vailsymposium

Bruce Walker lived and worked in the CIA’s secret training site at Camp Hale between 1960s and 1964. A graduate of DePauw University (1953), he spent two years in Korea with the Marine Corps, then joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1956. From 1960-68, he worked on the CIA’s Tibetan resistance project in Asia and the USA, codenamed STCIRCUS. At Camp Hale, his responsibilities included instruction in observation, photography, report writing, compass and map-reading, world history and politics, and English to Tibetan soldiers. He joined them in afternoon calisthenics and volleyball. Mr. Walker was the only CIA officer who could speak and read the Tibetan language; like all the officers stationed at Camp Hale, he developed strong relationships with his Tibetan counterparts and a lifelong commitment to the Tibetan cause.

In an effort to preserve for the public the history of the CIA Tibet project, he created the STCIRCUS archive of project materials at the Hoover Institution Library at Stanford University. In 2009, he commissioned a painting for the CIA’s Intelligence Art Gallery titled “The Secret PLA Pouch Heads to CIA’s K Building.” The painting depicts the Tibetan resistance army’s capturing of a Chinese officer’s document pouch, the largest intelligence coup out of China during the Cold War.

Bruce Walker’s first-hand experiences at Camp Hale as well as his undercover work on the Tibet operation offer a rare glimpse into this unknown part of Coloradan, U.S. and Tibetan history.