Eye in the Sky: The Story of the CORONA Spy Satellites

by Dwayne Day

  Indeed, in early 1957, Levison had begun the design of a panoramic camera for a follow-on Air Force balloon reconnaissance project called WS-461L. Using the higher resolution of the center lens field to sweep a wide angle, the panoramic camera provided high resolution over a wide swath. Such cameras, to be sure, had been used since the nineteenth century, but except for James Baker’s work on the spherical shell lens, little effort had been invested in developing aerial panoramic cameras. In 1949, Lieutenant Colonel Richard W. Philbrick, the Air Force Liaison officer at BUORL, for the first time modified an S-7 Sonne strip camera and mounted it so that the film traveled perpendicular to the direction of flight. He rotated the entire camera around the longitudinal axis of the aircraft and pulled the film past a slit synchronously with the rotation of the camera body and lens. A dramatic panoramic photograph of Manhattan Island taken with this camera appeared in an issue of Life magazine that year. Philbrick’s pioneering work had prompted the Fairchild design of a rotating aerial camera that caught the attention of Davies and Katz; however, Levison avoided rotating the camera by selecting a 12-inch focal length f/5 triplet, three-element lens and rotating it 120 degrees about its rear node, back and forth, perpendicular to the line of flight. Again working with Francis Madden and using this mechanization and the fast (for aerial photography) f/5 lens, this camera, when combined with high-resolution 70mm (2-inch) document copy-type film, would immediately produce images with 100 line pairs per millimeter. In March 1957 Katz christened the proposed camera design HYAC (for high acuity), and, on viewing the test results, in January 1958 he declared: “Seeing this photo … gave me a real and honest thrill. I think this is one of the top achievements in the history of aerial photography, certainly that portion of the history to which I’ve been exposed and in which I’ve been involved.”88

  The HYAC camera underwent flight tests in late 1957. At the same time, Itek’s president Richard Leghorn met with BU’s president Harold C. Case. Although the USAF might still fund specific projects like the HYAC camera, Case feared that the overall expense of operating the BUPRL would quickly drain the university’s financial reserves. He wanted to divest the university of the enterprise immediately. Moving more rapidly than other bidders, again with the financial backing of Laurance S. Rockefeller, Leghorn made an offer that acquired for Itek the entire 106-member staff of the BUPRL and all of its on-going contracts, physical equipment, camera designs, and research reports, effective January 1, 1958.89 At its core, Itek now was BUPRL resurrected to operate for profit.

  Leghorn and Macdonald were aware of the impending Air Force-CIA satellite reconnaissance project and its planned use of the Fairchild panoramic camera.

  With the flight-tested HYAC camera behind them, they possessed an impressive alternate. If scaled-up from a 12-inch to a 24-inch focal-length lens, and using high-resolution 70mm film, calculations showed that this nodal point-scanning, 70-degree panoramic camera would provide a resolution on the earth’s surface of 20 feet. That was a significant improvement over the 60-foot resolution of the Fairchild spin-stabilized camera. Moreover, with sufficiently low blur rates, faster optics, and projected Eastman Kodak film improvements, a scaled-up HYAC-type camera might achieve a resolution at the earth’s surface approaching that of balloon-borne cameras. The Itek camera proposal, which arrived at CIA headquarters in mid-February 1958, prompted Bissell and Ritland to consider funding a backup to the Fairchild camera. But were other American aerial camera systems available that might be preferred in the space reconnaissance role?

  To answer that question, on March 18, 1958, CORONA leaders conducted an evaluation of alternate cameras at the Old Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C.90 In addition to Bissell and Ritland, the assessment panel consisted of the president’s science advisor, James Killian, and two of his key PSAC advisors, Edwin Land and Harvard chemist George Kistiakowsky. The remaining panel members included Herbert York, ARPA’s chief scientist, and the Air Force WS-117L managers, Fritz Oder and his deputy, Bob Truax, who had just moved to Washington for an ARPA assignment that would in fact cover his new role as a technical advisor to Richard Bissell on Project CORONA.

  Four companies offered an alternate camera at this review: General Electric, Fairchild, Eastman Kodak, and Itek. The presenters for each of the firms arrived separately and waited in different anterooms, and each of the teams briefed the assembled CORONA evaluators alone. General Electric had hired Richard Raymond from RAND, and that firm offered a variation of the Fairchild spinner. Fairchild, in turn, offered a refined version of its original camera that could, it was hoped, secure a resolution at the earth’s surface somewhat better than the 60 feet claimed for the original. Eastman Kodak, which held the contract for the pioneer and advanced strip cameras of the WS-117L readout system, likewise recommended a version modified for panoramic coverage with spin stabilization. Finally, physicist and Itek cofounder Duncan Macdonald and John C. (Jack) Herther offered a reciprocating 70-degree field panoramic camera with an f/5 Tessar-type 24-inch focal length lens, otherwise similar to the high-performance HYAC balloon camera.91

  Itek’s proposed vertical-looking camera scanned at right angles to the line of flight, which demanded a satellite horizontally stabilized on all three axes. That introduced technical complexity and accounted for the presence of Jack Herther. Richard Leghorn had hired him as one of Itek’s first technical employees just before the BUPRL acquisition. A 1955 MIT graduate, he wrote his thesis on a gyrostabilized ascent guidance system for the WS-117L orbiting stage, after which he had been posted as a reserve officer to the nascent program office in the ARDC’s Detachment 1 at WPAFB.92 Now Herther explained for the Project CORONA evaluation team how the Lockheed ascent guidance system could be modified to stabilize the Agena horizontally on all three axes in space for a short duration, low-altitude reconnaissance mission. This orbital attitude-control system, Herther affirmed, would produce the pointing accuracy and low roll and pitch blur rates needed for the Itek camera to deliver a resolution at the earth’s surface of at least 20 feet.93

  Duncan Macdonald had worked previously with Arthur Lundahl, chief of the CIA’s photo-interpretation unit, on matters of high-altitude Air Force balloon and U-2 aerial photography. He knew that a camera’s effective resolution at the earth’s surface allowed photo-interpreters to positively identify objects 3 to 5 times larger than the resolution achieved.94 Based on photo-interpretation needs, the performance experience with the HYAC flight test program, and a stable (low blur rate) platform in space, Macdonald predicted that eventually it should be possible to achieve balloon quality photographs from satellite altitudes. After all of the presentations, the CORONA evaluation team conferred and selected Itek. The long-shot newcomer would supply the backup camera.95

  On March 24–26, 1958, Bissell and Ritland closeted themselves with all of the primary CORONA contractor representatives at the Flamingo Motel in San Mateo, California. Bissell informed attendees that a backup camera would be procured from Itek. Lockheed announced that James W. Plummer, formerly in charge of the WS-117L Eastman Kodak payloads, would serve as the CORONA manager responsible for the technical integration of the project. Project participants agreed that General Electric would provide the recovery system and that the effort would consist of ten CORONA vehicles, with three more if needed, launched from Vandenberg AFB on the California coast. Component fabrication, assembly, testing, and a first launch, participants agreed in a burst of optimism, could be accomplished before the end of 1958.

  Back in Washington, D.C., on April 9, 1958, Bissell finished for the president’s approval the CORONA Project Proposal. It called for the concurrent procurement of both the Fairchild and Itek cameras, though at this point the Itek system appeared a clear favorite because of its better initial resolution and promise of even greater resolution for photo-interpretation growth potential. Two days later, perhaps at the urging of Edwin Land, General Ritland and Bissell decided against procuring the Fairchild camera with its spin-stabiliz
ation, and in favor of the Itek HYAC-type camera that required a stable platform in space. The revised proposal outlined a project that would consist of twelve launchings, become operational in June 1959, and conclude a year later in June 1960 when the WS-117L readout system was scheduled to become operational. Fairchild would remain in the project, at least temporarily, by fabricating the Itek-designed cameras.96

  The revised CORONA Project Proposal also identified ARPA as exercising overall technical supervision, with the Air Force, through Air Force Ballistic Missile Division, acting as its agent. The CIA would remain responsible for CORONA’s security system and for procuring the reconnaissance equipment. With the concurrence of ARPA director Roy Johnson and other project participants, Bissell and the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, General Charles P. Cabell, presented this proposal to President Eisenhower on April 16, 1958.97 After asking some questions, the president verbally approved it.98 On April 25 Bissell issued a two-page Statement of Work to guide the prime contractor, Lockheed’s Missile and Space Division. Among other objectives, it called for photographs with a resolution at the earth’s surface of 25 feet or better with a location accuracy objective of plus or minus one mile; maximum possible ground coverage; and recovery of latent image film “by means of ballistic reentry and land or sea recovery.” After identifying the primary subcontractors and items that the government would furnish, the statement turned to the question of managing the organizational amalgam. Overall technical direction, it advised the firm, “is the joint responsibility of several agencies of the Government. In the interest of effective management, however, such direction will be provided primarily by and through the Air Force Ballistic Missile Division acting as the agent for all interested components.”99

  At the end of April 1958, CORONA participants thought that they had embarked on a short-term, high-risk strategic reconnaissance venture that would augment the U-2 as an overhead technical collection system until WS-117L satellites became operational in 1961. That CORONA would succeed beyond anyone’s expectations, that it would eclipse the WS-117L program entirely, that it would continue in operation over 12 years and set the pattern for American reconnaissance satellite projects to follow, and that managing it would prompt creation of a National Reconnaissance Office, they could not know and would not have believed. On the recommendation of science advisors, on the approval of the president, on the word of businessmen and government officials pledged in the clasping of hands, and on a broadly drawn two-page Statement of Work, Project CORONA was underway. The space-based “intelligence revolution” had begun.

  DWAYNE A. DAY

  5

  A STRATEGY FOR RECONNAISSANCE

  Dwight D. Eisenhower and Freedom of Space

  Winston Churchill once characterized the Soviet Union as a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Other scholars have used the analogy of Russian matrioshka dolls—open one and you will find another, and another inside that, and so on. The meaning is the same: it was difficult to know what was happening within the Soviet Union because so much was hidden behind several layers of secrecy. Therefore, the United States after World War II developed a vast intelligence bureaucracy, and the Soviet Union was its primary target.

  The same analogy of secrecy could also be used regarding early American space policy under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Rather than providing only an uncoordinated, retroactive response to Soviet events, as was commonly believed, early American space policy was highly focused, with one goal in mind: the eventual deployment of intelligence collection satellites.

  SPACE AND NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY

  Presidential policy is not created all at once, but rather evolves over time. As such, it is never possible to state with authority that the president’s apparent goals during the implementation of a program or policy are the same ones he had at its initiation. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to conclude that Dwight D. Eisenhower, from the first time he gave serious consideration to the concept until the day he left office in January 1961, viewed satellite reconnaissance as a precious commodity that he had to protect with “bodyguards” of cover stories, half-truths, misdirections, and diversions. Much of the American civilian space program, for instance, appears to have been a visible, public means of diverting attention from the security-related programs Eisenhower valued. Even other military programs themselves shielded his top priority: the reconnaissance satellite program.

  President Dwight D. Eisenhower addressing the American public on July 25, 1955. Eisenhower was determined to ensure that the United States gathered the intelligence it needed on the Soviet threat, but that it did so in a nonthreatening manner.

  The recent declassification of a large number of National Security Council documents from the mid-1950s clearly shows that a crucial starting point of the American civilian space program—the U.S. scientific satellite for the International Geophysical Year (IGY)—was in fact initiated because Eisenhower and his top advisors wanted to establish a legal precedent for flying reconnaissance satellites over the Soviet Union. Eisenhower approved the U.S. scientific satellite program in 1955 as a means of serving as a “stalking horse” for future intelligence satellite programs.1 Furthermore, the Department of Defense was not the only agency interested in this strategy. The CIA was as well, and actually contributed several million dollars in funding to the “civilian” U.S. scientific satellite program.

  THE KILLIAN REPORT

  In September 1954, the Science Advisory Committee of the Office of Defense Mobilization, under orders from President Eisenhower, began a study of the problem of surprise attack.2 Headed by James Killian, then president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the group was known as the Technological Capabilities Panel (TCP). Its report, “Meeting the Threat of Surprise Attack,” was issued on February 14, 1955. Often referred to as the “Killian Report,” it greatly impressed Eisenhower.

  During the course of its deliberations, the study’s intelligence panel, headed by Polaroid’s Edwin “Din” Land, became aware of two advanced proposals for intelligence collection. One was a nuclear-powered reconnaissance satellite using a television camera. This was outlined in a report by the Air Force’s think-tank, the RAND Corporation, titled “Project Feed Back.” The other idea was a U.S. Air Force development program for a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft. While investigating the aircraft program, the panel became aware of a proposal by the Lockheed Skunk Works for its own high-flying strategic reconnaissance aircraft, known as the CL-282. Land brought Lockheed’s proposal to President Eisenhower’s attention. Unlike the Air Force program to develop a reconnaissance aircraft, the CL-282 would be configured to carry out strategic reconnaissance prior to hostilities—pre-D-day reconnaissance. The Strategic Air Command had previously rejected this mission, but those on the TCP thought it vital.

  Eisenhower approved the CL-282 project and placed it under the charge of Richard Bissell, a newcomer to the CIA. The plane, eventually known as the U-2, was never mentioned in the Killian Report itself, but was described in a highly classified annex. It was labeled for the “Eyes Only” of President Eisenhower, and he probably destroyed it along with another classified annex on the submarine-launched ballistic missile program.3

  Eisenhower assigned the U-2 mission to the CIA for three reasons. First, he thought it would be less provocative if a civilian pilot, rather than a military one, flew the aircraft into foreign territory. Second, he wanted the reconnaissance photographs to be evaluated at the national leadership level, as opposed to being evaluated within the military services (which he felt had an incentive to interpret intelligence in their own favor). Finally, he did not want to antagonize the Soviets by pursuing a provocative program in the open. He felt that military pursuit of the program would only exacerbate tensions between the superpowers.4

  A drawing of an atomic-powered reconnaissance satellite proposed by the Project Feed Back team. This proposal prompted the Technological Capabilities Panel to recommend that t
he United States use a scientific satellite to establish the right to “freedom of space.”

  Those involved in the TCP report knew that overflight of another nation’s territory by such an aircraft was a clear violation of international law. It could also be viewed as a hostile act. In reality, American aircraft flying missions on the periphery of the Soviet Union were being fired upon on a regular basis and even shot down. The consequences of violating national airspace were clearly a major concern for those planning aircraft reconnaissance missions. But a satellite, flying much higher, would not necessarily violate international law since no clear definition existed of where “airspace” ended and “space” began. Realizing this, Land and the others on the panel decided to attempt to influence strongly the establishment of international law.

  Although the majority of the contents of the intelligence section of the TCP report remains classified, crucial portions are now known because they were included in other documents that have been declassified. For example, a cover letter accompanying the report upon its delivery to the Policy Planning Staff at the Department of State declares that one of the intelligence panel’s conclusions was the need for the “re-examination of the principles of freedom of space, particularly in connection with the possibility of launching an artificial satellite into an orbit about the earth, in anticipation of use of larger satellites for intelligence purposes.”5 Another document, dated only two weeks later, called for the Department of State to discuss the following recommendation: