Douglas Mackiernan

Douglas Mackiernan

Douglas Seymour Mackiernan (April 25, 1913–April 29, 1950) was the first officer of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to be killed in the line of duty. He worked as a cryptographer for the United States Air Force (USAF) and was then posted to China, as an Air Force Meteorologist during World War II. By 1947, he had quit the Air Force and was employed as a covert intelligence officer by the CIA. As a cover for that work he was assigned the position of Vice-Consul for the US State Department at the consulate in Ürümqi (Tihwa), in Sinkiang in the North West corner of China—modern Xinjiang. There his scientific talents (he dropped out of MIT after his freshman year) were employed in espionage. Until 2002, the CIA successfully hid the fact that Mackiernan was America's first atomic spy; Mackiernan's collection of atomic intelligence about the USSR's first atomic bomb (tested just across the border at the Semipalatinsk Test Site, Kazakhstan) was first revealed by the journalist Thomas Laird, but only confirmed by the CIA in 2008.

In the fall of 1949, Mackiernan led a party of five (including the two men who would survive the trip: Vasili Zvansov and Frank Bessac) out of Ürümqi. They first spent time with nomadic Kazakhs and then traveled on to Tibet, by horseback and camel, en route to India. Mackiernan was shot dead by Tibetan border guards while crossing the Chinese frontier into Tibet; the US Government failed to request permission, in a timely fashion, from the Tibetan Government for the Mackiernan party to enter Tibet. The Tibetan guards had standing orders, in the tense spring of 1950, to shoot all foreigners who attempted to enter Tibet. Mackiernan and his party were dressed as Kazakhs; the Kazakhs and Tibetans were traditional enemies who raided each other across the border.

Because he was the first CIA officer operating under diplomatic cover as a State Department employee to be killed, the CIA had not yet established procedures about pensions; ultimately his wife and children were denied a CIA pension. In 1950, Peggy Mackiernan was awarded a small pension by the State Department, much smaller than her pension would have been if she had received the CIA pension that was due to her. It was only in 2000 that the first star on the CIA's Wall of Honor was acknowledged to belong to Mackiernan in a secret memorial ceremony with Mackiernan's wife and family present at the CIA's Langley, Virginia, headquarters. When Mackiernan's atomic intelligence work was revealed by a journalist in 2002, it was disputed by CIA employees; however, in 2006, his name was listed in the CIA's Book of Honor and in 2008 his employment by the CIA and his work in atomic intelligence was officially and publicly acknowledged by CIA Director Michael Hayden.