How the CIA captured a A-12 Blackbird

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How the CIA captured an A-12 Blackbird

Friday, January 26, 2007
By Jonathan Karp, The Wall Street Journal

The Central Intelligence Agency is closing in on a high-value
landscaping target: a 1960s spy plane called the A-12 Blackbird.

The CIA plans to mount the once-secret, 102-foot-long supersonic plane
on a pole at its Langley , Va. , headquarters in time for the agency's
60th anniversary in September. The jet chosen for the mission is a
particularly well-preserved specimen that has been at the Minnesota Air
Guard Museum , next to the Minneapolis- St. Paul airport, since 1991.

Even though a moving crew began the 10-day process of dismantling the
spy plane this week, volunteers who painstakingly restored it at their
own expense are continuing to oppose what they consider a hijacking.
Their pleas for mercy, backed by the governor and entire Minnesota
congressional delegation, have fallen on deaf ears.

"Possession is nine-tenths of the law, so until they drag it away with
me screaming, we have a chance," said James Goodall, an aviation buff
and retired Minnesota National Guardsman who salvaged the plane and led
efforts to preserve it.

The A-12 Blackbird, retired in 1968, was the forerunner to the
better-known SR-71 Blackbird. The stealthy A-12 is one of the fastest
aircraft ever made, capable of flying at more than three times the speed
of sound and at the edge of space. The plane originated as part of a CIA
program code-named "Oxcart." Of the 15 A-12s built by Lockheed Martin
Corp.'s famed Skunk Works advanced projects unit, nine remain. One is on
display at an Air Force base, and the others are at museums around the
country.

Mr. Goodall and his supporters don't question the right of the Air
Force, which controls these decommissioned warplanes, to reclaim an A-12
and lend it to the CIA as an oversize lawn ornament inside the agency
compound. Instead, their two-month dogfight has been aimed at getting
the Air Force to justify removing the Minnesota museum's crown jewel
while three A-12s sit in Alabama, including one that has been neglected
since suffering hurricane damage. Another is parked on the USS Intrepid
aircraft carrier, a floating Manhattan museum that will be closed until
late next year because of renovation work across the Hudson River .

The CIA, whose headquarters isn't open to the public, had no role in
selecting which plane it would receive. The Air Force says the Minnesota
Air National Guard doesn't have a historical connection to the A-12, and
though the Minnesotans have taken good care of their A-12, the
volunteer-run museum doesn't meet the Air Force's current legal
requirements for its museums. For one thing, it doesn't have a salaried
director. After reviewing all nine A-12s, "The only one that didn't have
a legitimate rationale for its location was Minnesota 's, " said Terry
Aitken, senior curator at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force.

That logic outrages Mr. Goodall, 61 years old, who spent 20 years in the
Minnesota Air National Guard and his entire adult life smitten with the
A-12. He says he became an "airplane nut" at age 5 when he saw a
squadron of B-36 bombers flying over San Francisco Bay . He first
glimpsed a Blackbird as an 18-year-old Air Force recruit at Edwards Air
Force Base in California . It was March 10, 1964, and "it affected me
forever," he says.

Over the years, Mr. Goodall became an expert, writing five books on the
supersonic plane. He built a rapport with Ben Rich, who developed the
Blackbird for Lockheed and eventually ran Skunk Works. Mr. Goodall says
he got a tip from Mr. Rich in 1989 that the Blackbird program would be
canceled. "If anyone can scrounge one, you can," he says the late Mr.
Rich told him.

At the time, Mr. Goodall was the staff historian for the 133rd Airlift
Wing of the Minnesota Air National Guard. He hatched a scheme to rescue
an A-12 from the scrapheap in Palmdale , Calif. In 1990, Minnesota's
congressional delegation backed the Air Guard museum's request, citing
the fact that companies in Minnesota supplied key Blackbird components
and that some Blackbird pilots hailed from the state.

The Air Force was happy to unload the A-12 to avoid a costly process of
destroying the asbestos-packed plane. Once the Air Force museum agreed
to the loan, Mr. Goodall arranged for two massive cargo planes from the
New York Air National Guard to haul the Blackbird in pieces from
California . He persuaded a local hotel to put up the flight and moving
crews free of charge for 10 days. "The Air Force estimated the move
would cost $500,000. I got it done for $27,000. That makes me the
deal-of-the- century guy," Mr. Goodall says.

Back in St. Paul , he marshaled volunteers and corporate donations for
restoration work. He then spent years -- and thousands of his own
dollars, he says -- scrounging for cockpit instruments, at one point
swapping a prized ejection seat from his private collection to get a
supersonic speedometer known as a Mach meter.

All was well until last November, when the museum got a letter from Mr.
Aitken, the Air Force museum curator, invoking a provision of the loan
agreement that allows the Air Force to reclaim its plane by giving 60
days' notice. The only reason Mr. Aitken cited for the decision was the
need to "satisfy current exhibit requirements. "

Distressed local Air Guard commanders appealed to save the A-12, calling
it a "labor of love." Mr. Aitken replied that the plane didn't conform
to the air park's primary mission, which is to commemorate the state
guard wing's history, and said it would be better suited at the CIA. Mr.
Goodall, who is now retired in Seattle but returns to the Twin Cities
occasionally to visit his beloved Blackbird, energized the opposition
movement by urging guardsmen and the museum's civilian nonprofit
foundation to enlist Minnesota and national politicians. He also
mobilized support from former A-12 pilots.

Mr. Goodall's plea: If the Air Force wants a plane to commemorate the
CIA's pioneering past, it should take one that actually flew in combat.
Minnesota 's plane never saw action. The A-12 in Birmingham , Ala. , on the
other hand, photographed North Vietnamese surface-to-air missile sites
in 1967, later sustained flak damage, and flew over North Korea on a spy
mission in 1968 after the North Koreans captured the USS Pueblo,
claiming the Navy ship had strayed into its territorial waters.

Some Minnesotans are upset that the Air Force gave short notice and
didn't offer to discuss its A-12 plans. "This is a museum, a community,
not a war game," said Mark Ness, vice chairman of the museum foundation
and a retired Air National Guard brigadier general. Mr. Goodall knew the
odds were long. The Air Force has plucked other planes despite local
resistance, including a B-36 bomber taken from Fort Worth , Texas , and
the celebrated World War II B-17, the Memphis Belle, from its namesake
city in Tennessee .

Even as another joint appeal from Minnesota 's congressional delegation
was delivered to the Air Force secretary Friday, the Air Force museum
told guardsmen in Minneapolis- St. Paul to prepare for the movers.

The Minnesota museum's supporters have retained a former state supreme
court justice as their lawyer, but as the moving crew continued to
unbolt the A-12's wings Thursday, they had yet to decide whether to seek
a court injunction against the move. Mr. Goodall, who refers to the
plane as "my A-12," has made his own unilateral sortie. He has removed
some cockpit instruments he had donated. "No one will see them anyway if
the plane is on a pole," he says. "I'll be damned if the CIA ... will
get their hands on these."