CIC provides security on Eniwetok Atoll

Photo By Amy Stork | Officers of Operation SANDSTONE, 1948. Colonel Cibotti is in the back row, seventh from the left.  

FORT HUACHUCA, AZ, UNITED STATES

04.11.2022

Courtesy Story

U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence

by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian

On April 14, 1948, the first of three nuclear bomb tests comprising Operation SANDSTONE took place on Eniwetok (today known as Enewetak) Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The U.S. Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) held responsibility for maintaining security during the tests.

Following World War II, the United States continued its research and development of nuclear weapons under the auspices of the newly created civilian-led Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). The AEC conducted its first postwar tests in 1946 at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. By 1948, a new series of tests—Operation SANDSTONE—were underway at nearby Eniwetok Atoll.

In November 1947, the advance party departed Hawaii for Eniwetok. It included Lt. Col. Philip R. Cibotti, Jr., a 32-year-old West Point graduate who had served in the Central Pacific during the war and who most recently commanded the 401st CIC Detachment in Hawaii. Given the scope of the operation’s physical security requirements, a Joint Security Group (JSG) was activated to operate under the J-2, Col. Thomas J. Sands. Colonel Cibotti took command of the JSG, the bulk of which included fifty men from his previous unit, the 401st. Also under Cibotti’s command was the 369th CIC Detachment, activated at Camp Holabird specifically for Operation SANDSTONE. Commander Capt. Eugene J. Kolb and his seventeen personnel arrived on 22 February 1948. The final contingent of Cibotti’s JSG was the fourteen men of the 700th CIC Detachment, which had just passed from Army to U.S. Air Force control in December.

A comprehensive counterintelligence plan was essential to SANDSTONE’s security program. Security was required long before the personnel and test components arrived at Eniwetok. Ultimately, Colonel Cibotti established travel control points that spanned across 7,000 miles, with personnel screenings conducted at Washington, D. C., Long Beach, California, Fort Shafter, Hawaii, Kwajalein Atoll, and Eniwetok. Security detachments, augmented with U.S. Marines, traveled aboard the four major ships transporting personnel, fissionable materials, weapons components, and related equipment.

On Eniwetok, the CIC agents required the test’s 10,366 military, civilian, and contractor personnel to attend security lectures about the rules of voluntary censorship and importance of maintaining security. During unannounced security “sweeps,” the agents checked passes and identification cards. They also assigned every island involved in the tests a team of guards to watch for possible reconnaissance by foreign ships, aircraft, and submarines.

Perhaps the biggest security threat to the project was the potential compromise of documents, photographs, and communications. Colonel Cibotti’s agents confiscated all personal cameras for the duration of the tests, and they screened all personnel for photographs, film, and documents upon their departure from Eniwetok. Finally, some of Cibotti’s agents served as couriers to escort radioactive cloud sample filters, film, and documents back to the United States during and after the tests.

When the third and final test of Operation SANDSTONE concluded on May 14, 1948, Colonel Cibotti could report that overall security of the tests had been maintained. The CIC found no evidence of compromised classified materials and no incidents of sabotage. Although some unofficial photographs of the tests did show up in Hawaii, the individual was cleared of espionage. He was, however, arraigned before a courts martial for his serious security violation.

• Date Taken: 04.11.2022
• Date Posted: 04.11.2022 11:14
• Story ID: 418240
• Location: FORT HUACHUCA, AZ, US