Memoirs of a former CIA spy

Former Central Intelligence Agency spy, Leonard LeSchack, known among certain circles as the American James Bond, is a retired U.S. Navy captain who recently penned his memoirs in a two-volume set entitled “He Heard a Different Drummer.”

LeSchack, now a resident of Boundary County, is known for many accomplishments, but most notably for successfully pulling off a stunt in 1962 similar to the one seen in the 1965 James Bond film, “Thunderball,” during a CIA mission known as Project COLDFEET.

During the Cold War, airborne surveillance showed a Russian ice station that had been quickly abandoned, as the ice pack threatened to crush it. The abandoned station piqued the interest of the The Office of Naval Research and the CIA because they were convinced there was information on board that could answer their question: How can the United States both hide and find boomers (nuclear ballistic missile submarines) under the ice without knowing what the Soviets knew about finding them? The Soviets were active in the Arctic, and still are, but, at the time, U.S. military intelligence wasn’t certain what their capabilities were.

LeSchack, who recognized the importance of being able to track nuclear submarines beneath the ice as a result of assisting the Navy in setting up an acoustic array in the Arctic Ocean in 1960, had an idea that would earn him the Presidential Legion of Merit in November 1962. LeSchack suggested the idea to his boss, Dr. Max Britton, head of the Office of Naval Research’s Arctic Program, over a martini lunch in Washington D.C.

“My boss thought about it for a moment and then said, ‘What do you want to do, be an American James Bond?’ as he ordered another martini,” LeSchack said. “But he didn’t dismiss the idea.”

Little did Britton and LeSchack know, that James Bond would be duplicating the very stunt that they were about to embark on in the 1965 film “Thunderball,” starring Sean Connery.

That meeting, between Britton and LeSchack led to a multi-agency cooperation. The Defense Intelligence Agency was just set up and agreed to provide the funding. The CIA provided the aircraft with Skyhook Aero-retrieval system; and the Navy and the Air Force were also on board with LeSchack’s bold mission.

Time was critical. The Russian drift stations were disintegrating quickly into the Arctic Ocean after being abandoned.

On May 28, 1962, intelligence operatives LeSchack and a Russian linguist, U.S. Air Force Major James F. Smith, parachuted from a converted B-17 bomber flown by CIA, from an altitude of 1,200 feet in subzero temperatures over the frigid Arctic, landing safely onto the floating Soviet ice station, NP 8 (North Pole No. 8).

“I had 14 months of polar experience in the Antarctic and four months on Air Force Arctic Drift Station T-3,” LeSchack said. “I knew exactly what to look for on any abandoned Soviet drift station.”

Their mission of espionage against the Soviet Union lasted five days on board the ice station NP 8 before CIA picked the two spies up using LeSchack’s idea of utilizing the system as seen in the James Bond movie. The Fulton Skyhook retrieval system, a sophisticated helium-filled, blimp-shaped balloon, attached to a 500-foot nylon pickup line, designed to be snatched by an aircraft in flight. The spies would then be picked up and winched into the aircraft while in flight.

With a booty bag of Soviet secrets in hand, and once again safely aboard the B-17, the celebration of a successful, and one of the most notable, Cold War missions began.

“The mission doctor checked Jim and I out, then we celebrated with a bottle of Vat 69 scotch, provided to us by the CIA air boss who was on board,” LeSchack said. “Then Jim and I promptly fell asleep.”

LeSchack’s next assignment was U.S. official representative to the Argentine Navy in their 1962-63 Antarctic Expedition, during which time he served on their icebreaker, San Martin.

He later studied in Paris at Les Expéditions Polaires Françaises, and studied geophysics at the University of Wisconsin (Madison), then traveled to Panama, Peru and Colombia to conduct environmental research under various U.S. government contracts.

“Part of my role was to determine the potential for political terrorism in this part of the world,” LeSchack said. “In 1973 I visited Siberia as part of a scientific delegation to the Second International Permafrost Conference; the Soviet Academy of Sciences invited me based on a paper I wrote on permafrost in Alaska.”

LeSchack explained that the conference and the associated field trip through Gulag Archipelago country was an unusual opportunity for gathering intelligence. The Navy eventually called him back to active duty to run the Cuban-Haitian Refugee Center in Puerto Rico.

Later, they ordered him to the U.S. Naval Station at Panama Canal where he became that command’s intelligence officer. After his release from active duty, LeSchack moved his private research office from Maryland to the Florida Keys and worked with his midget oceanographic research submarine.

“I called it my “yellow submarine,” LeSchack said. “When the Navy learned that I had moved to the Florida Keys and was still in the Navy Reserve, they tasked me to set up a Naval Reserve Intelligence Unit to support the then recently established U.S. Forces Caribbean Command in Key West. I became its first commanding officer and also served as deputy chief of intelligence for that command.”

LeSchack retired from the Navy in 1989 and moved to Boundary County in 2011.

He lives a quiet life filled with literature, science and classical music — and continues to write. LeSchack said reading adventure stories as a youth inspired him to live a bold and daring life. Rather than reading the tales of others, LeSchack now pens his own adventures.

LeSchack’s memoirs “He Heard a Different Drummer” and Project COLDFEET: Secret Mission to a Soviet Ice Station, by William M. Leary and Leonard A. LeSchack, a historical documentation of the mission, can both be purchased at Bonners Books, or on Amazon.com.