Douglas Mackiernan
Douglas Seymour Mackiernan | |
---|---|
Born | Spy and Diplomat at the Central Intelligence Agency | April 25, 1913
Douglas Seymour Mackiernan (April 25, 1913 – April 29, 1950) was the first officer of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to be killed in the line of duty.[1]
Early life and career
Mackiernan was born in Mexico City, Mexico, to an adventurous father who had been a whaler and explorer. As a child, the young Mackiernan learned English, Spanish, French, and German. He was the oldest of five brothers: Duncan, Angus, Malcolm, and Stuart. His family later moved to Stoughton, Massachusetts, where he worked at his father's filling station business, and he and his brothers became amateur radio operators. MacKiernan was of Irish descent.[2][3]
Mackiernan spent one year at
He worked as a
CIA career
In the CIA, his scientific background (he had dropped out of MIT after his freshman year[7]) were employed in espionage and other intelligence of the Soviet atomic bomb. Until 2002, the CIA had classified information on Mackiernan collecting atomic intelligence about the Soviet Union's first atomic bomb (tested just across the border at the Semipalatinsk Test Site, in Kazakhstan). Mackiernan activities were first revealed by Thomas Laird,[8] and confirmed by the CIA in 2008.[9]
In the fall of 1949, Mackiernan led a party of five (including the two men who would survive the trip, Vasili Zvansov and
Because he was the first CIA officer operating under diplomatic cover as a State Department employee to be killed, the CIA had not yet established procedures about pensions. Ultimately his wife and children were denied a CIA pension. In 1950, Peggy Mackiernan was awarded a small pension by the State Department, which was much smaller than her pension would have been if she had received the CIA pension that was due to her. It was only in 2000 that the first star on the CIA's Wall of Honor would be acknowledged to belong to Mackiernan in a secret memorial ceremony. Mackiernan's wife and family were present at the CIA's Langley, Virginia, headquarters.
Final CIA mission
On September 2, 1945, the Japanese surrendered after they had inflicted great hardship during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The armies of Chiang Kai-shek's Republic of China were defeated by those of Mao Zedong's Chinese Communist Party during the spring and the summer of 1949. On July 29, Secretary of State Dean Acheson ordered the US consulate at Ürümqi, Second East Turkestan Republic or Xinjiang Province, Republic of China, to be closed as the Communist Chinese were expanding. Mackiernan was ordered to stay behind, officially to destroy consular records and equipment and covertly to continue atomic intelligence activities.
On August 10, 1949, Mackiernan sent a classified coded message to Acheson that acknowledged that he was operating the long-range atomic explosion detection equipment.[10] By mid-September, Chiang's forces had switched sides without a fight, and Communist troops were due to invade Ürümqi at any point. Also, the Soviets had just completed their first atomic test in nearby Kazakhstan, on August 29, 1949. Mackiernan's work was now finished. Though it was still possible for Mackiernan to have flown out of Ürümqi on a regularly-scheduled flight, Mackiernan and the CIA chose a different path: through Tibet to India.
Mackiernan may have feared that he would be arrested if he had tried to travel through Communist China, as were other US consuls during that period. By then, Mackiernan's work as an espionage agent was known to the communists. Whatever his motivation, on September 25, 1949, Mackiernan sent his last telegram, stating that provincial officials had accepted Chinese communist authority, and the communist army was about to enter the city.
Two days later, Mackiernan and a Fulbright scholar, Frank Bessac, drove out of the main gates of Ürümqi with their gear, which included machine guns, grenades, radios, gold bullion, navigation equipment, and survival supplies. The guards checked Mackiernan's passport and let him through. CIA employees of the period have described Bessac as a CIA contract agent [11].(Bessac denied the label, and, other than hearsay, no evidence exists to substantiate Bessac was a contract agent. Later, Bessac pondered if he would have joined the CIA, he could have gotten anti-aircraft guns and mines for the Tibetan defense of the impending Chinese invasion).
Mackiernan and Bessac met up with three anti-communist
After a month with Osman Bator, the Mackiernan party embarked on a difficult journey by horseback and camel across 1,000 miles of
In March, the small group struggled over the mountains and then trekked across the vast uninhabited
The Tibetan guards realized that they had made a mistake only five days later when they met a group of couriers from the Dalai Lama with a message of safe conduct for the group. The American government had delayed sending its request for permission for the Mackiernan party for so long that it was impossible for the Tibetan government to act in time. On June 11, 1950, Bessac and Zvansov finally reached Lhasa, just weeks before the beginning of the Korean War. According to Heinrich Harrer, who later befriended Bessac in Lhasa, the Tibetan soldiers who attacked Mackiernan's caravan had hoped to plunder their provisions but were later punished for their callousness.[12] This was also mentioned in Life Magazine, 1950.[13]
Mackiernan's death, as a State Department official, was subsequently reported by
References
- ISBN 978-0-231-13924-3.
- ^ McDermott, Peter (February 7, 2017). "Putting self above national heroes". The Irish Echo. Retrieved May 11, 2023.
- ^ Clancy, CJ (February 7, 2022). "Douglas Mackiernan: The first CIA officer killed on duty". Irish Central. Retrieved May 11, 2023.
- ^ "They Fired Three Shots". The Washington Post. 1997-09-07. Archived from the original on 2020-07-13.
- ^ "Measuring Change at the CIA".
- ^ http://images.library.wisc.edu/FRUS/EFacs/1947v07/reference/frus.frus1947v07.i0008.pdf p. 566-567.
- ^ "The First Atomic Spy". Archived from the original on 2011-06-08. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
- ^ a b "Into Tibet - the CIA's first atomic spy and his secret expedition to Lhasa by Thomas Laird". Archived from the original on 2008-07-04. Retrieved 2008-10-04.
- ^ a b "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-07-08. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ regarding this note to Acheson see National Archives RG 59, 125.937D/8-1049 as cited on pg 306 of Into Tibet
- ^ Regarding Bessac's work as a CIA contract agent, see pg 244 of Into Tibet
- ^ Harrer, Heinrich (1953). Seven Years in Tibet. Putnam.
- ^ Life Magazine, November, 1950
- ^ a b "Amnesia to Anamnesis — Central Intelligence Agency". Archived from the original on September 19, 2008.
- Ted Gup, "The Book of Honor: The Secret Lives and Deaths of CIA Operatives" Anchor Books, 2001 hardcover: ISBN 978-0-385-49541-7.
- Thomas Laird, Into Tibet: The CIA's First Atomic Spy and His Secret Expedition to Lhasa, Grove Press 2002 hardcover: ISBN 0-8021-3999-X.
- Frank B. Bessac; Joan Orielle Bessac Steelquist; Susanne L. Bessac, "Death on the Chang Tang; Tibet, 1950: The Education of an Anthropologist", University of Montana Printing & Graphic Services 2006 Softcover: 0-9773418-2-8 (ISBN 9780977341825).
- Heinrich Harrer, "Seven Years in Tibet", E P Dutton, 1954 hardcover: ASIN: B0006ATJRY.
- James A. Millward, "Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang", Columbia University Press, 2007, hardcover: ISBN 978-0-231-13924-3.
- Frank B. Bessac as told to James Burke "These Tibetans Killed an American and Get the Last for It: This was the Perilous Trek to Safety" Life Magazine, November, 1950.
- Linda Benson and Ingvar Svanberg, "The Kazakhs of China: Essays on an Ethnic Minority", "Osman Batur: The Kazakh's Golden Legend", Upsala University Press, 1988.
External links
- Charles Kraus, “To Die On the Steppe: Sino-Soviet-American Relations and the Cold War in Chinese Central Asia, 1944-1952,” Cold War History 14, no. 3 (August 2014): 293-313, doi: 10.1080/14682745.2013.871262. Archived here [1]
- Website for the book Into Tibet Archived 2020-03-21 at the Wayback Machine with sample chapter
- "The First Atomic Spy" from MIT's Technology Review, January, 2001
- "Star Agents" by Ted Gup, from The Washington Post, September 7, 1997
- Miscellaneous collected information on Mackiernan