Operation Northwest Passage

Excerpt from The Helios Division: The Declassified Interviews, Chapter Six, page 208 [with added material from National Archives Stack 47, security clearance HEL-1078-ckl6h4208]

Daniel Washburn, General, USAF (retired), stands with me on the front porch of his ranch house in South Dakota, near the end of our conversation. An unlit cigar dangles from his lips, which he tosses away at my questioning look. We lean on the railing for several minutes, watching the sun sink lower in the sky, until he begins to speak with the same strong demeanor the nation saw so many years ago.

You understand that there's hardly anything I can tell you.

Yes.

And yet you're still here. That's the sort of tenacity that can get you answers, or get you sent on a one-way flight to Nevada-46. But I guess that's up to me, isn't it? So let's start out by talking about things you already know, from my point of view.

Whenever some hack journalist pushes out an article or a book about Helios, they always seem to focus on the negative aspects. They pore over casualty rates and technological crises and transcripts of Arkhangelsk and Kbely and Kursk. There isn't a conspiracy theorist out there who doesn't think we were some sort of secret society bent on genocide. But what no one remembers is everything positive we accomplished. Without us, countless people who suffered from spinal cord damage would still be paralyzed. Without us, there wouldn't be countless pieces of military hardware that are protecting our nation as we speak. Without us, there's a good chance the United States would be nothing more than a footnote in the history books! Without us, thirty-two good people would still be--

[He clears his throat and looks away for a silent minute. When he turns back, a strange edge has entered Washburn's voice.]

Look. There's hardly anything I can tell you that you don't know already. So what do you want me to repeat to you?

There's one thing I haven't heard much anything about. What about this-what was it-

[There is a brief pause as I check an old USAF printout.]

This "Operation Northwest Passage"? The only thing I have is the years it took place, and even that took months to dig up.

[Washburn's jaw sets visibly.]

Boy, of all the things you could have asked about...

The following conversation never happened.

[Editor's note: At this point, the public recording of the interview, and therefore the transcribed chapter in The Helios Division, ends. A partial transcript of the final five minutes of the tape has been provided in attached document A-12.]

Operation Northwest Passage was our magnum opus. Millions of man-hours and countless taxpayer dollars were poured into it, and every single minute and cent was repayed tenfold by our successes. If every other Helios program failed, I still wouldn't be able to write the division off as a failure due to this one mission. If you ever saw even a hundredth of what we discovered, what we innovated, what we brought back...you would understand why I feel the way I do. And although every detail of the operation, from who was involved to even where we were headquartered, will be classified for the next one hundred fifty-two years, I can tell you that those men and women were the bravest I have had the honor of serving with. And that no matter what, no one will forget their days with Operation Northwest Passage.