How to Pronounce Douglas Mackiernan
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Apr 25, 1913 Mexico City, Mexico Died on 29 Apr 1950 (aged 37)
American spy
TaurusDouglas Mackiernan - Place of Birth, Date of Birth, Age, Wiki, Facts, Net Worth, Birthday, Biography and Family
Douglas Mackiernan, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Family, Facts, Age, Net Worth, Biography and More in FamedBorn.com
About Douglas Mackiernan
- Douglas Seymour Mackiernan (April 25, 1913 – April 29, 1950) was the first officer of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to be killed in the line of duty.He worked as a cryptographer for the United States Army Air Forces and was then posted to China as an Air Force meteorologist during World War II.
- By 1947, he had quit the Air Force and was employed as a Paramilitary Officer in Special Activities Division (renamed Special Activities Center in 2016 ) by the CIA.
- As a cover for that work he was assigned the position of Vice-Consul for the U.S.
- State Department at its consulate in Ürümqi (Tihwa) in Xinjiang (Sinkiang).
- There his scientific talents (he dropped out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after his freshman year) were employed in espionage.
- Until 2002, the CIA successfully hid the fact that Mackiernan was America's first atomic spy; Mackiernan's collection of atomic intelligence about the Soviet Union's first atomic bomb (tested just across the border at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan) was first revealed by the journalist Thomas Laird, but only confirmed by the CIA in 2008.In the fall of 1949, Mackiernan led a party of five (including the two men who would survive the trip, Vasili Zvansov and Frank Bessac) out of Ürümqi.
- They first spent time with Osman Batur and his Kazakh warriors who fought against the Chinese Communists to liberate Eastern Turkistan and then traveled on to Tibet by horseback and camel en route to India.
- Mackiernan was shot dead by Tibetan border guards while crossing Xinjiang into Tibet; the United States government had failed to request permission, in a timely fashion, from the Tibetan government for the Mackiernan party to enter Tibet.
- The Tibetan guards had standing orders, in the tense spring of 1950, to shoot all foreigners who attempted to enter Tibet.
- Mackiernan and his party were dressed as Kazakhs; the Kazakhs in China and Tibetans were traditional enemies who raided each other across the border. Because he was the first CIA officer operating under diplomatic cover as a State Department employee to be killed, the CIA had not yet established procedures about pensions; ultimately his wife and children were denied a CIA pension.
- In 1950, Peggy Mackiernan was awarded a small pension by the State Department, much smaller than her pension would have been if she had received the CIA pension that was due to her.
- It was only in 2000 that the first star on the CIA's Wall of Honor was acknowledged to belong to Mackiernan in a secret memorial ceremony with Mackiernan's wife and family present at the CIA's Langley, Virginia, headquarters.
- When Mackiernan's atomic intelligence work was revealed by a journalist in 2002, it was disputed by CIA employees; however, in 2006, his name was listed in the CIA's Book of Honor and in 2008 his employment by the CIA and his work in atomic intelligence was officially and publicly acknowledged by CIA Director Michael Hayden.
