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From the document
The above plan, even if approved, does not appear to be feasible for a number of reasons, but the merits of the plan were not discussed.
The Interdepartmental Intelligence Conference is considering plan for the development of individuals who could act as agents for the United States in the event that Alaska is occupied by a foreign power.
IT IS BELIEVED THAT WHILE BUREAU SHOULD AID AGENCY DESIGNATED TO ESTABLISH SUCH A NETWORK IN ANY WAY POSSIBLE, IT SHOULD NOT ASSUME THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PROJECT ITSELF, INASMUCH AS THE SUGGESTION WAS PROJECTED TO OBTAIN POSITIVE MILITARY INTELLIGENCE IF AND AFTER ALASKA IS HELD BY AN ENEMY.
Excerpts are passages from a US government work (public domain), quoted exactly as they read in the scan, and checked against the full text on every rebuild.
These 32 pages open the FBI's file on the Alaska stay-behind network that the Air Force later ran as WASHTUB. They are the Bureau's paperwork from its first six months of contact with the idea, January to July 1950, before any agent was recruited. The full Vault release runs to five parts; this extract stops where the papers on individual recruits begin1.
How the FBI heard of it
The first page is the FBI's own index of what it held back: 85 pages of part 1 deleted, nearly all "Referral/Direct" or "Referral/Consult", meaning they were sent to other agencies, chiefly the military, to decide on release1.
Then comes the founding memo. On 27 January 1950 the Special Agent in Charge at Anchorage, John H. Williams, reported to J. Edgar Hoover that Captain Minor Heine, US Navy, director of intelligence for the Alaskan Command, had called a conference that morning at Fort Richardson. Present were the Army's G-2 in Alaska, an Air Force wing intelligence officer, a J-2 officer and the two senior FBI men in Anchorage. Most of what the officers said is blacked out. Heine said the plan had been put to the Alaskan commander, General Nathan Twining, and his aide, and "They went for it." The SAC's own verdict was that the plan did not "appear to be feasible", though its merits were not discussed1.
Washington checked. On 2 February the Office of Naval Intelligence told the FBI it knew nothing about the scheme, and on 15 February headquarters decided not to raise it with the Interdepartmental Intelligence Conference (IIC), the FBI-Army-Navy coordinating body Hoover chaired, until there were developments1. On 2 March Heine said the proposal had gone to Twining's office but not yet to the Joint Chiefs of Staff1.
The plan comes back through Washington
By June the IIC itself was "considering plan for the development of individuals who could act as agents for the United States in the event that Alaska is occupied by a foreign power." Headquarters told Anchorage on 20 June to confer at once with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) and to say whether any of its informants could serve1. Anchorage's coded reply of 24 June said Heine had forwarded the idea to the Joint Chiefs in February and been told in April to take no further action; this does not square with his statement of 2 March, and the file does not explain the difference. Anchorage advised that the Bureau should help whichever agency was chosen but not own a project meant to produce military intelligence, and that its existing informants were not the right type1.
The remaining pages are IIC agendas and minutes from May to July 1950 on other business: port security, and how to handle foreign diplomats suspected of espionage. At the 6 July meeting Hoover urged early decisions on detaining diplomatic personnel in wartime and mentioned that secret plans for suspending habeas corpus were already in place1.
What came next, and how to read it
The FBI did join the programme, which it called STAGE, before Hoover pulled it out in September 1951 and left the Air Force in charge; OSI's historian later counted 89 agents trained by 19592,4. Reamer, writing from the released files, traces the whole arc3.
This extract shows the Bureau's view only, and the military's own contributions are mostly redacted or referred away. No private Alaskan is named in these pages; the people named are officials acting in their posts1. The Air Force's planning file, released separately in 2014, gives the other side2.
Sources
- FBI Stay-Behind Special Agent Program in Alaska, Part 01 of 05, Federal Bureau of Investigation, The Vault (1950).
- Other Proposed Plan for Intelligence Coverage in Alaska in the Event of an Invasion (Stay-Behind Agent Program), 1947–1954 (AFOSI FOIA release), US Air Force Office of Special Investigations, via Government Attic (2014-08-04).
- Other A Cold War mission to maintain sleeper agents in Alaska in case of a Soviet attack, Operation Washtub, never materialized, Anchorage Daily News (David Reamer) (2022-12-11).
- Other US trained Alaskans as secret 'stay-behind agents' (Associated Press), Fox News (2014-08-31).