Douglas Mackiernan
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Douglas Seymour Mackiernan (April 25, 1913– April 29, 1950) was the first of over 70 officers of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to be killed in the line of duty. He had gone to China in 1947 to work for the State Department, but soon found his talents employed in espionage.
After the fall of China to the communists in 1949, Mackiernan and a small group of associates escaped to Tibet by horseback and camel, with the goal of establishing a base there and providing arms to resist the Chinese. He was killed while crossing the Chinese frontier into Tibet, possibly mistaken for a communist infiltrator.
Because he was operating under diplomatic cover as a State Department employee, his wife and children were denied a CIA pension, and his mission remains disavowed, but the first star on the CIA's wall of honor was acknowledged to family members to belong to Mackiernan in a secret memorial ceremony at CIA's Langley, Virginia headquarters in the year 2000.
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[edit] Early life and career
Mackiernan was born in Mexico City to an adventurous father who had been a whaler and explorer. As a child the young Mackiernan learned English, Spanish, French, and German. His family later moved to Stoughton, Massachusetts where he worked at his father's filling station business and became an amateur radio operator. Mackiernan spent one year at MIT as a physics major in 1932, then dropped out and became a research assistant at the university. He served as a major in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, first as a cryptanalysis officer in 1942 in Washington, DC, then as a meteorological officer in Alaska and from November, 1943 until the end of the war in Tihwa (Urumchi), the capital of Sinkiang (Xinjiang) Province. In February, 1947, Mackiernan missed the adventure of the war and applied to the State Department for a position as a consular clerk at his former location in China. He was eagerly accepted, and by May he was on his way back. He soon found himself recruited for, and ideally suited to, espionage work.
[edit] CIA adventure
China fell to Mao Zedong's communist revolution during the spring and summer of 1949. On July 29, 1949, Secretary of State Dean Acheson ordered the US consulate at Tihwa, Sinkiang Province, to be closed. Mackiernan was vice consul by this time, and stayed behind to destroy consular records and equipment and continue covert activities. By the end of August civil conditions had seriously deteriorated, and escape by conventional routes was impossible. 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 translator, Frank Bessac, sneaked out of the city with their gear, which included machine guns, radios, gold bullion, navigation equipment, and survival supplies. They met up with three anti-communist White Russian allies, and embarked on a harrowing journey by horseback and camel across 1000 miles of Taklimakan desert, travelling south-southwest by night towards the Himalayas. Mackiernan carefully recorded positions and landmarks, and radioed their progress to Washington. By late November they reached the 10,000 ft "foothills" of the Himalayas, where they spent the winter.
In March the small group struggled over the mountains, and arrived at a Tibetan outpost on April 29, 1950. As they approached with their hands up, gunshots rang out. Mackiernan and two of the Russians were killed, while Bessac and the other Russian, Vassily Zvonzov were captured. The Tibetan guards realized that they had made a tragic mistake when five days later they met a group of couriers from the Dalai Lama with a message of safe conduct for the CIA team. On June 11, 1950, Bessac and Zvonzov finally reached Lhasa just weeks before the beginning of the Korean War. Mackiernan's death (as a State Department official) was subsequently reported by the New York Times on July 29, 1950. His CIA employment has never been publicly acknowledged.
[edit] References
- Thomas Laird, Into Tibet: The CIA's First Atomic Spy and His Secret Expedition to Lhasa, Grove Press 2002 hardcover: ISBN 0-8021-1714-7, 2003 paperback: ISBN 0-8021-3999-X
[edit] External links
- Website for the book Into Tibet 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
