Into Tibet: The CIA's First Atomic Spy and His Secret Expedition to Lhasa by Thomas Laird

From the Publisher

For over fifty years the CIA has closely guarded the identity of the first agent killed in the line of duty -- the unnamed First Star on the outfit's Wall of Honor. That agent was Douglas Mackiernan. His unprecedented atomic intelligence operations helped shape both Central Asia and the CIA as we know them today. His work remains so sensitive that the Agency, even now, will neither confirm nor deny his existence. A riveting expose of international intrigue, Into Tibet reveals the extraordinary still-classified missions that sent Mackiernan and his partner, Frank Bessac, into the heart of the Cold War.

Douglas Mackiernan was America's first atomic spy. He ventured into Russian-controlled territory to collect intelligence about uranium mining -- an unsettling sign that Russia was developing an atomic bomb. Soon after, he helped create a system to detect Russia's first atomic tests. Into Tibet brings to life Mackiernan's adventures as he installed cutting-edge radiation detectors near Russia's atomic test site. With the help of his four brothers, who never knew they were facilitating atomic intelligence, he also ran a long-distance radio receiver station in his Massachusetts home to collect this coded data. Simultaneously he began to organize anti-Chinese nomads into proxy U.S. fighting forces in Central Asia. Only after his role as a U.S. spy was blown did he set off for Tibet.

Although the United States had never recognized Tibet's claim to independence, Into Tibet uncovers evidence that in 1950 the CIA and the State Department worked covertly to do just that, by arming Tibet weeks before it was invaded by Communist China. When Mackiernan met Frank Bessac in Central Asia and spoke the code word that identified himself as a fellow CIA agent, the two set off with trusty White Russian companions on a harrowing two-thousand-mile trek on foot and camel. To this day Bessac denies that he was working deep under cover as a CIA contract agent.

Bessac had a subtle understanding of the complicated politics of Central Asia -- one that the American government, consumed in McCarthyera hysteria, tragically did not. Although Mackiernan met a tragic and gruesome end, Bessac went on to meet the Dalai Lama in Lhasa and encouraged the Tibetans to request covert U.S. aid. Only with the publication of Into Tibet can we ask the questions the CIA has hidden for so long. Did bungling at the highest levels of U.S. government cause the death of America's first atomic agent and the Chinese invasion of Tibet?

A gripping narrative of survival, courage, and adventure among the nomads, princes, and warring armies of Central Asia, Into Tibet is a stunning true story, based on previously undisclosed materials discovered after six years of research -- including the Dalai Lama's first-ever interview about these events.

Publishers Weekly

Laird, a journalist for Asiaweek who has lived for many years in Nepal, traces the story of two CIA agents, Douglas Mackiernan and Frank Bessac, sent on an intelligence expedition to Tibet in 1949-1950, at the height of U.S. concern about the Soviet Union's atomic experiments and the spread of communism in China. Mackiernan (who was killed during the mission, the first undercover CIA agent to die in the line of duty) and Bessac, with several other cohorts, trekked through Tibet on foot, gathering atomic intelligence and establishing regional contacts. The mission was part of a U.S. attempt to arm Tibet, and Laird argues that the American presence may have precipitated China's invasion of the country, which the U.S. abruptly abandoned (cutting off covert funding) after establishing diplomatic relations with China in the 1970s. Focusing on the heart-stopping details of the expedition itself, Laird gives the now familiar story of callous CIA manipulation an absorbing twist. The need for lengthy historical context, however, results in a number of digressions on subjects such as the Tibetan earthquake of 1950 that disrupt an already meandering story and, in their brevity, are often simplistic. Further, much of the source material remains classified, forcing Laird to speculate a great deal. This (perhaps unavoidable) approach raises questions of whether Laird has the whole story. Although the adventures make for interesting reading, a lack of critical facts and focus undermine this account. (May) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

KLIATT

In 1950, forces from Communist China poured into Tibet in order to "liberate" it from American and British influence. Since then, that remote land had been a protectorate of the People's Republic and few of today's students realize that it was once an inaccessible and romantic kingdom forbidden to foreigners. The invasion took place as the Cold War was approaching its height and China was in an expansionist phase. Tibet would serve as a buffer state and, being deliberately undeveloped, would be fertile ground to demonstrate the benefits from a progressive socialist state. The US, also operating in a Cold War matrix, determined to head off its adversary, and its CIA felt equal to any subversive task. Unfortunately for its goals, the Agency was still operating in a WW II mode. Placing undercover agents in hostile territory worked well with French and Yugoslav partisans, but not in other situations. The story of an ill-organized expedition, plagued by inter-governmental rivalries and wild-hair individuals, is gripping reading. The ultimate disaster—things turned out very, very badly indeed—makes a grim object lesson for operatives and for policy makers. Laird is well positioned to write a book of this nature. A writer and photographer who lived for three decades in Nepal, he knows well the High Himalayas and its people. More importantly, he has a larger view of Tibetan culture and politics and mores than, apparently, the CIA had. This book is a good insight into the twilight world of espionage as well as a fascinating portrait of a fragile corner of the world at a crucial point in its history. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2002,Grove, 364p. illus. bibliog. index.,

Kirkus Reviews

An initially promising but poorly executed expose of Cold War spookery in the high Himalayas. Asiaweek correspondent Laird turns up an intriguing tale of a secret CIA-sponsored expedition (details of which are still largely classified) into Tibet just before the Chinese invasion of 1950. Neither altruism nor defense of democracy prompted the American mission, which put five spies on the ground at considerable risk to themselves; instead, Laird suggests, the CIA was rushing to locate Asia's uranium reserves and convince their owners to side with America, then enjoying a brief postwar monopoly on the manufacture of nuclear weapons. The CIA's involvement in Tibet was ironic, Laird shows, since the State Department had hitherto evinced little interest in the remote nations of Central Asia and had effectively encouraged one-time ally China to expand beyond its borders and acquire whatever territory it wished. The American spies of 1949-50, Laird writes, had only mixed success, and some of them were killed. The Tibetan guerrillas funded by the CIA after the Chinese invasion fared still worse. Abandoned when the US and China established diplomatic relations in the early 1970s, hundreds of guerrillas died as a result, Laird charges: "collateral damage of American actions, which America now denies ever happened." This story isn't exactly new (Life magazine reported some of it in 1950), but it has long been forgotten. Unfortunately, Laird's narrative is ill-developed, less a cohesive narrative than a movie treatment that jumps from subject to subject in very short chapters. The author relies on hearsay and speculation as much as hard fact ("naturally the agents in the field never viewed their workthis cynically, but those who sent them there may have"), and his prose is awash in ellipses and non sequiturs ("because of a childhood spent in Mexico and Brazil he spoke German and Spanish fluently"). Of some interest to Cold War buffs, though general readers will do better to wait for the History Channel special.

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