The acronym MASINT refers to “Measurement and Signature Intelligence.”

Whenever you read a thermometer, you are learning some MASINT. The degree of temperature is the “measurement.” The coldness or heat causing that degree (the air temperature) is the “signature.” Winter air leaves a different signature than does summer air. MASINT is that simple.

Or it is that simple until you need MASINT from somewhere thousands of miles away without any gadget there to measure the signature. Now imagine needing that information before we had the Internet. Or spy satellites. Or even much television.

Yes, the era before television. No, it wasn’t the Dark Ages. Okay, maybe it was. But we did have the Atomic Bomb. In fact, back in 1947, the only country with the A-Bomb was the United States. But because the Cold War was on, most people expected that Joseph Stalin, that conniving Communist dictator, would make sure his Soviet Union got one too. After all, “Uncle Joe” had plenty of spies. We, however, had very few spies. Did you know the CIA was not even created until 1947? We had very few spies.

However, we did have a powerful institution called the Atomic Energy Commission, chaired by a guy named Lewis Strauss. Towards a plethora of scientific professionals, Strauss posed this poignant predicament: “When Uncle Joe gets the Bomb, how would we know?”

Well, they answered him, we’ll know when Uncle Joe blows up Cleveland.

Strauss disliked that answer. What if the first target of Uncle Joe isn’t Cleveland? What if it’s Hackensack, New Jersey? Or Deadhorse, Alaska? Or East Berlin, Pennsylvania? Wouldn’t it be nice to know if the people there should leave those places?

So Strauss challenged the scientists to devise a way to detect what was, at the time, the most secretive of Soviet secrets: how to detect a Soviet atomic test. It was a challenge so daunting that several of America’s best physicists warned him that our sensors weren’t good enough. Worse, they said, our sensors would never be good enough. The feat was impossible. Forget it.

So, how much do we need Cleveland?

Well, Strauss was just a typical guy. So typical, he began his career as a shoe salesman and became a millionaire. So typical, he was smart enough to know when he needed help. So he went to his friend James Forrestal, who just happened to be the Secretary of the Navy and, later, Secretary of Defense. Strauss told Forrestal that throughout the entire U.S. Government, nobody — nobody — was monitoring the Soviet Union for atomic tests.

Forrestal didn’t believe him, declaring, “[Expletive]! We must be doing it!”

Please don’t blame Forrestal for his ignorance. Even today, upon a multitude of momentous issues, what he expressed is a commonplace misconception. “We must be doing it!” Oh really? Why is that? Is it because the United States Government, convoluted since its conception, is known for its consistent competence? Its excellence? Its effectiveness? Its effervescent efficiency? Conscientious in its commitment to common sense? A bastion of buoyant brilliance, bereft of bombastic bureaucratic bumbling?

Forrestal made a few phone calls and, soon enough, discovered that he was wrong and Strauss right. Then Forrestal learned something else: Strauss told him that unless the Pentagon did something really smart, like help the Atomic Energy Commission, the Commission would endeavor to fix the MASINT problem all by itself. Well, Strauss continued, that project could get very expensive, so expensive that the Commission would have to ask Congress for more money. And to justify that request, the Commission would have to inform every Member of Congress that the Pentagon had left the entire country dangerously vulnerable to a massive sneak attack. Just like at Pearl Harbor, only a few years before.

“Forrestal saw the point immediately.”

With that little mission accomplished, Strauss’ next task was to find a way to violate the laws of physics.

Well, Strauss was just a typical guy. So typical, he had never gone to college, an absence which probably made him smarter. Regardless, not every American physicist had dismissed his challenge. There were a few mad scientists (“mad” meaning mavericks) who were intrigued by the idea of creating special sensors that could detect trace amounts of the radiation an atomic blast would create. The sensors could be carried on airplanes flying near, but not inside, Soviet airspace. It was a great idea and it merited a great response.

“This program is nonsense.”

So proclaimed a famous physicist, asserting that too little radiation would remain for any sensor to detect it, certainly not thousands of miles from the blast. But because the maverick scientists were mad, they persevered. Imagine being in their place — tackling the most urgent, most daunting spy problem of the day, attempting something which people smarter than you have declared to be nonsense, even physically impossible. No pressure.

Well, the sensors did get built, and the planes were equipped, and the MASINT flights were flown. And almost immediately the sensors detected — radiation. Yikes!

Relax — it was just a few volcanoes. Yes, it’s true. Even small amounts of volcanic activity create trace amounts of radiation. Who knew? Now we do.

More MASINT flights were flown. Then, on September 3, 1949, the sensors detected more radiation than the designated alert level. Four times more. It was evidence, very disturbing evidence, that pointed to one inescapable conclusion.

Their sensors were crap.

Either that, or Uncle Joe just detonated an Atomic Bomb.

Critics of the MASINT technology were asked to assess the data. Albeit, they were the critics, but they were still some of America’s best scientists. Almost unanimously they agreed that, yes, an atomic test had occurred in the Soviet Union. But they weren’t sure when. Their best guess was sometime over the previous two weeks. Then the MASINT creators stood up, those maverick scientists mad with enthusiasm, and declared that the exact date was August 29. At exactly midnight, Greenwich Mean Time.

They were off by just an hour.

That wasn’t all. Further study of the MASINT data revealed that the Soviet A-Bomb was nearly identical to the American A-Bomb that, four years before during World War II, had been dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. Here was definitive proof that America’s super-secret Manhattan Project had been infiltrated by Communist spies. Drat. But now we knew for sure.

The good news, what little there was, is that American ingenuity had invented a scientific way to pierce the Stalinist secrecy of the Soviet Union — without any insider secret agent. In the decades since then, so many additional forms of MASINT were invented that American bureaucrats have happily bestowed the highest distinction they can: an acronym.

Hence, MASINT.

Cynics contend that Lewis Strauss, the former shoe-salesman without a college degree, just got lucky. “So the guy ordered a MASINT solution and some scientists got him one. Big deal.” Well, it was a big deal. Albeit, the mad scientists never did violate the laws of physics. But neither did they know, exactly, what those laws were. People who dismissed Strauss as naïve failed to realize that a former shoe salesman never leaves that job naïve. Brilliance is no guarantee against being wrong. Some eminent nuclear physicists saw impossibility and quit without trying, whereas Strauss saw the unknown and took the risk.

Maybe Strauss wasn’t just a typical guy. Maybe he was just a typical American.

Lucky Cleveland.

Respectfully (because all my readers deserve respect),

Reginald Dipwipple

Secret Agent Extraordinaire

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