By fall 1953, the project focused on giving its OSI personnel and SBAs refresher courses. OSI originally planned to construct about 200 of these survival huts, but adverse weather conditions and challenging terrain scaled down those numbers dramatically.Īlmost all of the caches were completed by 1953, but some needed repairs due to weather damage. Each hut had survival materials such as food, skis, snowshoes, medicine, clothing, sleeping bags, weapons and ammunition. They also made gaining access to the caches much easier, since the doors wouldn’t be blocked by several feet of snow. The stilts protected the supplies inside each cache from being destroyed by animals. The typical cache was a log cabin, set on stilts about 10 feet above the ground. One of the main duties during that time was the construction of the E&E caches throughout Alaska. Bill Mann was sent from OSI Headquarters to Alaska to assume operations as the Deputy Director for Special Operations. In the fall of 1951, the FBI handed over the entire project to OSI. The priests would serve a pivotal role in the survival of endangered Airmen in the event of war. With the permission of the regional bishop, the priests were allowed to aid downed Airmen as long as their work was a purely humanitarian effort and not a spy mission. They found Catholic Jesuit priests working in northern Alaska who could serve as team leaders for this mission. OSI got a lucky break when its agents were recruiting SBAs for the E&E sanctuary mission. Eventually the training was moved back to Alaska. OSI and the SBAs had to keep their mission a secret from the community, which was difficult to do in small towns where everyone tended to know each other well and when neighbors were asked to provide background information on those selected. for training, leaving many Alaskans to wonder why some of their neighbors were being sent to the continental U.S. In the beginning of the operation, the SBAs were sent to Washington, D.C. They came from a wide variety of backgrounds, everything from wealthy prospectors to bush pilots. The local SBAs went through an arduous screening process to ensure they were loyal, patriotic Americans who would support the US mission in a time of war. Cappucci wanted only the most highly trained special agents to serve in Alaska, so he assigned top agents from the Special Activities Branch who then reported to the icy tundra for this top secret mission. The other involved the construction and equipping of survival caches along established E&E routes, and the recruitment, training and support of local civilians who could take downed Airmen into their homes. One focused on the recruitment, training and ongoing support of the local residents as SBAs. Ultimately, two operations came out of Cappucci’s plan. Cappucci envisioned a plan that involved escape and evasion (E&E) routes that led to safe houses, scattered throughout the Alaskan wilderness, for downed U.S. In addition to the SBA underground network, Maj. He immediately met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to convince them to expand the project. Cappucci, a veteran counterintelligence (CI) agent and chief of OSI’s Special Activities Branch in Washington, D.C., was named the chief coordinator for the project. The FBI and OSI began a joint venture which eventually became known as the “Alaska Project.” A primary feature of the plan was to train civilians to serve as Stay Behind Agents (SBAs), who would serve as operatives of an underground intelligence network should the Soviets invade. In the event of war, Alaska would serve as a major staging ground for attacks, but it could also potentially be invaded. OSI agents planned to use Alaska’s proximity to the Soviet Union to their country’s advantage. On October 18, 1948, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, now the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), opened a detachment at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Ak. During this time, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the United States Air Force looked toward Alaska as a crucial strategic location in the event of war with the Soviets. The fear of communist aggression reached a feverish pitch when Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee launched the campaign to reveal the infiltration of communists in the U.S. In the tenuous early days of the Cold War, the potential for military conflict with the Soviet Union and the spread of communism were important factors that shaped United States military policy and operations.
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