laurance:
“This summer I was associated with a special IDA project operating in the Cambridge area and concerned with certain Southeast Asia problems. My particular piece of it seems to have been accepted, and some of the requisite hardware has already been fabricated.”
Coincidentally, an associate of former IDA Trustee Laurance Rockefeller, Randall P. Marston, sat on the board of directors of the Squires Sanders, Inc. firm that was awarded the initial $43,000 war contract to produce the initial hardware for the electronic battlefield project, that Jason East Project No. 2 of Columbia’s IDA was designing under MIT Professor Hill’s leadership.

In an Oct. 20, 1966 letter to Charles Fontaine, former IDA Vice-President and Director of Research Hill also reported that his Jason East Project No. 2 group had demonstrated the possibility of “a new type of military electronics operation.” Besides Hill, the Jason East Project No. 2 group then included Princeton University Professor Richard Leibler, George Wheeler and M. Paul Wilson of Bell Telephone Labs, Leonard Sheingold of Sylvania, Burton Bruno and Walter Hausz of General Electric and Bruno Augenstein of IDA.

Columbia University's IDA Jason Project 1960s Work: Part 10

Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron plane that IDA-Jason university consultants helped develop for use in Vietnam War in 1960s.

After receiving and looking over the IDA weapons research report that resulted from the Jason Division’s summer 1966 session of developing new weapons technology for use in Indochina, U.S. Secretary of Defense McNamara “helicoptered in to meet with Jason and the Cambridge Group for the last time” on Sept. 7, 1966 “at Zacharias’ summer home on Cape Cod,” according to The Jasons by Ann Finkbeiner. At this Sept. 7, 1966 meeting between these IDA-linked U.S. university professors, “Deitchman and Kistiakowsky explained the plan to McNamara” and “maps of Southeast Asia were spread out in the living room,” according to the same book.

The Vietnam On Trial: Westmoreland vs. CBS book also revealed what else happened in September 1966:

“The Jasons…pushed for a follow-on contract…They recommended that the Pentagon follow up the `Summer Study’ with a full-time task force…They...noted that IDA, by virtue of its…location and experience, seemed a suitable place to manage this effort.

“McNamara bit. On September 15[1966] he appointed Air Force Lieutenant Alfred Starbird as head of Joint Task Force 728, which would develop the barrier…”

By September 1966, members of the “Jason East Project No. 2” group also had begun to work even more closely with the Pentagon’s Electronic Warfare Task Group to immediately start developing the electronic battlefield for use in Indochina. Some of this electronic battlefield development work was apparently done at the U.S. Air Force’s Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts. An Aug. 30, 1966 letter from MIT Professor and former IDA Vice-President and Director for Research Hill to the Commander of the Electronic Systems Division at Hanscom Air Force Base, U.S. Air Force Major General J.W. O.Neill, for example, states:

“Dear Jack,
“In retrospect, I think we had a very successful summer and although we worked hard, I think the group of us who worked at Building 1521 really enjoyed the task and the surroundings.”

MIT Professor Hill was apparently the chairman of a special group that Secretary of Defense McNamara had set up, as an additional part of the “Jason-East” group, to work, especially, with the Chief of the Pentagon’s Electronic Warfare Branch, Morten Roney.

A Sept. 20, 1966 memorandum from the Pentagon’s Tactical Control & Surveillance Systems Assistant-Director John Klotz to the Pentagon’s Director of Research and Engineering, Dr. Foster, on the subject “Meeting Between East Jason Group and Electronic Warfare Task Group” also noted:

“I arranged for a session on 13 September 1966 between the Jason East Group (Hill) and the Electronic Warfare Task Group (Fubini). Rear Admiral F.A. Bardshar of the JCS also attended the meeting.

“Dr. Hill briefed the Electronic Warfare Task Group on the activities under review by his Group and answered questions pertaining to use and implementation of equipment.”

Columbia University's IDA Jason Project 1960s Work: Part 9

Sensor weapon used in Vietnam that Jason Project's university professors developed for Pentagon.

A follow-up study to its June 1966 Wellesley, Massachusetts gathering was also held by Jason East members on the East Coast in July 1966. As an MIT professor named Albert Hill wrote in a July 11, 1966 letter to Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton:

“I should like to report that our special project got underway as scheduled on Wednesday, July 6, and I believe I can say we are beginning to come to grip with the problems.”
According to an Aug. 1, 1966 list of “Jason East Participants,” Columbia Professor Leon Lederman also attended the July-August “special project” follow-up session on the East Coast in 1966, as did Columbia University Professor and Columbia University IBM Watson Laboratory Director Richard Garwin and Columbia University Professor I.I. Rabi. Other U.S. scientists, U.S. academics or Pentagon officials whose names appeared on the Aug. 1, 1966 list of “Jason East Participants” were the following folks:

James Armstrong of IDA’s Weapons Systems Evaluation Division;
Delbert Arnold of IDA’s Weapons Systems Evaluation Division;
Bruno Augenstein of IDA’s Weapons Systems Evaluation Divison;
Hendrik Bode, a Bell Telephone Labs Vice-President;
Albert Bottoms of IDA’s Weapons Systems Evaluation Division;
Burton Brown of General Electric Company;
Chester Cooper of IDA;
E.E. David Jr. of Bell Telephone Labs;
S.J. Deitchman of IDA;
Col. Robert Duffy of the U.S. Secretary of Defense’s Office;
Giulio Fermi of IDA’s Weapons Systems Evaluation Division;
Peter Freck of IDA’s Weapons Systems Evaluation Division;
Charles Fritz of IDA’s Weapons Systems Evaluation Division;
Eugene Fubini, an IBM Vice-President;
Murry Gell-Mann of California Institute of Technology;
Marvin Goldberger of Princeton University;
Donald Glaser of the University of California-Berkeley’s Virus Lab;
Daniel Gould of MIT;
Walter Hausz of General Electric;
Albert Hill of MIT;
David Katcher of IDA;
William Kaufmann of MIT;
Carl Kaysen of Harvard University;
Henry Kendall of MIT;
George Kistiakowsky of Harvard University;
Robert Kulinyi of Fort Monmouth;
Charles Lauritsen of California Institute of Technology;
Thomas Lauritsen of California Institute of Technology;
John Lawson of IDA’s Weapons Systems Evaluation Division;
Richard Leibler of IDA;
Harold Lewis of the University of California-Santa Barbara;
Franklin Lindsay of Itek;
Franklin Long, a Cornell University Vice-President;
Gordon MacDonald of UCLA;
William Matthews of MIT;
Peter Metz of MIT;
John Moriarty of IDA;
Walter Morrow of MIT’s Lincoln Labs;
Joseph Navarro of IDA;
William Nierenberg of the University of California-San Diego/La Jolla;
Alan Peterson of the Stanford Research Institute;
Emanuel R. Piore of IBM;
John Pontaro of IDA’s Weapons Systems Evaluation Division;
Edward Purcell of Harvard University;
Ellis Rabben of IDA’s Weapons Systems Evaluation Division;
George Rothjens Jr. of IDA’s Weapons Systems Evaluation Division;
Jack Ruina of IDA;
Col. Sanders of the Office of the Secretary of Defense and IDA;
Matthew Sands of Stanford University;
Oliver Selfridge of MIT’s Lincoln Labs’
Leonard Sheingold of the Sylvania Corporation;
Eugene Skolinikoff of MIT;
Norman Taylor of Arthur Little;
Clark Thurston of MIT;
Leonard Weinstein of IDA’s Weapons Systems Evaluation Group’
George Wheeler of Bell Telephone Labs;
Jerome Wiesner, the Dean of Science of MIT;
E. B. Wilson of Harvard University;
Maurice Wilson of Bell Telephone Labs;
Jerold Zaharias of MIT;
Frederick Zachariasen of the California Institute of Technology; and
George Zweig of the California Institute of Techonology.

According to The Jasons by Ann Finkbeiner, the Jason East group apparently completed their report during July and early August 1966 that designed “specific types of mines and bombs” and “suggested the aircraft appropriate for dropping, orbiting and striking” and again met at Dana Hall Girls School in Wellesley, Massachusetts on Aug. 15, 1966. Then, on Aug. 30, 1966, “Nierenberg, Deitchman, Kistiakowsky, Ruina, Jerome Wiesner and Jerrold Zacharias met with Robert McNamara and presented their report,” according to the same book.

In their 1987 book Vietnam On Trial: Westmoreland vs. CBS, Bob Brewin and Sydney Shaw also described what happened after the July and August 1966 summer meetings of Columbia’s IDA Jason Division:

“the IDA’s Jason division…on August 30, 1966 sent McNamara the results of their `Summer Study,’ which determined that `In the realities of Vietnam…the barrier must be imposed and maintained mainly by air.’
“This report, based on the research of M.Goldberger and W. Nierenberg, put a twentieth-century high-tech spin on the age-old concept of a wall…

“…As the Jasons planned it, the air-supported…barrier would consist of two parts, an anti-foot-traffic barrier and an anti-vehicular barrier, each backed by its own system of sensors and weapons…
“The Jasons…proposed `seeding’ a variety of unique munitions along the [Ho Chih Minh] Trail, lying in wait for an unsuspecting foe. These included `button bomblets,’ aspirin-sized explosives designed more to activiate the sensors when stepped on than to cause casualties. The bomblet was backed up by…irregular-shaped antipersonnel mines…

“Finally, the Jasons proposed that vehicular traffic detected by the sensors should be attacked with SADEYE-BCU26B cluster bombs…”

Columbia University's IDA Jason Project 1960s Work: Part 7

2006 book about Columbia's IDA Jason Project

During the June 13 to June 25, 1966 Jason Summer Study of Columbia’s IDA, the U.S. university scientists more concretely developed the concept of the electronic battlefield. As The Jasons by Ann Finkbeiner noted in 2006:

“The scientists sat around a table on the grounds, `one fine afternoon,’ said Seymour Deitchman, an IDA engineer with experience in Vietnam who was working with Jason; they talked about sensors and aircraft and electronics and `sketched out the general outlines of an electronic barrier system.’…

“…What is clear is that the…Jason study on the sensor barrier became the prototype for the modern electronic battlefield and arguably changed the way war is waged…”
The 1985 book Heavy Losses by James Coates and Michael Kilian also observed:

“…The group became the driving force involved with a number of controversial research projects during the Vietnam War…

“…The Jasons…advocated…using some fiendishly deadly new antipersonnel weapons…The Jasons dreamed up an arsenal of fantastic new killer weapons every bit as horrible as anything ever created by the Pentagon research and engineering section.

“…At that meeting and in successive conferences, the Jasons developed a plan for sowing sensors and deadly `bomblets’ across a strip of Vietnam eighty miles long and fifteen miles wide. A similar strip would be laid out along the border between Vietnam and Laos.”