Fort Meade

Fort George G. Meade, Maryland (postal address Fort Meade, MD 20755 on United States Army Intelligence and Security Command correspondence) became the headquarters of the NSA after a site board chose it in February 1952; the first personnel to arrive were 149 Marine guards, about 2,000 employees worked in barracks on Canine Road before construction ended, and the Operations 1 building was completed in 1957, after which the agency's communications intelligence staff moved in.¹ The post also held the headquarters of the U.S. First Army, named in a Grill Flame session report as "First Army Headquarters, Ft Meade MD."² On the fort the U.S. Army's 902d Military Intelligence Group, the Operations Security Group and the Systems Exploitation Detachment worked in numbered buildings, among them the Command SCIF in Building 4554.³⁴

Gondola Wish and the Army unit, 1976 to 1979

Jim Schnabel wrote that Mel Riley was posted to the Operations Security Group at Fort Meade in 1976 and that the Systems Exploitation Team, set up by Brigadier General Edmund Thompson of the Army Intelligence Agency, had offices down the hall in Building 4554; Lieutenant Frederick Atwater arrived in the summer of 1977, when the Army Intelligence Agency and the Army Security Agency were merged into the Intelligence and Security Command.³ The project Atwater proposed was given the code name Gondola Wish, with a few thousand dollars in travel money, cramped space in Building 4554 and Major Murray Watt as commanding officer; Schnabel placed the viewers' first quarters directly under a women's lavatory, and wrote that after complaints (including a howitzer salute on the parade ground that startled Ken Bell out of a session) the unit moved to Buildings 2560 and 2561 on Llewellyn Street, former bakery school and mess hall huts of the Second World War, which the viewers refurbished themselves, Joe McMoneagle painting a deep-space mural on a disused oven shield in 2561.³

An Army legal chronology shows a different date for the program's formal limits. Its entry for September 26, 1978 records a 902d Military Intelligence Group memorandum in which the Army staff office DAMI-ISH "cancelled GONDOLA WISH" because the Monroe Institute of Applied Sciences training was not cleared and "could be categorized as experimenting with human use"; the same chronology follows the Army General Counsel's opinion of February 1979 that Grill Flame could involve "testing on human subjects," a Surgeon General's subcommittee ruling of March 1979 that the Army protocol was "NO RISK, NO HUMAN USE," and the Under Secretary of the Army's approval, on January 14, 1981, of continued Grill Flame activities, after which INSCOM became "the only active operational GRILL FLAME element in the Army."⁵⁶⁷ The Defense Intelligence Agency's own history states that INSCOM assembled a unit in 1979, held its first operational sessions in September 1979 after a summer training phase at Stanford Research Institute, and in December 1979 declared the in-house unit operational "having the capability to remote view targets of intelligence interest."⁸

Visitors, 1982

On February 9, 1982 Brigadier General James L. Dozier, after his kidnapping, was briefed on Grill Flame at the Command SCIF (Building 4554) and asked to review viewers' sketches for correlation to places surrounding his kidnapping; the project manager, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Jachim, decided not to have him sign a briefing certificate.⁹ A letter of April 14, 1982 from the Defense Intelligence Agency's Intelligence Programs office to the staff director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence arranged for up to six members and staff to visit "Army's GRILL FLAME facility at Fort Meade," adding that "much of the concern should be laid to rest by the Fort Meade trip."¹⁰ On May 4, 1982 Annette Smiley of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence staff was briefed at Building T-2561, where McMoneagle presented completed evaluated projects and Atwater walked her through Building T-2560; the record states that she explained that the only reason she was there was "the strong support for GRILL FLAME" by a committee member from North Carolina (the name is withheld), and that Grill Flame "had been cut in the Senate."¹¹ On June 29, 1982 three Senate Appropriations Committee staff members, with Jack Vorona of the Defense Intelligence Agency, were briefed at T-2561.¹²

Center Lane and Sun Streak

A Center Lane information paper for the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, dated March 7, 1985, lists initial orientation training of one to two months at Fort Meade, advanced training in which the Monroe "Discovery" series was "done at Fort Meade to screen personnel" before a Gateway program in Virginia, "applications training" in "specially designed hemi-sync environments" at Fort Meade, and states that facilities at Kimbrough Army Hospital, Fort Meade, "are available if required."¹³ After the Defense Intelligence Agency took the unit in 1986 under Sun Streak, with twelve billets authorized, a December 1992 staff study called its project, then named Star Gate, one "housed in temporary facilities at Fort George G. Meade."¹⁴

That staff study, prepared after the fiscal 1993 defense authorization conference report directed the agency to study moving Star Gate to the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center at Fort Detrick, records visits by Star Gate managers to the center on October 9 and 22, 1992, a meeting of the center's director, deputy, chief scientist and life sciences chief on October 14, and an inspection of the Fort Meade facility by the center's deputy director on October 29. Arguments for the move included that "Fort Meade is an open military post; Fort Detrick has controlled access through a guarded gate," that the Star Gate building was "a substandard World War II pre-fabricated frame structure," that the project reached the Defense Intelligence Agency's electronic mail only by "commercial telephone and facsimile service," and that the medical center had a reserve attorney who could assess human use compliance. Arguments against included an AFMIC concern that Star Gate methods "might damage AFMIC's credibility," a concern about a repeat of the "Yellow Rain" controversy, and the project manager's opinion that "the Fort Meade facility is ideal." A later Defense Intelligence Agency summary states that "a decision was made to retain the project at Fort Meade."¹⁴¹⁵

Closure, 1995

The Central Intelligence Agency's transfer chronology for 1995 records an all-day visit by the agency and a representative of its Office of Military Affairs to "Ft. Meade to meet all program personnel and discuss transfer" on March 15, an independent contractor hired to compile bibliographies who began work at Fort Meade "immediately," a memorandum of understanding between the U.S. Army and the agency in April with funds "officially transferred to Pentagon," and a May entry in which the Defense Intelligence Agency told the agency it would reassign the Star Gate personnel because the review would not end by July 1.¹⁶ An agency memorandum of April 11, 1995 states that unclassified reports were moved to the agency's Office of Research and Development, classified reports were retained "in appropriate containers at the Star Gate facility," and "all additional or duplicate copies of contractor reports at the facility were destroyed."¹⁷

Later contracts paid at Fort Meade

The Defense Intelligence Agency's 2008 award HHM402-08-C-0072 to Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, issued by the Virginia Contracting Activity at Bolling Air Force Base, names the NSA Finance and Accounting Office at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland 20755-6856, as the office making payment.¹⁸