Tag Archives: Intelligence Office

1972 SEAD January-April Part 1: The Stupidity Intelligence Office

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Working at SEAD. Continue reading →

I worked in the Intelligence Office at SEAD for a little less than three months. I worked with the same five people for almost that entire time. I find it puzzling and a little irksome that in 2020 I can remember none of my co-workers’ names, and I also can recall very little that I personally did there.

I attribute this failure to three things.

  1. Almost nothing even slightly memorable—especially compared to SBNM—happened in those three months. There were no incidents whatever.
  2. My work was totally routine. I remember nothing but typing and routine filing.
  3. I had a bad attitude. My thoughts kept gravitating toward my ETS day.

Here are the four people who were already working in the Intelligence Office when I arrived:

Maybe DIA?
Maybe DIA?
  1. The Chief Intelligence Officer (CIO) was a civilian. I had almost no dealings with him. I have only a vague idea of what he did. I had no idea whether he worked for the CIA, the DIA, or some other acronym. He had a private office and lived off-base.
  2. The Assistant Intelligence Officer (AIO) was an Army lieutenant. He was not a lifer. I worked with him a little and even socialized with him once. Nevertheless, I would not hazard a guess as to his job description. He also had an office and lived off-base.
  3. The chief clerk as a middle-aged woman who had worked with the CIO for several years. I thought of her as my boss. She with us at her desk in a rather large area with three desks surrounded by shelves and filing cabinets, but no walls or dividers. She lived off-base.
  4. A PFC had been working in the same area as a clerk-typist for a few months when I arrived. I am not sure whether he was classified as an MP or a clerk-typist, but he lived in the barracks. He and I got along very well, and we socialized together a little. I was a SP4, and so I outranked him, but even at the end of my time at SEAD he knew the job better than I did. So, if he said something needed to be done, I did not question it.
Paperwork

When I arrived at the Intelligence Office there was a backlog of paperwork. The quantity of reports, letters, and what-not was a little more than the two people in the big work area could easily handle. On the other hand, there was not enough work for three people. After I was there for a couple of weeks, the backlog had disappeared, and my PFC friend and I had plenty of spare time.

Towards the end of January the three of us in the big work area were joined by another soldier, a sergeant who was TDY1, which meant that his was a temporary assignment. He did not know how to type, and so we had very little work for him. We also did not have a desk for him. So, he just sat on a chair in our workspace and twiddled his thumbs. I would have found his situation very stressful. My brain needs to be occupied. When I try to relax my thinking, I generally fall asleep. In my first summer job I had little to do, but I was required to look busy. It was a difficult situation for me. The link for the blog describing that summer will be linked here.

I think that the sergeant on TDY was still there when I ETSed in April. I never did find out what his next assignment was.

Class_A

The soldiers in the office wore the winter version of the “Class A” uniform. This consisted of:

  • A dark green suit coat that had space for all of the badges, insignias, and medals.
  • A light tan long-sleeve dress shirt.
  • A plain black tie.
  • Trousers that were, I think, the same color as the coat.
  • Black dress socks.
  • Plain black shoes, which were not ideal for walking through the snow that was on the ground from the day that I arrived until the day that I left.Garrison_Cap
  • An olive drab “garrison” or “envelope” cap. This was the most practical headgear. In 1972 soldiers ALWAYS wore headgear outdoors and NEVER wore headgear inside. The garrison cap could be folded once and kept on the belt when indoors.
  • We also had a government-issue overcoat and raincoat. I never used the latter.

 

I am pretty sure that we hung up the coats somewhere as soon as we got to the office. I only had one suit coat, and I worked Monday-Friday. I don’t remember how we managed to have clean uniforms every day, but I cannot remember any problems. There must have been really good laundry service.

The attention of the officers seemed to be primarily directed toward convoys. Every so often the people in charge of handling the materials stored at the depot would load up some trucks with the goods that were needed at another post in the eastern U.S. The Intelligence office would presumably designate the route and the timing of the delivery. MPs served as armed guards, which was considered by most as a much more interesting assignment than driving around in the snow at SEAD.

Nobody from the MP Company—or anywhere else—ever asked me what we did at the Intelligence Office. If anyone had asked, I would have replied that I had no idea what the officers did. My job was simply to type and file forms.

What they did ask me about was a civilian employed in the Personnel Office, which occupied the other half of the building in which we worked. She was considered—by far—the hottest female on the base and, I venture to say, the hottest in this area of the country. Several guys manufactured various excuses to walk down to our building to ogle her. The MP’s all worked shifts, which meant that everyone in the company had off-duty time available during business hours every day to devote to visits to the Personnel Office. Quite a few made a habit of it, but no one made any headway.

My co-workers and I had some mundane dealings with the Personnel Office. For example, we sometimes borrowed or lent some supplies. Our involvement with this lady, who was always personable, convinced us that she had no interest in the MPs.

This is a rough schematic of the Intelligence Office. The Personnel Office and the lobby would be below the drawing.
This is a rough schematic of the Intelligence Office. The Personnel Office and the lobby would be below the drawing.

The first day that I arrived at my new workspace I noticed one peculiar thing, but I did not mention it until I was fully trained, and we had eliminated the backlog of paperwork. Appended to one of the walls near the doors to the two offices was a sign that read “Intelligence Office”. I proposed to the PFC that we erect by the door that everyone always used to get to our work area a similar sign that indicated that our area was the “Stupidity Office”. We designed, created, and posted a rather realistic sign. The CIO and AIO got a chuckle out of this, but, needless to say, they made us take it down.

The 201 files for all of the military personnel on the base were stored in our office. I don’t know why; we never consulted them. They contained everyone’s test scores, deployment history, and lots of other things. I was often bored, and I occasionally looked through them. I was more curious about the scores on the Language Aptitude Test, which I had taken at Fort Polk in October, as described here. I scored 73 points on that test. In all of the folders that we had I did not find any other score above 10.

I was also interested in the GT scores. I had heard that the minimum score for assignment to the MP MOS was 90. Only one person in the 295th MP Company had a score that low, and it was the the highest-ranking NCO on the base, Top, our First Sergeant. I was surprised to find that no one had a higher score than mine. At least one guy in E-10-4, our AIT company, scored higher.

The most interesting 201 file of all belonged to Capt. D’Aprix. It had page after page referring to an incident that happened a few years earlier at some other post. Evidently it was all worked out in the end; his assignment at SEAD had entailed a lot of responsibility at a top-secret installation. The exact disposition of the investigation was not detailed in the folder. I never mentioned a word about this to anyone.

Reel_Tape

The lieutenant in the Intelligence Office invited me to his (and his wife’s) house for supper once. I don’t know what the occasion was. He was an enthusiastic audiophile. He played some music on his reel-to-reel tape player. I asked if the sound quality was a good as on vinyl records. He said that it was “probably better”. It probably was better after the record had been played a large number of times. I never have been able to understand how analog recording works under any circumstance.

I don’t remember what kind of music he preferred.

PDQ

I hung around some with my co-worker, the PC. He was the first classical music aficionado that I had encountered in the Army. He played some of his Peter Schickele records for me. I became a pretty big fan. I subsequently purchased a couple of PDQ Bach albums. While I was isolating during the pandemic in 2020, I listened to the opera The Abduction of Figaro on YouTube (available here) while walking on my treadmill on rainy days.

1. TDY stands for Temporary Duty. No one knows what the “Y’ designates.

1972 January: Transition to Seneca Army Depot

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Getting to and learning about SEAD. Continue reading →

My recollections of the period between my departure from SBNM and my arrival at SEAD are very sketchy. Someone on the base in Albuquerque must have helped with the travel arrangements. I am pretty certain that I did not bring my golf clubs, my stereo and speakers, my album collection, and other bulky items to SEAD. So, they must have been shipped to my parents in Leawood, KS. I assume that before I left I was also debriefed, which is the Army’s way of saying that I was warned me not to tell any communists about any of the mission-critical classified information and activities that I saw at SBNM.1

I flew from the Sunport to KC, spent a few days with my family, and then on January 10 I flew to Rochester, NY, which is as close as you can get to SEAD using commercial aircraft. I don’t remember any of that.

201The one thing that I clearly remember is that I was handed my own personnel file (called a 201) and told to hand it over when I arrived at my new post. This amazed me. If they let me do this, it seemed likely that each person who was relocated must have been entrusted with his own 201 file. I immediately looked through mine to find the letter of commendation from the base commander prainsing the heroic acts performed by me and my clipboard during the harrowing Siege of Sandia Base that is described here. I found it. What if there had been a letter of reprimand? I could conceivably have received one for my run-in with Capt. Creedon or my attire at the base EM committee meetings (both described here). Could I have just removed derogatory items at will? I don’t see why not. Computerized records were not yet ubiquitous. Paper still ruled.

Roch_SEADThe instructions on my orders indicated that after my plane landed I should board a bus for Canandaigua, NY. When I arrived at the bus station there, I was still thirty miles or so away from SEAD, which is located near Romulus, a bump in the road between Seneca Lake and Cayuga Lake. I have no clear recollection as to how I made the last leg of the journey. I remember that there was no snow on the ground as we approached the base, but it had started to snow before I exited from the bus, van, car, or truck that brought me. Soon it was coming down hard. Incidentally there was snow on the ground all the way to the day that I left, April 10.

You can just drive in now, but the barriers were always down when SEAD was still operational. At least two MPs with rifles manned the main gate.

I remember that the main gate seemed to have a much more serious security detail than at SBNM. The MPs were armed with M16s, and they stopped every vehicle. There were three sets of fences; one was topped by rows of barbed wire and one electrified. At SBNM we ordinarily just waved everyone in.

Someone showed me to my room. The barracks were not nearly as opulent as the ones at SBNM. Every room had two occupants. My roommate was from Texas. I don’t remember his name—in fact, I only remember the name of one person whom I encountered in my three months at SEAD. This failing astounds me. I usually remember names.

He was a little shorter (in height, not less time remaining) than I was, but he was powerfully built. I later learned that he was the high school state champion weightlifter in his weight class. He had a temper, too. I gave him a wide berth.

I asked him if they had regular room inspections. He said that there were inspections, but they were not very common. So, I just piled all my stuff in my locker and locked it. I didn’t make my bed every morning either. My lack of standards for orderliness became a sore point with him. He might have resented the fact that I was so short (in the Army sense), too.

The next morning I was interviewed by a female2 civilian in the MP office. This was something of a surprise to me. SEAD had a lot of civilian employees. SBNM did too, but there they almost all worked for Sandia Labs doing God knows what. Civilians at SEAD were hired for jobs that I would have expected military personnel to do at SBNM.

I handed my personnel folder to the lady who was interviewing me. She was shocked and disgusted when she discovered that I only had eighty-eight days before I ETSed. “April 10! What are we supposed to do with you for less than three months?” I had no answer. They decided to assign me to help with paperwork at the Intelligence Office, which required a walk of a block or two from the barracks. I never worked even one day as an MP at SEAD, but I still stayed in the MP barracks.

The commanding officer of the 295th MP company was Capt. D’Aprix. He gave a security briefing to a handful of newbies. Some might have been civilians. Some might have come from SBNM.

The first sergeant of the company (always called “Top”) may also have been there. If he said anything, it did not impress me enough to stay in my memory.

What could graduates of this institution be working on at SEAD?

Capt. D’Aprix emphasized that security was everyone’s responsibility at SEAD. A “depot” in military terminology is a place to store something. He said that “special” weapons were stored there. The actual nature of the weapons was—and still is!—highly classified, and we were not allowed to disclose what kind they were. He did not mention it, but the units of the soldiers who worked on SEAD were not classified. All the MPs and all the technicians who maintained the weapons wore patches with mushroom clouds on their sleeves identifying them as belonging to the Defense Nuclear Agency. The technicians all came from SBNM, an open base. The building in which they were trained displayed the words “DEFENSE NUCLEAR WEAPONS SCHOOL” in letters that were more than a foot high. Anyone who could not figure out what kind of weapons were in the depot was too stupid to be dangerous.

We were also told to be on the lookout for card-carrying communists and other shady characters who were interested in what went on at SEAD. It was not feasible for all areas to be guarded all the time. Therefore, the MPs patrolled the entire base (or at least the part within the fences), and the ever-changing routes that they employed were TOP SECRET. So, if we were in a bar or other establishment in one of the neighboring towns, we needed to keep our guard up and our mouths shut.

I was there in the winter. Unless a relative has died, absolutely no one goes to this part of the Finger Lakes in the winter. I guarantee that if any unfamiliar people appeared in Romulus (population about 4,000), they would be noticed by everyone immediately. I suspected as much even on that first day, but I later became certain.

I found the following interesting write-up at https://www.senecawhitedeer.org/index.cfm?Page=Military%20History.

This is a recent satellite image of the entire SEAD complex, which has pretty much gone to SEED since the Army abandoned it in 2000.

In the mid 1950s the north end of the Depot property was transformed into a special weapons area. These special weapons areas (19 in total in the United States) were designated as “Qs”. Becoming a Q area represented the highest security levels known at that time because their mission was to house atomic weapons which indeed were very special weapons.

The Q was built over two years and consisted of about one square mile of area, eventually resulting in 64 igloos, some of them atomic bomb blast resistant. The Q had its own security force, specially trained Military Police who patrolled the Q 24 hours a day. The Q area had a triple wall fence surrounding it, with the middle fence being electrified at 4800 volts. No one was allowed inside the Q without a heavily armed MP escort.

Although the Army still does not acknowledge that storage of atomic weapons occurred within the Seneca Depot, other documents found by SWD suggest that the Seneca Army Depot was the US Army’s largest arsenal of atomic weapons and the second largest atomic stockpile in the entire United States. Besides atomic bombs, the Depot also housed atomic artillery shells for Atomic Annie, a long range artillery gun only fired once in Nevada.

Today, the Q is peaceful once again, this time being leased by Finger Lakes Technologies Group, as it recycles some of the igloos for secure document storage.

I never heard anyone talk about the Q area. I had no idea that there was anything else on the base besides the part that we patrolled.

After the base closed in 2000, a group of locals developed really ambitious plans to make it profitable, but very little came of it. The place is now a veritable wasteland.

Not in this man’s army.

1. In point of fact, the only thing that I did or saw that required a clearance was the night that I stood watch on Manzano Base. The irony is that at that time my clearance had not yet arrived. I described this incident here.

2. There were no female MPs in the Army in my day. This was the only part of the first half of the movie Stripes that I found outrageously discordant with my experience. Women were, in fact, allowed to become MPs in 1975, and the movie was made in 1981. So, I guess that inclusion of the MP babes was vaguely plausible. That they were attracted to two middle-aged (Bill Murray was 31 at the time, and Harold Ramis was 37) layabouts is questionable.

However, the entire second half of the film featuring the “Urban Assault Vehicle” was, of course, preposterous.