GETTING THE BIG PICTURE FOR THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100150017-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 29, 2012
• Sequence Number: 17
• Publication Date: November 28, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

AT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/08/29: CIA-RDP9
N
L.:FEARED
O C
Jack Anderson
THE WASHINGTON POST
28 NOVEMBER 1982
0-00965R000100150017-0
i
.Getting the Big Picture for the CIA
,
In the secret world of the CIA and other in-
telligence agencies, star performers can't get the
public acclaim that's heaped on heroes in other
lines of work. About the best they can hope for
is recognition by their professional colleagues?
and competitors.
Sometimes, though, the passage of time
makes it possible to tell the exploits of these
unsung undercover heroes. That's the case with
Arthur Lundahl, the founder, innovator and for
many years general factotum of the CIA's Na-
tional Photo Interpretation Center.
Lundahl, now retired at 67, was one of the
key professionals responsible for the CIA's
stunning intelligence success in the Cuban mis-
sile crisis 20 years ago, as well as other agency
coups that still can't be made public.
Lundahl was trained as a photo interpreter,
or PI, as they refer to themselves, in the Navy
during World War IL His wartime job was to
pore over aerial photos to discern bombing tar-
gets and the results of the air raids. The Navy
kept him on after the war to organize a photo-
interpretation center.
In 1953, the CIA knocked on his door and
asked him to set up a similar center for them. In
an interview with my associate, Dale Van Atta,
Lundahl recalled telling the CIA recruiters, "I
don't know anything about you guys. If you're
going to parachute me into Salerno or somevihere,
forget it. I'm a scientist."
But Lundahl accepted the challenge and set
to work for the spy agency, though officially
still working for the Navy.
From a 25-man staff housed in "sort of a
large broom closet," Lundahl's operation soon
grew to 150 persons in a suite of offices near
downtown Washington. Eventually, it was to
. reach more than 1,000, with an entire building
at a naval facility.
"I bought the first computer the CIA ever
had," Lundahl recalled?adding that it had to
come from Sweden. In 1954, the high-flying U2
planes changed the course of photo interpreta-
tion, to say nothing of the knowledge gained on
the Soviet Union. ?
President Eisenhower "loved reconnais-
sance," Lundahl recalled, and was particularly
fascinated with the CIA's huge photo enlarge-
ments?"as big as your couch, 40 by 60 inches
tin which] you could see the guys walking
around down there and all the small details."
The U2 operation established a new era of
spying. It also required imagination, ingenuity and
a lot of hard work by the PIs, as they squinted at
the shapes and shadows on the photo blowups,
trying to figure out which ones were important
After Francis Gary Powers' U2 was shot
down over the Soviet Union in 1960, the Na-
tional Security Council ordered that a central-
ized photo interpretation center be set up for
use by all the intelligence agencies. After the
usual bureaucratic bickering, the CIA got the
job, with Lundahl as boss.
Lundahl considers the Cuban missile crisis
the apex of the center's work, establishing its
importance once and for all. When he and his
PIs first reported what the Russians were doing
in Cuba to the CIA director, Lundahl was told
to set up a briefing for President Kennedy. He
took his photos to the White House.
"I had to interpret them for him," Lundahl
said. "It's always necessary, because the layman
isn't' used to looking at things in the vertical.
When you look down on a map, that's quite
' different from looking at things horizontally."
After studying the photos of missiles lying on
the ground, Kennedy asked Lundahl, "Are you
sure about this?" Lundahl assured him he was as
sure as a PI could be It was only later that Lun-
dahl learned, to his shock, that the president
hadn't been able to spot the missiles in the photos;
he was relying totally on Lundahl's judgment
"Kennedy had a little problem understand-
ing the difference between occupied and unoc-
cupied positions," Lundahl recalled. "In missil-
ery, you can survey a position, see how it's
equipped logistically and see what's nearby and
no missile is there. But when the whistle blows,
they can wheel it in ... ready to go."
Some of the photos obtained by low-flying air-
craft were startling in their detail?even capturing
open-topped Cuban military latrines in use.
"I couldn't resist," Lundahl recalls. "I
showed them to Kennedy and talked to him
about occupied and unoccupied positions." The
president got such a kick out of one that he
asked for his own enlargement of the photo,
which he would show to visiting dignitaries.
01962, United Feature Syndicate
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/08/29: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100150017-0