Duckett participates in a briefing at the White House in March 1975 with CIA Director William Colby (center) and Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger (right).
Duckett, who usually avoided the limelight, was photographed at the White House (below) while receiving an award from President Ford in 1974.
Western North Carolina’s own Carl Ernest Duckett
In 1975, Duckett made a rare public appearance, testifying to a Senate committee about revelations that the CIA had conducted extensive secret drug tests.
As the CIA’s top science official, Duckett oversaw secret programs including surveillance flights.
The Glomar Explorer mission, which Duckett oversaw, was an unprecedented and mostly failed attempt to raise a sunken Soviet nuclear submarine from the ocean’s depths.
The CIA’s CORONA spy satellite, one of Duckett's many high-tech assignments.
Duckett is one of the few CIA officers in history to receive the Distinguished Intelligence Medal twice, and in 2007, the agency posthumously named him one of its 50 key trailblazers.
