Myron S. Malkin

Myron S. Malkin (1924 to 1994) was an American physicist and administrator who directed the Space Shuttle program at NASA headquarters from 1973 to 1980, after posts at Yale University, General Electric, NUS Corporation and the Department of Defense.¹

Education and military service

Born in Youngstown, Ohio, Malkin enlisted in the United States Marine Corps during World War II and landed with the 5th Marine Division at Iwo Jima. He began attending Yale College while in the service, graduated with honors in physics in 1948 as a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and then received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in nuclear physics from Yale.¹

Yale, General Electric and NUS Corporation

Malkin was a member of the physics faculty at Yale from 1952 to 1961. In 1961 he joined the General Electric Company, where until 1969 he worked on missile nose cones and re-entry vehicles for strategic ballistic missiles and served as general manager for the U.S. Air Force proposed Manned Orbiting Laboratory, a space station program that was canceled before it began.¹ From 1969 to 1972 he was president of NUS Corporation, a Rockville, Maryland company engaged in nuclear power plant engineering.¹

Defense Department, 1972 to 1973

The obituary states that in 1972 Malkin was named the first Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Technical Evaluation, a job he held until he went to NASA.¹ A letter of July 26, 1972, from Albert C. Hall to Richard Helms, Director of Central Intelligence, states that Hall had appointed "my Deputy, Dr. M. S. Malkin, to represent ASD (I)" on an ad hoc panel to study SIGINT issues before the September EXCOM meeting, with Dale Hamilton as alternate.²

The Final Report of the COINS Review Group, dated February 1, 1973, lists "OASD(I), Chairman Dr. Myron S. Malkin Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Technical Evaluation)" as head of the group's working group; the April 18, 1973 report of the COINS and IRAC working group carries the same listing.³ A Central Intelligence Agency memorandum of February 6, 1973 on a meeting with the COINS project manager refers to "the conclusions of the Malkin group as approved at its 26 January meeting."⁴ An undated National Security Council Intelligence Committee listing of task groups for working group case studies names "Dr. Myron Malkin, OASD(I)" as chairman of the cruise missile study.⁵

NASA Space Shuttle program, 1973 to 1980

The NASA history office lists "Myron (Mike) Malkin" as "the Headquarters Shuttle Program Director from 1973 to 1980."⁶ The obituary states that from 1973 to 1980 he led the effort to bring together the components that became the Space Shuttle, and that he pushed to have the orbiter, external fuel tank and twin solid-fueled booster rockets built on time and integrated as a system.¹ The obituary quotes Jerry Grey of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics: "He really put the pieces together." It describes Malkin as "an efficient and sometimes cantankerous manager."¹ A schedule of a nine-week CIA Senior Seminar, forwarded on August 4, 1978 to Loch Johnson after an Office of Training briefing, lists a session on "The Space Shuttle Program" with "Dr. Myron S. Malkin Space Shuttle Program Director, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)."⁷ Under the author name "Malkin, M. S.," the NASA Technical Reports Server holds papers he wrote on the program: "Space Shuttle - The new baseline" (1974 reprint), "The Space Shuttle - Key considerations" (1975), "Space Shuttle 1976 into mainstream development - Program commitments on schedule to insure careful progress" (1976), "Space Shuttle - Now and later" (1979), "The Space Shuttle" (1979 reprint) and "Planning Space Shuttle's maiden voyage" (1979, with R. F. Freitag). Their author affiliations read NASA Office of Manned Space Flight, NASA Office of Space Flight and NASA Headquarters.⁸

Later career

The obituary states that Malkin left NASA before the first shuttle flight in April 1981, and that he was in the control room as an agency consultant during that flight.¹ It then names two later posts: vice president for research and development at Fairchild Industries, and the consulting firm Malkin Associates, Inc.¹

NUSAC board, 1979 to 1980

The Winter 1979 to 1980 issue of the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management Journal reports the election of Brian J. L. Berry to the board of NUSAC, Incorporated of McLean, Virginia, a nuclear safeguards consultancy. The item names George R. Wackenhut as chairman and states that "Besides Dr. Lumb, the other members are Dr. Myron S. Malkin, Director of NASA's Space Shuttle Program, and Robert E. Miller, Executive Vice President of Resources Science Corporation." The item also names Ralph F. Lumb as president.⁹ The same journal's Spring 1979 issue carries a Coral Gables, Florida dispatch of December 28 stating that Wackenhut Corporation had purchased the assets of NUSAC, Inc. for an undisclosed sum, and that Lumb would remain president.¹⁰

NUSAC was established in 1968 as the Nuclear Surveillance and Auditing Corporation, 7777 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, Virginia, and was renamed NUSAC, Inc. by stockholder vote.¹¹ A funeral-home obituary states that Lumb became president of NUSAC in 1971.¹² The Journal lists NUS Corporation separately from NUSAC in contributor affiliations in the same volumes (for example David G. Ward, "Consulting Engineer, NUS Corporation," in 1979), and the records found do not state a corporate relationship between the two companies.⁹

Name in the Cabazon Arms letter

A letter over the name of Arthur Welmas, president of Cabazon Arms, on letterhead at 83-180 Requa Avenue, Indio, California, is headed "CABAZON INDIAN SECURITY /WSI JOINT VENTURE" and is addressed to Timothy La France of La France Specialties, San Diego, as "PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL." It is dated "May 1" with no year printed. It describes a planned armaments manufacturing facility on the Cabazon Indian Reservation and states that "Several governments, which meet the U.S. State Department approval have stated their needs for this equipment." Names listed beneath Welmas's signature are Peter Zokosky, "Bob Frye," "Dr. Myron Malkin," "Colonel Glade Flake," John James, Bruce James, John Paul Nichols and Wayne Reeder.¹³ The letter that precedes it in the same folder refers to a business plan projection made in April 1982 and a staff visit "in early February with Dr. Frye and associates."¹³

A Myron S. Malkin sat on the board of a Wackenhut-owned company in 1979 and 1980, and the Cabazon letter is headed as a "WSI" joint venture and sits in a folder labelled "Wackenhut-Correspondence." Malkin had held Defense Department intelligence-oversight posts in 1972 and 1973 and had worked on strategic missile re-entry vehicles from 1961. The Casolaro papers also hold interview notes in which a speaker refers to a "Dr. Malkin" in the context of a Department of Defense clearance (below). Records found do not establish that the Dr. Myron Malkin named on the letter is Myron S. Malkin, and no opened record places Malkin at Cabazon, with Michael Riconosciuto, or with Wackenhut after 1980.

Clearance remark in the Gunderson interview notes

In a transcript in the Casolaro papers, an interviewer initialed "T.G." (initials matching Ted Gunderson) questions a speaker initialed "M.R." The speaker refers to gatherings in 1965 and 1966, to Timothy Leary, refers to a man named Holbert and to events of July 1981, and speaks of "Paul's death" and a meeting with Fresno homicide investigators. On the subject of the Church of Set and Michael Aquino, the speaker says: "Uh, now the reaction to Aquino that I got from Dr. Malkin was, "Well, his clearance isn't all that high."" Asked "Clearance where?", the speaker answers that it was Aquino's top secret clearance, adds that he does not know the nomenclature of the higher clearances, and states that Malkin said, in Defense Department terms, that Aquino was low. He states that almost everyone in Aquino's group is psy-ops or intelligence related.¹⁴

The file's cover line begins with the name "Michael," and its first notes are headed "NOTES OF PHONE CONV. 12/29/87"; the date of the interview passage itself is not stated. Records found do not establish whether the speaker is Michael Riconosciuto, or whether this "Dr. Malkin" is Myron S. Malkin.

Death

Malkin died on the Monday before October 26, 1994, of heart failure, according to his family, at a hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, where he lived. He was 70. He was survived by his wife, Jocelyn Schoen Malkin, a psychiatrist, a son, Peter K. of White Plains, a daughter, Martha Malkin Zornow, a brother and two sisters.¹