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| In October 1965, CIA had undertaken a clandestine mission to install a spying device to keep tab on the Chinese. |
This feature appeared in Rock and Ice issue 156 (January 2007). Only select features from print issues of Rock and Ice appear online. To enjoy the full array of writing and imagery in Rock and Ice subscribe here.
I stumbled upon the legend of Nanda Devi and Nanda Kot and the lost CIA plutonium on a cold October night in 1987, sitting with friends, swilling cheap malt liquor around a roaring campfire in Yosemite. To my best recollection, Tucker recounted the most outrageous climbing yarn I’d ever heard. Tucker, whose low-slung build lent him an authoritative air, was one of those whose expression becomes more earnest and animated with each drink.
Before falling from buzzed eloquence to drunken rambling, the swaying Tucker cast a spellbinding tale of legendary climbers, CIA spooks, radioactive poison and mountains bigger than we could imagine.
Hunkered around the campfire, I don’t think any of us really believed the CIA recruited climbers as spies or that several pounds of the deadliest substance known to man lay buried at the source of the Ganges River. But the story intrigued me, and nearly 20 years later I began investigating Tucker’s bizarre story, a story whose facts proved to be more outrageous than even the best fiction writer could spin.
DR. STRANGELOVE I PRESUME
From 1965 through 1968, the CIA, with the full cooperation of the Indian Government, trained some of the best Indian and American high-altitude climbers to spy on Communist China. They did so by attempting to deploy two plutonium-powered surveillance devices in the Himalayas.
The plot came on the heels of an October test of Red China’s first nuclear weapon in the remote Xinjiang province in western China, and the chance meeting was between none other than Barry Bishop and General Curtis LeMay. Bishop was an unassuming climbing legend, a summiteer on the first successful American Everest expedition in 1963, and recipient of the National Geographic Hubbard Medal from President John F. Kennedy himself.
LeMay had his own chestful of medals including the Distinguished Service Cross, an award second only to the Medal of Honor. Called “Iron Ass” by his own troops, he was the archetypal Pentagon hawk—a real-life cigar-chewing model for the rabid General Buck Turgidson of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. LeMay is credited with the infamous quote, “They’ve [the North Vietnamese] got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression, or we’re going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.”
The peak ultimately chosen was Nanda Devi—a mountain sacred to Hindus as the abode of their preeminent Goddess. The peak, India’s highest, rose from a pristine bowl of alpine meadow bordered by a jagged rim of summits. If anything on earth was Shangri-la, the Sanctuary—as the enclave was known—was it. In 1965, at the start of the CIA field operation only six climbers from various expeditions had stood on Nanda Devi’s summit at a cost of three lives. Indeed, only as late as the 1930s did humans even penetrate the Sanctuary.
Reflecting the era’s unbridled enthusiasm for atomic power, the transceiver was powered by a System for Nuclear Auxiliary Power (SNAP) turning radioactive heat into electricity. The Nanda Devi SNAP, designated Model “19C,” hid seven plutonium rods totaling 1,900 grams of alloyed plutonium—Pu-238 (half-life of 87 years) and Pu-239 (half-life of 24,400 years). The unit, expected to run the four-part Nanda Devi sensor for two years, was a round microwave oven-sized metal bin with five radiating fins. Towering above was a six-foot long antenna.
On the shoulder of the second peak—the square-topped massif of Nanda Kot—the Indo-American spy team successfully installed an identical eavesdropping device. That device, repeatedly buried in frequent blizzards, was eventually recovered after producing no worthwhile intelligence. A non-nuclear component was never located and subsequently abandoned.
With these certainties in mind, I boarded an Air India 747 in late August 2005. I’d quit my day job a year earlier to pursue the life of an author. The spy story was my inaugural title. Part of telling the tale meant going to India to check things out myself. It was a long and tricky process to get permission for Nanda Kot alone, and a year of hopeful wrangling garnered nothing more than a permit denial for Nanda Devi. The reason given was environmental degradation in the Sanctuary, but in my eyes, it was all because of the lurking SNAP.
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| At 21,200 feet during the 1965 CIA operation on Nanda Kot. Nanda Devi is in the background. |
INTO THE SANCTUARY
Clouds rise from the valley below and pour from the summit ridge above, hemming us in a whiteout. A few hours ago our world was a broad vista of ragged Himalayan ridges and peaks—some exceeding 21,000 feet—marching northward to Tibet. Now, in the decreasing visibility, our only sense of what lies ahead is the encroaching rumble of avalanches. Heavy waves of snow lash us. We move from below an ice cliff into an adjacent cave-like gash in the mountainside—the remnants of a deep crevasse, roofed by a sheet of ice—and pitch our tents.
The four of us—ace climber Jonny Copp, a past Himalayan teammate Chuck Bird, and his girlfriend, fellow climber Sarah Thompson—have spent the last few weeks trekking through a Tolkeinesque landscape of vibrant green foothills, deep river gorges, and ghost-towns deserted following Sino-Indian border clashes of the early 1960s. Now we climb into the abode of the gods, surrounded by ranks of peaks including our objective Nanda Kot and the majestic Nanda Devi.
Sleep comes quickly. But at 11:30 p.m. on September 3, 2005, one month after we left Colorado, Chuck wakes with a start. “Oh God!” he screams. He’d been dreaming something dark and nasty, but I’m just awake and annoyed. I don’t vocalize it, but inside I say to Chuck, “Shut up.”
At this moment, I’m convinced we’re on the threshold of success. In perhaps one long day, we’ll summit the hammer-headed Nanda Kot, which at 22,510 feet is merely one of hundreds of such summits in this great range. Her attraction lies neither in her height nor beauty, but in the fact that somewhere on these icy flanks lies a tangible vestige of the most bizarre spy adventure of the Cold War, a vestige that has brought me halfway around the world and could threaten the lives of millions.
Fighting claustrophobia, Chuck unzips the tent door, a noisy process of fumbling for the zipper, and straining for leverage against the reluctant tent fabric. He debates taking a sleeping pill, then decides against it. I just want him to settle down so I can sleep, not knowing that his midnight fumbling will soon save my life. Jonny snores lightly as Sarah settles back into the prone position. I’m anticipating a long day tomorrow and rest is important. The open tent door bathes me in cold unsettling wisps. I close my eyes, hoping for an unconscious reprieve.
For a brief moment the deadly flow diminishes—like the trough between two big ocean waves. I make an instinctive grab for the ice screw. I vaguely remember fixing the screw into the blue ice face above my side of the tent during the prior afternoon—an eternity ago. It’s a good thing. As my hand latches the frigid metal, a second, stronger wave swells, and I pull myself up with one arm, right hand locked in a death grip on the carabiner clipped to the ice screw. Having something to pull on makes the difference between treading the snow’s surface and being sucked under. My stocking feet gain the top of the moving mass as the tide slows almost to a halt. Then as fast as it all started, it stops. Billions of ice crystals pay obeisance to the laws of physics as they meet, interlock, and come to rest at the angle of repose. As for the others, they’re gone, washed down the chasm towards the black and bottomless pit.
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Takeda Punches up Nanda Kot. Photo: Jonny Copp. |
PATRIOT GAMES
The whole Nanda Devi affair was a fascinating story, one threatening to fade into history as its participants passed away. The CIA’s Himalayan operation comprised eight separate expeditions and must have cost tens of millions of dollars in helicopter support, supplies and logistics alone. The devices ran up a bill of millions. The climbers—paid $1,000 per month (a decent living in those days, but for the climbers, sporadic work at best)—represented a Sixties mountaineering dream team and included Tom Frost, who to this day holds true to his oath of silence, Lute Jerstad, who suffered a heart attack and died in 1998 while trekking in Nepal, Jim McCarthy, who has retired to Jackson, Wyoming, and Dr. Robert Schaller, who is semi-retired.
Today, though “crippled by arthritis” and his sandy hair gone white, Schaller is still the tall, handsome, driven man of his espionage years. Before making his mark on the medical world as a pediatric surgeon, Schaller made history of another sort, if known only by a few people, with what was then the greatest alpine climbing feat accomplished by an American. A year after the device was lost and while helping search for the lost sensor in September 1966, he climbed alone to Nanda Devi’s summit from Camp IV at 23,750 feet. His journal and photographs, a historic record of those exploits, were confiscated by the CIA. Such secrecy not only denied Schaller his place in climbing history, but also did nothing to assuage the concerns of a wife whose husband had mysteriously disappeared for months on end over a four-year period. With three other CIA climbers, Schaller won an intelligence medal from the Agency. It was draped around his neck—then locked away in a vault at CIA headquarters in Langley. Ultimately, he also lost his marriage, alienated his children and now finds himself, “disappointed by a government I don’t trust anymore.”
The cost runs deep for another Nanda Devi survivor, legendary climber, former American Alpine Club president and retired Manhattan trial attorney Jim McCarthy, whose short, stocky build matches a pugnacious verbal style. He said to me after a half-dozen scotches, “Yeah, the device got avalanched and stuck in the glacier and God knows what effects that will have.”
McCarthy blames the radiation for testicular cancer. “In 1971, while climbing on Devil’s Tower,” McCarthy recalls, “I was changing my pants when I noticed one of my testicles is greatly engorged. We drove straight back to New York, found the very best doctor in the Metro area. Two minutes later, I’m in the OR.”
McCarthy recovered, but notes, “I saw the Sherpas fighting over who got to carry [the SNAP],” adding, “They had no idea of what it was. They’d put the thing in the middle of their tent and huddle around it. I guarantee none of them are alive now.”
McCarthy had been vehemently against abandoning the generator on the mountain. On the CIA Nanda Devi expedition of October 1965, of which he was a part, a storm forced the hand of Indian climber Captain M. S. Kohli. The CIA expedition and the SNAP were stalled by deepening snow on the flat shoulder of Camp IV at 23,750 feet. The high camp team consisted of an Indian climber and six Sherpas. As leader of the espionage field effort, Kohli radioed for a general retreat, one that entailed leaving the SNAP at the high camp. Says McCarthy, who was recovering from altitude sickness at basecamp, “When I realize that they’re dumping the fucking generator and going down the mountain, I’m like, ‘What the fuck are you doing? Have them bring it down! Are you crazy?’ I’m yelling at the top of my lungs.” According to McCarthy, the CIA case officer nearly had to pull him off Kohli. “He says to me," McCarthy says, :‘You are creating an international incident!’”
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| Captain M.S. Kohli and Barry Corbett erect the SNAP device on Nanda Kot |
CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER
Plutonium is funny stuff—a metal unlike any you’ve ever seen. Changing the shape of a plutonium mass can lead to an uncontrolled release of energy—the same energy that holds matter together. Say you held a sphere of plutonium-239 the size of a coconut. It would feel warm “like a live rabbit” and chances are, you’d suffer no ill effects. But if you could magically compress the ball at an extremely high speed and pressure, you and your surroundings would vaporize in the sudden flash of intense heat, light and radiation. In rudimentary terms, this is a nuclear weapon.
But the SNAP’s potential is frightening. In 1987, a scrap merchant in Goiania, Brazil stole a cigarette lighter-sized amount of Cesium-137 (1,400 curies in terms of radioactivity) from a therapy machine. The blue powder contaminated 200 people. Four died, including a four-year-old girl who had to be buried in a lead coffin. Pavement and buildings needed to be decontaminated. Contaminated soil had to be carted away. The once vibrant Goiania suffered a 20 percent economic drop. Tourism dropped to zero.
The SNAP–19C retains 23,500 curies—20 times that of Goiania. What would happen if it were discovered by an unsuspecting mountain villager? Most experts agree that it made its way to the bottom of the glacier. Could the plutonium be ground to powder that would contaminate the Ganges? Schaller says that the lost material poses “a miniscule threat,” because the plutonium amount was relatively small and the dilution factor—even if the stuff gets into the Ganges—is so great. Most scientists agree with Schaller, though there are a prominent few who point out that this early in our involvement with the material, we cannot know what constitutes a hazard, or what scenario might unfold. While avoiding hysteria, consider another horrifying potential. Dr. Iggy Litaor of the Tel-Hai Academic College in Tel Aviv, Israel, says, “The real threat of the material lost on Nanda Devi is the dirty bomb. Such a device could yield the entire Lower Manhattan uninhabitable, creating a worse economic disaster than the Great Depression.”
“The CIA can neither confirm nor deny the existence nor non-existence of the records responsive to your request—such information unless it has been officially acknowledged would be classified for reasons of National Security under the Executive Order 12598. The fact of the existence or non-existence of such records would also relate directly to the information concerning intelligence sources and methods.”
The results of those findings led to speculation that the SNAP could have been buried in the glaciers in the mountain or in the debris on the slopes of the mountain. The worst scenario saw the SNAP having fallen into the mountain streams and finally reached the gorge of Rishi Ganga (the river issuing from the Nanda Devi Sanctuary), and, as a result of multiple impacts during the fall the device might have been very badly damaged/disassembled and thus scattered all over, in which case radioactive material would have got released in the environment.
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| An Indian Air Force helicopter removes supplies from the Nanda Devi Sanctuary during an unsuccessful search for the missing SNAP. |
AFTER THE AVALANCHE
By some miracle, Chuck and I collect ourselves in the darkness moments after the avalanche. A few short seconds ago, the roaring tide had us swimming for our lives. Now we stand in waist-deep snow, clad only in our socks and thermal underwear.
As I struggle, I have the vision of being crushed under the debris of a collapsing cave, the solid roof of ice falling with abrupt finality. In that split second I imagine the irresistible tons of ice popping my skull, breaking me like a stick. Worse, the thought crossed like lightning, I’d be trapped, pinned, broken and screaming, my last few seconds, or minutes, or hours on earth, helpless, rendered immobile, with no escape, except the relief of dying. Not even Chuck, who is right next to me could hear my screams. Nor I his.
Our headlamps—critical pieces of survival gear—are buried under the snow. I yell into the darkness at Jonny and Sarah. A shrill and edgy, “Are you guys all right?” flies into the darkness, flat and toneless. There’s no echo and no response. I think to myself, if they aren’t dead yet, then they are dying.
Chuck is tense, but controlled and deliberate. With plenty at hand to manage, he’s detached from the predicament of our teammates, despite his intimate connection with Sarah.
Just then, a scream pierces the darkness. It’s Jonny. For an instant, I shudder, wondering if he’s crushed and momentarily coming out of shock. The tone registers an angry “Fuuuuck!” And for a horrid instant I picture a mess of broken limbs and mangled bodies. After a few moments Jonny yells, “We could use some help down here!” The words are edgy but lucid. They are a few feet from the edge of the pit. Kneeling blind and bootless on the avalanche debris—poised as it is on the angle of repose—there’s nothing we can do. It’s many tense hours later that we find almost all of our gear. Then we four do nothing but wait.
Days later we emerge from our shelter into the blinding sun of a clear day. Scores have perished in the same Himalaya storm and the chop of distant helicopter blades usher the departure of a neighboring climbing team—their leader dead of a stroke.
Jonny and I have a psychological box into which we put our harrowing adventure on Nanda Kot. We’ve chosen our lifestyles, and long ago both accepted such risk as part of climbing. Chuck, and especially Sarah, haven’t the experience or background to shake the ordeal. Thus, three days after emerging from our tomb, Jonny and I attempt to climb Nanda Devi East, while the rest remain in camp.
At almost 24,390 feet, Nanda Devi East is bigger, harder and higher than Nanda Kot, and is a sister summit to Nanda Devi, which lies roughly one mile to its west. It’s never been climbed by Americans and is one of the hardest summits in the Himalaya, having just one route to its summit. Tenzing Norgay, of Everest fame, stated it was the hardest thing he’d ever climbed. Our attempt was the most intense mountain experience I’ve ever had. In four days Jonny and I got within 200 meters (one hour) of the top in an alpine-style effort before a blizzard blew in. We bailed from 23,500 feet with no food and a half can of fuel left. While we didn’t make the summit, we did get a tremendous view into the Sanctuary and a panorama that included the fall line of the SNAP.
We also filled three bottles with samples of silt and water from the stream that issues from the Rishi Ganga as it enters one of the three tributaries of the Ganges. Though Indian government testing of glacial runoff in the late 1970s revealed no evidence of contamination, it is unclear if that testing has been conducted on an ongoing basis.
Back home in Boulder I sent the samples off to a lab for testing. The report came back saying that the alpha, beta and gamma counts were, “above expected levels for natural sediments,” and that “It certainly looks like you have something interesting going on with these samples.”
While these tests are inconclusive, at press time the silt samples are undergoing more detailed analysis. Four decades after the SNAP device was lost, we are no closer to solving the mystery—the one thing that is certain is that the plutonium remains out there, buried in the Sanctuary, grinding inexorably toward whatever fate may bring, a Pandora’s box locked in ice.
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| Thompson, Takeda and Bird descend Nanda Kot after surviving the avalanche. Photo: Jonny Copp |
Pete Takeda lives in Boulder, Colorado. His new book An Eye At The Top Of The World: The Terrifying Legacy of the Cold War’s Most Daring C.I.A. Operation is available through www.petetakeda.com or at your local bookstore.
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