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 8

U. of C.-Santa Barbara Site of Secret 1966 Follow-up IDA-Jason Weapons Research Session of  university professors

The month after its June 1966 Wellesley, Massachusetts summer study, the Jason Division of Columbia’s IDA held a follow-up weapons development research study session in Santa Barbara, California, related to helping the Pentagon wage its war against the Vietnamese people, in July and August of 1966. During this July and August “Jason Division West” summer study meeting, Columbia University Professor Henry Foley apparently resided in Room 8229 of a college dormitory while attending the Jason Division’s summer session; and Columbia University Professor and Director of Columbia’s Nevis Labs Leon Lederman apparently was assigned Room 8323 for his dormitory room.

The following other U.S. academics or IDA staff people also apparently attended the July and August 1966 Jason meeting in Santa Barbara: Joel Bengston; James Bjorken; Richard Blankenbecler; David Caldwell; Kenneth Case; Nicholas Christofiles; Earl Crisler; Roy Cook; Paul Cusick Jr.; Roger Dashen; Seymour Deitchman; Ray Dow; Freeman Dyson; Inise Eichorst; Val Fitch; Kathryn Fitch; Murray Gell-Mann; Mervin Goldberger; Roland Herbert; David Katcher; Henry Kendall; T. Lauritsen; Robert Levin; Harold Lewis; Nicholas Laske; Harris Mayer; Gordon MacDonald; William Nierenberg; Scott Payne; Allen Peterson; Albert Petschof; Malvin Ruderman; Matthew Sands; John Simerson; Samuel Treiman; Kenneth Watson; Steven Weinberg; Ronald Weiner; Herbert York; Fredrick Zachariasen; and George Zweig.

As The Jasons by Ann Finkbeiner revealed, “they met off the Pacific coast, at the University of Santa Barbara, on the upper floor of a dormitory.” The Jasons also revealed that during the summer of 1966, “Val Fitch and Leon Lederman designed what they called pencil mines: little projectiles that looked like ballpoint pens…”

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.”

Columbia University's IDA Jason Project 1960s Work: Part 6

1966 Jason Secret Summer Study Scheduled Speaker McGeorge Bundy with LBJ

The 1966 Jason East Summer Study in Wellesley, Massachusetts began at 10:30 a.m. on Monday, June 13, 1966 with a talk by Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton on the “Framework” for the two-week summer meeting. After a 1 p.m. lunch break, C. Thomsson of RAND, G. Parker of RAND, G. Tanham of RAND and George Carver of the CIA led a discussion on “General Background, South and North Vietnam,” between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. Following refreshments at 5 p.m. and dinner at 6:30 p.m., an evening session was held in which the three RAND representatives and the CIA representative continued the afternoon session’s discussion of “General Background, South and North Vietnam.”

The following morning at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, June 14, 1966, the Director of the Pentagon’s Research and Development, John Foster, and the Pentagon’s Assistant Director of Tactical Warfare Programs, Leonard Sullivan, led a discussion on “Research & Development,” before breaking for lunch at 12:30 p.m. The next day, at 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, June 15, 1966, the Assistant to the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Lt. General A.J. Goodpaster, led a discussion with the U.S. university professors who were members of IDA’s Jason Division on “Military Operations,” before again breaking for lunch at 12:30 p.m. The discussion of “Military Operations” continued after lunch at 2 p.m. But the afternoon session’s discussion on June 15, 1966 was led by the Assistant Commander for the U.S. Marine Corps, Lt. General Richard Mangrum.

The next day began with a talk, at 9 a.m. on Thursday, June 16, 1966, by General Harold K. Johnson, the U.S. Army’s Chief of Staff, who also spoke on the topic of “Military Operations.” After a 12:30 lunch break, the discussion on “Military Operations” that General Johnson was leading resumed at 2 p.m. in the afternoon. Following a 6:30 pm dinner break, the U.S. university professors attending the Jason Division weapons research summer study at Wellesley were addressed at 8 p.m. by the U.S. Department of State’s Deputy Assistant Secretary and Vietnam Coordinating Commission Chairman Leonard Unger on the topic “Political Framework.”

The following morning, at 9 a.m. on Friday, June 17, 1966, Colonel Cutler of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) led a discussion on “North Vietnam and Related Subjects,” until the lunch break. When the Jason Division professors reconvened at 2 p.m., the discussion about “North Vietnam and Related Subjects” was continued, although the afternoon discussion was now led by either George Carver of the CIA or Peer de Silva of the CIA. On Saturday, June 18, 1966 at 9 a.m., the Assistant Administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development [A.I.D.], Rutherford Ponts, also led a discussion on “Pacification.”

There was no formal schedule of lectures during the second week of the 1966 Jason Summer Study meeting at Wellesley, Massachusetts. But at 2 p.m. on Monday, June 20, 1966, a general who was the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force led a discussion on “Military Operations;” and at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, June 21, 1966, the Vice-Chair of U.S. Naval Operations, Admiral Horacio Rivero also spoke on “Military Operations” when the U.S. professors who were members of the Jason Division reconvened. In addition, during the second week of the 1966 Wellesley Jason Division summer study of Columbia’s IDA, Johnson Administration national security affairs adviser McGeorge Bundy, CIA official Komer and IDA President Maxwell Taylor were all scheduled to speak to the U.S. university professors at evening sessions.

Columbia University's IDA Jason Project 1960s Work: Part 5

Dana Hall School dorm `Top Secret' 1966 meeting site of  IDA-Jason Project Weapons Research Consultants 

The U.S. university professors who were “Jason-East Participants” were sent a memorandum on Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] stationery from D.H. Gould of M.I.T. on June 3, 1966, on the subject “June Meetings” which stated:

“The two-week session will run from Monday, 13 June through Saturday, 25 June, at Dana Hall.

“Dana Hall is a girls’ school located in Wellesley, Massachusetts. We have obtained exclusive use of Johnston Hall, a quadrangle of new, air-conditioned dormitories, as well as the adjacent Library building. We will assign each of the local participants a room in the dormitories for working space. The Library building will be used for briefings, meetings, group working space, and will house the administrative staff. The meeting spaces are all air-conditioned.

“We plan to serve breakfast and lunch to the participants in a nearby building, Monday through Saturday.

“Enclosed are directions and a map which will help you find Dana Hall if you are driving.

“We have settled on a consulting fee of $150 [equivalent to $1,383 in 2017 dollars] a day for those participants who are able to accept a fee. Please let me know if this is appropriate in your case and I will make the necessary arrangements.

P.S. Dr. Zacharias enthusiastically recommends Malcolm Browne’s book, “The New Face of War”. 

Prior to arriving at the Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Massachusetts for the June 1966 Jason Division summer study of Columbia's IDA, the U.S. university professors were also issued a document, titled "Institute for Defense Analyses, Project Jason East 1966: Standard Practices and Procedures for Security", which stated:

"The 1966 Jason East Study is located at Dana Hall School, Wellesley, Massachusetts...Jason East Project members and IDA employees have been granted Top Secret security clearances...Guards will be on duty at the open entrance to the project building on a 24 hour per day, 7 days per week basis...As a General Statement, the importance of complete control of all classified material cannot be overemphasized..."