Abstract
ABSTRACT Between 1949 and 1953, the CIA’s Munich operations base airdropped 12 agents into Western Ukraine with instructions to gather intelligence and assist the local partisan movement (Project AERODYNAMIC). Yet Soviet security forces captured or killed all but one of the intruders. Based on official records and the personal papers of the CIA officer in charge of the project, this article discusses AERODYNAMIC’s historical background and reviews the agents’ recruitment, training, and deployment. The project failed, the article argues, due to a lack of strategic planning, ill-defined American policy toward the USSR, and the reckless operational culture of the CIA in Germany. In the absence of a meaningful after-action review, few lessons were learned, and the agency continued to conduct flawed covert operations for several years, culminating in the ill-fated Bay of Pigs landing in 1961.
Published Version
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