As I thought about what it would take to do the counterintelligence study correctly, it quickly became apparent that I needed to get out of the Pentagon and talk firsthand to the people who were or would be designing, building, testing and operating the Army’s new high-tech weapons system then under development. This meant I had to travel first to Huntsville, Alabama, the headquarters of the Army’s missile defense command.
Then I would go to the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) in Cheyenne Mountain, near Colorado Springs, Colorado. The NORAD part of the trip was key for me to understand how the system was designed to operate in wartime conditions. Finally, I needed to travel to Kwajalein Atoll, the western terminus of the U.S. Pacific Missile Test Range. That was where the Safeguard system was being tested.
These trips were eye-opening. Though my schooling had largely been absent of scientific training, I needed to acquire some knowledge of the inner working of this complex system if I was to understand in even a rudimentary manner the counterespionage and counter-sabotage threats to the system’s deployment and use. By the time I returned to the Pentagon, I had had an amazing technical education in an extremely short period of time. My interviews and conversations in Huntsville with the Army’s Safeguard development personnel were part of this interesting and challenging education.
