RAT Underground Newspaper's May 1968 Cover Cartoon Revisited:

What Happened On Columbia University's Campus 50 Years Ago In 1968: A 2017 Retrospective Documentary

1968 Columbia Student Occupation and Columbia Students' Afro-American Society Leader Bill Sales: A 1995 Interview By Meg Starr

May 1968  issue of  RAT underground newspaper's front page 

In its August/September issue of 1995, the anti-imperialist Love & Rage newspaper published the following interview with former Columbia Students' Afro-American Society [SAS] Leader Bill Sales by long-time anti-imperialist and anti-racist prisoner solidarity activist Meg Starr. 

During the 1960s Bill Sales was a radical student activist. His experiences show how the Black student movement was shaped by the overall Black liberation movement, and how Black students in turn helped shape the white student movement.

It is interesting to compare Bill’s version of the early stages of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and the Columbia Strike (an important occupation of buildings at New York City’s Columbia University by Black and white students in 1968) with more mainstream and white-centered accounts of the same period. His stories also bring to life the incredible radical diversity and power of the Black Liberation movement. Readers interested in learning more should read Bill’s latest book, From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity (South End Press, Boston, 1994).

U of Penn and the NAACP

Meg Star [MS]: How did you become an activist as a student?


Bill Sales: “I was involved with the student chapter of the NAACP at the University of Pennsylvania in 1962. I had first come in contact with the movement on that campus through some people who were members of RAM. [The Revolutionary Action movement was a semi-clandestine organization that, beginning in 1963, attempted to combine mass direct action with the tactics of self-defense to push the movement towards revolutionary politics.] Two members in particular were friends of mine: Max Stanford [Muhamed Ahmed] and Stanley Davis. I knew Max from high school, and Stanley was a student at Penn before we became active. We all ran track together, believe it or not.”

MS: In 1962 the Penn Chapter of the NAACP invited Malcolm X to speak on campus, and they picketed Democratic Party Headquarters in Philadelphia to support Robert Williams. Williams had been the president of the NAACP in Monroe County, NC until 1959, when he called for armed defense in the face of growing KKK violence. During the next several years James Farmer, the Rev. Leon Sullivan, and many other Civil Rights leaders also spoke on campus.

Sales: “Then I went to the march on Washington and was very impressed by all the goings on. I wanted to come back and assume the leadership of the NAACP on campus; I wasn’t satisfied with its level of activism.”

MS: In the meantime, during the summer of ‘63, CORE [The Congress of Racial Equality was a direct-action-oriented civil-rights group that emphasized community based actions in Northern cities.] and the NAACP were confronting de facto segregation of construction sites in Philadelphia. Bill’s two radical friends were arrested after being beaten by the police at one site. U of Penn was undergoing major renovation, so the students confronted the university’s own hiring practices.

Sales:  “Now all during the four years at Penn I was being exposed to different ideological currents, both in the Civil Rights Movement and in what came to be the New Left. I didn’t have the slightest idea that that was what it was at the time. In my senior year, protesting segregation, I came in close contact with CORE and the NAACP. I can put it this way: I developed a greater appreciation for CORE and an utter disdain for the NAACP.”

Black Students Organize

MS: When Bill graduated from Penn he went to Columbia University to do graduate work. He arrived in the fall of 1964, the fall after African-American students organized on campus.

Sales:  “A year after I left Penn, Bob Brand, a white student from the NAACP, got in touch with me. He asked my permission to convert that chapter into an SDS chapter because at that point the only people left were white students who were very much interested in the anti-war situation. Many of those guys who became important in SDS got their first exposure in civil rights activity.”

MS: Bill arrived at Columbia in 1964, the same semester that the Students' Afro-American Society was founded. In the mid-’60s campuses that for centuries had been lily-white were opening the doors to Black students for the first time. Columbia, Harvard and Yale were a little ahead of the majority of campuses.

Sales:  “A whole lot of debate was going on about identity, about who we were as Black students, and what was our responsibility to the movement.”

MS: The numbers of Black students were increasing every semester and the class base of the students accepted by the college was becoming more working class, which affected the level of militancy.

Sales:  “There was a basis for effective group action. People sensed that potential, and also, no Black person at this time could get away without defining their lives at least in part in terms of the struggle that was going on in the larger society.”

MS:  While Bill studied Swahili and met African leaders in the internationalist community around Columbia, he also reunited with Max Stanford.

Sales:  “Max had been working with Malcolm in the OAAU period [the Organization of Afro-American Unity] and I ran into him shortly after Malcolm was assassinated. Max helped me get oriented to the scene in NY.”

“Gym” Crow & Early Alliances

MS:  In ‘68 the off-campus and on-campus movements were to come together. Columbia University had admitted Black students while continuing to be a smug and racist institution, completely out of touch with the neighboring Harlem community. The university occupies a small area of land, one side of which is a cliff overlooking the public Morningside Park, which is used primarily by the Harlem community. Columbia worked out an arrangement through its shady Board of Trustees’ ruling-class connections to lease public land for the site of a new gym. Originally the gym was intended to be in Morningside Park, and to be completely closed to community residents. When the community objected to that Columbia started construction of two gyms: a large one for Columbia students and a smaller one for the community residents. Protesting the “Jim Crow Gym” brought together many different insurgent communities.

Already alliances between SDS and the African American students organization had developed through two experiences. By 1967 the university had allowed the student athletes to be developed into a right-wing firing squad that attacked SDS demonstrations.

Sales:  “So one day Black students went out there. We had our own beef with these cats because they were racists. So we joined in to help the SDS guys because those people just didn’t know how to fight. Not that they weren’t game, they just didn’t know what to do in that kind of situation. So we went out and knocked heads with these jocks.”

MS:  CORE was trying to organize a union among the mostly African-American and Latino workers on campus. Black students and some of SDS became involved.

Sales:  “Ted Gold, one of the activists that got blown up in the townhouse [a member of Weatherman who was killed during an explosion at a safe house in NY on March 6, 1970], was very active in that. We all knew Gold long before we knew Rudd and those cats. The hell with them! They were off on some trip, but we knew the folks that were down. They were down long before it was fashionable to be down.

“One of the things that really got to me about Rudd was how you write a book confessing all the things you did were wrong. That’s bullshit! It wasn’t wrong just because you lost and it didn’t work. There’s a difference between winning and losing and being wrong.”

MS:  Alliances off-campus were also very important to the Black students. In ‘67 there was a Black Power Conference in Maryland that had a special meeting for student activists.

Sales:  “There were no more than 10 or 15 people in the place, but the following spring we were all involved in building takeovers on our different campuses. Herman Ferguson [an important Black activist and political prisoner, Ferguson was involved both in the Republic of New Afrika and the OAAU] was there that day; he was already on the lam.”

MS:  Bill became involved in an underground student group called “cadre.” The members were at different campuses. They took karate, studied, and made contact with various groups in Harlem.

MS: Why were you clandestine?

Sales: “This was an era when people got shot. H. Rap Brown was already underground. Some of the people we worked with were underground. It wasn’t as if we were planning to blow things up. But we felt that what we were doing was objectively revolutionary. And you just didn’t run around in a public organization. We assigned ourselves public organizations on campus to be in.”

The Columbia Strike

MS:  In April and May of 1968 Columbia University exploded into the famous strike and blockade. During those months over 1,000 students occupied four buildings on campus, fought the police, and held a dean hostage (briefly).

The role of the Black students in these events has been somewhat eclipsed in popular accounts. After describing the alliances on campus and off-campus that had been developed over the previous years, Bill described the day the decision was made to occupy the first building.

Sales:  “1968 in some ways appeared to be spontaneous. On the day the takeover occurred none of us had planned a takeover.”

MS:  Bill and his friends went down to an SDS demonstration at the sundial [a central location on the main part of the Columbia campus] to fight the jocks and to support the new president of the Afro-American Students Organization who was speaking.

Sales:  “When I got there I swear there were 5,000 people. It was a total shocker. I expected 200 people or so—the usual demonstration. The jocks were completely neutralized. The demonstration started by trying to take some demands into the president of Columbia University, but he closed his office building. The Black students wanted to storm the building, but Rudd said no. Someone in Progressive Labor said: ‘Let’s charge the gym site.’ So we all ran down.”

MS:  Community activists and campus activists had recently been arrested demonstrating at the site.

Sales:  “We ran down 1,000 strong and all hell broke loose. It’s the first and only time I ever got into actual combat with the police. We should have all been dead but there was a sergeant who pulled his forces back. At that time I was trying to break this cop’s thumb because I said “If he gets his gun out I’m a dead person.”

“I had only jumped him because one of his associates had started hitting one of our guys and then one of CADRE punched him out. This guy was facing me so I grabbed his wrist and twisted him around. I didn’t want to fight this cat and he didn’t want to fight me. I said I can take this guy; he’s scared of me. He’ll shoot me out of fear if he gets his gun out. People don’t realize how things escalate. Lethal confrontations that nobody means to happen—people were all fighting and this sergeant comes down and tells his men to back off and leave us alone. He recognized that it was Harlem and if they grabbed a bunch of Black students all hell would break loose.”

MS:  Bill stressed how many different people had their own organizations then and were prepared for confrontation. The Black women on campus, repulsed by the sexism of the African-American students group, had their own organization with their own community contacts.

Sales:  “They didn’t want to get everything through the guys. That meant that independently they had come to the same decisions we had come to, and they had a structure for functioning. When the shit hit the fan they weren’t tailing behind the men.”

MS:  After the confrontation at the gym site SDS and the Black students occupied the first building. While SDS leaders remained ambiguous about the decisions to occupy buildings for several days, the Black Students were firm from the beginning and influenced the actions of the rest of the campus.

The Movement Today [in 1995]?

When asked about the Black movement today [in 1995] Bill said:

Sales: “There is no Black movement today. There are a number of different people who are struggling as organizations or individuals, but a movement would imply a consensus on some very basic demands; a clear understanding of who the enemy is and some notion of what the future would look like. We don’t have that yet. I hope we’re building to it...

MS: Is there anything you’d like to say about white solidarity?

Sales: “I think there are some obvious errors that white leftists have made that they don’t need to make again! The arrogance and paternalism in relationship to the Black movement—to assume that you know what’s right for everyone because you have a revolutionary analysis of society, etc., etc. To see a certain kind of division of labor—you provide the intellectual muscle and the troops come from various Third World communities—that’s disastrous.

“A second thing that we really want is to build up a left inside of white working-class communities. We need to develop another pole in the communities that have been conceded to the fascists. That has been very difficult to do and very dangerous. That’s why it’s not done much! It’s actually easier for a white person to work in communities of color. Once they know you’re for real, people aren’t hostile to you, whereas in the white communities you can get murdered!

“A third point is not to get manipulated by feelings of guilt. There are a whole lot of opportunists in the Black and Latino communities who’ll try to manipulate you because you are white. You have to stand up for what you believe in.

“And then of course it’s important to study hard, be humble, and really listen. I know that as a 52-year-old one of the really frustrating things is trying to pass on your knowledge to the generation coming behind, because they think they know more than you already. But without an open mind you can screw up and repeat past `mistakes.’”

(Love&Rage newspaper, August/September 1995 issue)

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 13

Sensor used during Vietnam War whose antenna would pick up movements of targeted Vietnamese insurgents that U.S. aircraft attacked, which IDA-Jason consultants/university professors helped develop in late 1960s.(from Collection of Curator Branch Naval History and Heriatge Command).

In early March 1967, I accidentally discovered that Columbia University was an institutional member of the Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA], that Columbia University President Grayson Kirk was a member of both the IDA board of trustees and the IDA executive committee and that Columbia University professors Lederman, Foley and Koopman were members of IDA’s Jason Division of U.S. university professors who engaged in secret weapons technology research for the war in Vietnam. In late March or early April 1967, the Columbia-Barnard chapter of Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] then first formally demanded that the Columbia University Administration resign its institutional membership in IDA.

But on April 7, 1967, Brigadier General Deputy Commander Wesley Franklin of the Department of the Army’s U.S. Army Security Agency wrote a letter to the head of the Jason Project No. 2 group, MIT Professor Hill, which stated:

“Dear Dr. Hill,
“As you are aware, the work initiated on the basis of recommendations from your study group of the Jason-East program is fast culminating in an operational system. General Dynamics is now in the systems check out phase of CRAZY CAT fabrication.

“I invite you to visit the General Dynamics plant in San Diego to be updated on our progress in implementing your recommended program…

“We would also like you to review our systems test program and to visit Fort Huachuca during the systems operational test phase, which is scheduled 1 May through 9 June.”

MIT Professor Hill then wrote a letter on April 13, 1967 to General Maxwell Taylor (a former president of the Upper West Side's Lincoln Center and a former U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam), who was IDA’s president at the time of the 1968 Columbia Student Revolt, which stated:

“Dear Max:

“…Last summer you were kind enough to express some interest in my part of Jason-East, and I thought you would like to know that the special aircraft for this exercise are even now being completed in San Diego.

“Our last conversations I believe concerned getting support from your member universities in finding good people and sending them to you…”

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 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..."