by Dwayne Day
An imposing burden is therefore placed on officials and review officers working in the various declassification programs of the Intelligence Community. On the one hand, they strive to release the largest possible quantities of historically valuable records in the prevailing spirit of greater openness. But typically they must review records word by word in order to be certain that sensitive “sources and methods” information is not inadvertently released. They must expunge names of still-sensitive sources or technical capabilities. And they must take care to be certain that seemingly innocuous pieces of separate identifying information cannot be reassembled after release of records, if such a reconstruction would be damaging to intelligence sources and methods. The results of such efforts by declassification review officers are evident in blacked-out (formally known as “redacted”) portions of intelligence records available at the National Archives. In the future, of course, re-reviews of redactions may permit the release of excised words or passages.
The release of the CORONA imagery, which was completed in 1996, posed declassification challenges that in some respects even exceeded those described above. Soon after he was sworn in as DCI in November 1991, Robert Gates formed two task forces, one to consider the feasibility of declassifying reconnaissance satellite imagery, and another to determine how the Intelligence Community might use its technology to assist scientists studying the global environment. To a considerable extent, Gates’s initiative was motivated by interest expressed by then-Senator Albert Gore in the possible declassification and use for environmentally related purposes of imagery taken by obsolete broad-area search satellite systems.
This was an unprecedented proposition. Since the origins of the CORONA program in the 1950s, the existence of satellite intelligence systems had remained among the most highly classified of government activities. Beginning with the Eisenhower administration, and continuing through that of Gerald Ford, intelligence analyses derived from satellite imagery of the Soviet Union, China, and other areas of the world continually informed critical policy decisions. But it was not until 1978, when President Jimmy Carter announced that the United States used satellites to verify arms control treaties, that such reconnaissance activities were publicly acknowledged.8 And, as indicated elsewhere in this volume, it was not until September 1992 that the existence of the National Reconnaissance Office was officially revealed.
Thus, Gates’s task forces faced formidable obstacles. For example, how should the United States acknowledge the fact that it took photographs of countries, both unfriendly and friendly? There was also concern that, since satellites had also on occasion taken photographs of the United States, the specter of domestic spying might be raised. Declassifying satellite imagery would necessarily mean that details of optical and satellite technology and capabilities would for the first time be released to the public. Might such releases compromise other intelligence capabilities?9
The release of imagery would also require the concurrence of numerous entities within the Intelligence Community; this took time. Intelligence agencies would also have to change numerous regulations, security control measures, and international handling guidelines to reflect declassification of the CORONA, ARGON, and LANYARD systems; there were also concerns about the implications of releasing the imagery for future Freedom of Information requests.10 The declassification challenge escalated further, moreover, when Intelligence Community attorneys determined by late 1993 that only the president of the United States could order the declassification of satellite imagery.
As a result, President Clinton signed Executive Order 12951 on February 22, 1995, authorizing release of “scientifically or environmentally useful imagery acquired by space-based national intelligence reconnaissance systems, consistent with national security.” The executive order authorized the declassification and release to the National Archives of imagery from the CORONA, ARGON, and LANYARD systems, and specified that the transfer be completed within eighteen months. The executive order also stipulated:
In consultation with the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Director of Central Intelligence shall establish a comprehensive program for the periodic review of imagery from systems other than the Corona, Argon, Lanyard missions, with the objective of making available to the public as much imagery as possible consistent with the interests of national defense and foreign policy. For imagery from obsolete broad-area film return systems other than Corona, Argon, and Lanyard missions, this review shall be completed within 5 years of this order. Review of imagery from any other system that the Director of Central Intelligence deems to be obsolete shall be accomplished according to a timetable established by the Director of Central Intelligence. The Director of Central Intelligence shall report annually to the President on the implementation of this order.11
Vice-President Gore visited CIA headquarters on February 24, 1995, for a ceremony at which the executive order was announced. He said, “Satellite coverage gave us the confidence to pursue arms control agreements—agreements that eventually led to dramatic decreases in the number of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems.” He also noted that satellites “recorded much more than the landscape of the Cold War. In the process of acquiring this priceless data, we recorded for future generations the environmental history of the Earth at least a decade before any country on this Earth launched any Earth resource satellites.”
Three months later, on May 24–25, 1995, a major conference cosponsored by the CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence and the Space Policy Institute of George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs showcased the first declassified CORONA imagery and brought together most of the living members of the “CORONA Pioneers,” those individuals who had been closely involved with the program in its early years. A volume of newly declassified documents, compiled by Kevin Ruffner of the History Staff of the Center for the Study of Intelligence, was published to coincide with the conference. It included a newly declassified article by Kenneth E. Greer that was the first history of CORONA.12 The article was first published in 1973 in a classified issue of Studies in Intelligence, the journal of the foreign intelligence profession which was founded in 1955. The conference volume also included a declassified Special National Intelligence Estimate issued in September 1961, entitled “Strength and Deployment of Soviet Long-Range Ballistic Missile Forces,” which contained important strategic military analysis based on CORONA imagery.
OVERVIEW
This volume goes well beyond the discussions at the May 1995 “Piercing the Curtain: CORONA and Revolution in Intelligence” conference, but it also draws heavily on discussions during those two days. In particular, chapter 2 by Albert “Bud” Wheelon, who was one of the leaders in establishing a continuing U.S. photoreconnaissance satellite program, is a revision of his conference keynote speech, and chapters 8–11 are edited versions of the discussions by conference speakers of various aspects of the CORONA program and of the use of space-derived photo intelligence. Although these portions of the volume are not proceedings in the conventional sense, they are intended to preserve the most historically valuable elements of the conference discussions.
Chapters 1 and 3–6 are original essays by individuals able to put early U.S. photoreconnaissance satellite efforts in their historical and political context. Chapter 1, by Harvard Professor of History Ernest May, details the specific impact of CORONA intelligence on strategic assessments of the Soviet Union. Chapter 2, by Albert Wheelon, discusses the general technological background and development of the CORONA satellite. Political scientist/historian Dwayne A. Day addresses the development and improvement of the CORONA satellite in chapter 3. In chapter 4 historian R. Cargill Hall elaborates fully on the origins of both the concept of strategic intelligence in the post—World War II period and the various U.S. discussions and initiatives in strategic intelligence that preceded, and ultimately led to, CORONA.
A CORONA photograph of the Soviet N-1 lunar rocket-launch complex. The N-1 competed w
ith the American Saturn V program in the race to the moon. The fuel and oxygen tanks for the launch pads are located in the center of the photo, between the two launch pads.
One important difference between gathering intelligence from an orbiting satellite and from an overflying airplane or balloon was that the latter was clearly a violation of territorial sovereignty and thus in almost all cases illegal under international law. Before the first satellite was orbited, there was no international agreement on whether overflying a particular nation while in orbit would be viewed as infringing national sovereignty. Chapter 5, by Dwayne A. Day, portrays the focused U.S. efforts during the mid-1950s to use a proposed civilian scientific satellite program conducted as part of the cooperative International Geophysical Year to establish the precedent that satellite overflight was not a violation of sovereignty. This precedent would clear the legal path for the use of satellites to collect intelligence-related information.
A June 1970 CORONA image of the Soviet N-1 lunar rocket-launch complex with an inset closeup of the west launch pad. An N-1 vehicle is on the west launch pad at the right, and the east pad still shows evidence of an on-pad explosion in July 1969. The N-1 was the size of the American Saturn V rocket. This explosion of the unmanned rocket occurred shortly before Apollo 11 reached the moon. While the U.S. Intelligence Community knew that the Soviets were still engaged in a lunar program as late as 1969, such information was not common knowledge and the Soviets denied that they were racing the Americans to the moon. This explosion, which devastated one of the two launch pads, was a serious setback for the Soviet lunar program. Note the scarring on the left launch pad. The baffle plates over the flame trenches and a large lightning tower have been blown away. The launch tower has also been damaged.
The inset shows the “6L” N-1 vehicle as a fat, bullet shape at the center. The booster has no L-3 payload and is capped by a temporary cone. (Inset photo courtesy of C. P. Vick.)
A CORONA stereo image of the same target—the terminal area and Theme Restaurant at Los Angeles International Airport. Stereo images provided photo interpreters and analysts with extremely important information; they gave them a sense of depth perception so that they could assess objects more accurately CORONA first started taking stereo images with the introduction of the KH-4 system in January 1962. These two images were taken several seconds apart by the KH-4’s two main cameras. Note the movement of the planes on the tarmac and the different angle of the restaurant at the center of the photos.
The CORONA program was initially managed under an ad hoc arrangement involving both the CIA and the U.S. Air Force. This arrangement was patterned on a similar management structure for the U-2 program. By 1961, it was clear that the United States was likely to carry out a continuing program of satellite reconnaissance, and a more formal management structure was created. The result was the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an organization whose very existence was classified until 1992. In one of the first discussions of the NRO, the organization’s historian Gerald Haines discusses the NRO’s origins and early activities, including various institutional and personal controversies during NRO’s start-up years.
Chapter 7 departs from the subject of CORONA to discuss its Soviet counterpart, known as Zenit. This chapter, written by Russian space historian Peter Gorin, demonstrates that some aspects of the Soviet space reconnaissance program were very similar to the American CORONA, whereas others were very different.
The second part of the book is based largely on the words of those who themselves built and used CORONA. As mentioned above, chapters 8–11 contain more personal views of initial U.S. photoreconnaissance efforts and specifically of the CORONA program from individuals who were intimately involved in the 1958–72 period when the program took shape and came to fruition. Here they discuss how CORONA was used by the U.S. presidents, how the system originated and evolved, how it revolutionized mapmaking, and how they utilized the CORONA photographs. The excerpts from the May 1995 CORONA conference selected for inclusion here represent only a small portion of the discussions then; each participant reviewed the elements of his or her conference presentation selected for inclusion by the editors, and many took the opportunity to revise or expand on their original remarks.
The objective of this volume is to present a comprehensive, authoritative portrait of the origins of the U.S. photoreconnaissance satellite program, and particularly of the component of that program called CORONA. Such a portrait is particularly valuable because of CORONA’s significance to U.S. national security during the height of the Cold War. Perhaps Wheelon best summarizes the overall impact of the program:
CORONA made an extraordinary contribution to world stability.… It guided U.S. national security policy during the worst years of the Cold War and eventually enabled arms control treaties to be negotiated and monitored with confidence—treaties that now are reducing nuclear and conventional arsenals dramatically. This first satellite reconnaissance system was truly a triumph of American technology.13
Part One
THE CORONA STORY
The essays in this part of the volume discuss the CORONA program from various perspectives, ranging from its place in the history of the Cold War and in the emerging importance of strategic intelligence to national security policy, to its contributions to advancing space technology. The CORONA program was, of course, not an isolated development; it was the product of the convergence of new technological possibilities with Cold War strategic needs. Both of these aspects of the program’s history are fully covered in the essays included in this part of the book. The need to manage CORONA and its successor reconnaissance satellite programs in utmost secrecy gave rise to the need for organizational innovation; that story is told for one of the first times here. The value of strategic intelligence obtained from satellites was obvious to the Soviet Union as well as to the United States. Thus it comes as no surprise that the USSR paralleled CORONA’s development with a reconnaissance program of its own, Zenit. An overview of that program adds a useful dimension to the book’s contents.
Six of the seven essays included in part one were prepared especially for this book, though all draw on their authors’ previous work. The essay by Wheelon is an adaptation of his keynote address at the 1995 conference that began the collaboration among the editors. Because many of the essays discuss the same events from their author’s particular perspective, there is some duplication of information; the editors chose not to try to eliminate all of this duplication, since each essay author tells the CORONA story in a unique way. The sum total of the material in this part of the book and in part two, we believe, provides a comprehensive look at CORONA, truly an “eye in the sky” serving the U.S. national interest.
ERNEST R. MAY
1
STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE AND U.S. SECURITY
The Contributions of CORONA
The primary significance of the first U.S. photoreconnaissance satellite effort, the CORONA program, can best be understood in the context of the U.S-Soviet strategic nuclear balance. A strong case can be made that CORONA was a major factor in shaping the character of that balance during the 1960s, and even beyond.
ASSESSING THE STRATEGIC BALANCE
In the mid-1950s, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and members of his administration began to worry about the threat posed by Soviet long-rang missile programs. Given the “New Look” strategy just adopted, the administration was trying to estimate the minimum amount of conventional military force needed to deter the Soviets from launching a ground attack against Western Europe. The “New Look” strategy presumed that, because of the deterrent effect of America’s strategic nuclear capabilities, these conventional forces could be almost token in number. (In a public exposé of the strategy, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had warned that America’s response to Soviet aggression would be “massive retaliation.”) But RAND Corporation studies, briefed to Washington policymakers by Dr. Albert Wohlstetter, had begun to make clear the potential vulne
rability of America’s strategic nuclear bomber force. A Soviet surprise attack on those forces, RAND analysts estimated, could reduce to almost zero the United States’s ability to carry out the threatened retaliation. Particularly alarming was the possibility that the Soviets would stage such an attack with guided missiles as well as bombers, for missiles were much harder to defend against. Indeed, there was doubt as to whether any defense against missiles was feasible.1
The U.S. Intelligence Community responded to administration questions about Soviet missile programs with a 1954 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). Vetted by representatives of all relevant intelligence agencies and endorsed by the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), such an estimate was the ultimate finished product of the community. NIE 11-6-54, issued in October 1954, summarized all that the community knew about the subject as of that date. Because of its bearing on judgments about the contributions of CORONA, the foreword of this NIE deserves to be quoted at length.