Douglas Mackiernan

Who was Douglas Mackiernan?

Douglas Seymour Mackiernan was the first officer of the Central Intelligence Agency 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 covert intelligence officer 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 in Sinkang. There his scientific talents 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 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 out of Ürümqi. They first spent time with nomadic Kazakhs and then traveled on to Tibet by horseback and camel en route to India. Mackiernan was shot dead by Tibetan border guards while crossing the Chinese frontier 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 and Tibetans were traditional enemies who raided each other across the border.