Skunk Works

Before the government would sign a contract with me I had to submit for approval a security plan, detailing how we would tighten all the hatches of what was already one of the most secure operations in the defense industry. Hell, we already operated without windows and behind thick, eavesdrop-proof walls. We had special bank-vault conference rooms, lined with lead and steel, for very sensitive discussions about very secret matters. Still, the Air Force required me to change our entire security system, imposing the kinds of strictures and regulations that would drive us all nuts in either the short or long run. Every piece of paper dealing with the project had to be stamped top secret, indexed in a special security filing system, and locked away. Full field investigations were demanded of every worker having access to the airplane. They imposed a strictly enforced two-man rule: no engineer or shop worker could be left alone in a room with a blueprint. If one machinist had to go to the toilet, the co-worker had to lock up the blueprint until his colleague returned.

Only five of us were cleared for top secret and above, and over the years we had worked on tremendously sensitive projects without ever suffering a leak or any known losses to espionage. In fact, Kelly evolved his own unorthodox security methods, which worked beautifully in the early days of the 1950s. We never stamped a security classification on any paperwork. That way, nobody was curious to read it. We just made damned sure that all sensitive papers stayed inside the Skunk Works.

My biggest worry was clearing our workers for this project. They needed Special Access clearances, and I had to make the case for their Need to Know on an individual basis. But the government, not the employer, was the final arbiter of who was granted or denied access. The Air Force security people made the decision and offered no explanation about why certain of my employees were denied access to the program. No one in Washington conferred with me or asked my opinion or sought my advice. I knew my people very well. Some were horse players, several were skirt chasers, a few were not always prompt about paying their bills. For all I knew some of my best people might be part-time transvestites. I had no doubt that some of the younger ones may have indulged in “recreational drugs,” like toking marijuana at rock shows. Any of these “sins” could sink a valuable worker. I did win a couple of important concessions: the Air Force agreed that only those few technicians with a need to know the airplane’s radar cross section would require the complete full field investigation, which took around nine months, and I was granted temporary clearances for twenty specialists working on particular sensitive aspects of Have Blue. Most important, I raised so much cain that Air Force security finally granted me a “grandfather clause” for many of our old-timers who had been working on all our secret projects since the days of the U-2. They were granted waivers to work on Have Blue.

But security’s dragnet poked and prodded into every nook and cranny of our operation. Keith Beswick, head of our flight test operations, designed a coffee mug for his crew with a clever logo showing the nose of Have Blue peeking from one end of a big cloud with a skunk’s tail sticking out the back end. Because of the picture of the airplane’s nose, security classified the mugs as top secret. Beswick and his people had to lock them away in a safe between coffee breaks. The airplane itself had to be stamped SECRET on the inside cockpit door. I was named its official custodian and had to sign for it whenever it left its hangar area and was test-flown. If it crashed, I was personally responsible for collecting every single piece of it and turning all of it over to the proper authorities.

These draconian measures hobbled us severely at times, tested my patience beyond endurance, and gave Kelly every right to scold, “Goddam it, Rich, I told you so.” At one point I had to memorize the combinations to three different security safes just to get work done on a daily basis. A few guys with lousy memories tried to cheat and carried the combination numbers in their wallets. If security caught them, they could be fired. Security would snoop in our desks at night to search for classified documents not locked away. It was like working at KGB headquarters in Moscow.