by Dwayne Day
No data is available on the missions and success rate of Zenit-4 and its variants. It seems that until 1969 Zenit-4 was launched approximately at the same rate as Zenit-2 (10–13 missions per year), using the same orbital parameters. In 1969 Zenit-4 launches reached a peak (17 missions), while Zenit-2 was in decline (9 missions). The last Zenit-4 was probably launched on August 7, 1970 (Kosmos-355), for a probable total of 74 missions.
It is possible, however, that 1970 was not the termination point for the Zenit program, but rather a time of operational deployment of more advanced satellites based on the Zenit-4 design. Unlike the CORONA program, which ended in 1972 and was replaced by an entirely new system, the Zenit program continued, with increasingly more capable satellites.
CONCLUSION
It is difficult to overestimate the role of space reconnaissance in achieving a peaceful conclusion of the Cold War. Despite numerous technical differences, Zenit, CORONA, and their descendants met design objectives as reliable reconnaissance systems of an entirely new dimension. As a result, the Open Skies concept has become a reality of international relations in the past thirty years. Space reconnaissance systems became an important political instrument of both superpowers. Constant monitoring from space allowed the Cold War rivals to learn and verify the real military potential of the opposite side. That eventually laid a foundation for negotiations on reduction of strategic and conventional forces. In the Cold War atmosphere of deep mutual fear and distrust, space reconnaissance remained one of the few channels of objective information which was in high demand for keeping the world away from a nuclear catastrophe.
Part Two
VOICES OF THE CORONA PIONEERS
As mentioned in the introduction, the catalyst for this volume was the May 23–24, 1995, conference, “Piercing the Curtain: CORONA and the Revolution in Intelligence.” The event was cosponsored by the Center for the Study of Intelligence of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Space Policy Institute of George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. The conference provided the opportunity for the first unclassified discussions of the origins and evolution of the CORONA program and of its impact on the craft of intelligence and on national security policy—the major themes of this book.
While the editors wanted to put together a volume that went well beyond a printed version of the proceedings of the May 1995 conference, we also did not want to lose the historical insights and first-hand perspectives of the conference speakers, most of whom were members of an informal group known as the “CORONA Pioneers.” What follows is our attempt to accomplish that objective.
We have extracted the speakers’ remarks from the two days of conference discussions which we judged of particularly lasting interest. We then arranged those remarks in narrative form to create a coherent account of the topic under discussion. Each speaker reviewed the remarks we had selected; in some cases they revised or extended them for this book.
What this portion of Eye in the Sky represents, therefore, is an overview of CORONA and its impacts from those most directly involved. Their perspectives are crucial to a full understanding of the undertaking.
8
CORONA AND THE U.S. PRESIDENTS
The CORONA program’s primary purpose was to gather strategic information for American presidents and their advisors. President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s need to understand what was going on behind the Iron Curtain led him to approve the nation’s first reconnaissance satellite program.
In this chapter, three former presidential advisors who were instrumental in helping Presidents Eisenhower through Nixon understand and use CORONA intelligence recount the influence that this reconnaissance system had on presidents and their staffs during the Cold War. They stress that each presidential administration learned to rely on CORONA to help assess world events and make strategic decisions during a very tense and difficult time in global relationships. The first advisor, General Andrew J. Goodpaster, served as President Eisenhower’s Defense Liaison Officer and Staff Secretary during the conceptual development of the CORONA program and its early operations.1 Goodpaster is explicit about Eisenhower’s regard for, and understanding of, the importance of intelligence and the role it played in determining strategies. He notes:
Eisenhower’s experience at the Battle of the Bulge, where the Germans secretly amassed a major force unbeknownst to Allied intelligence, deeply impressed upon him the value as well as the limitations of intelligence, together with the dangers of being caught off guard. Although Eisenhower knew how important intelligence was, he also knew how incomplete it could be. However, his overall understanding of intelligence made him especially sensitive to the U-2’s critical role in maintaining America’s national security.
Early in Eisenhower’s administration, I would say around 1953 or 1954, he considered some proposals to construct high-altitude aircraft and satellites for the purpose of gathering intelligence. People believed that a reconnaissance satellite, or other type of high-altitude reconnaissance vehicle, with a high-resolution camera and lens, was quite feasible. The work of Din Land, John von Neumann, James Killian, and George Kistiakowsky, among others, had made such a proposal seem quite feasible. The concept for the U-2—the high-altitude reconnaissance plane—evolved because of this belief.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower examining the American flag flown aboard Discoverer XIII. The flight of Discoverer XIII in August 1960 helped to establish the cover story that the missions were for testing of biomedical and engineering systems. One week later, Discoverer XIV returned the first reconnaissance images of the Soviet Union. (Photo courtesy of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library)
When the Soviets orbited Sputnik in October 1957, it was quite apparent that something had to be done. So American planners placed a high priority on trying to launch some kind of American satellite so that we could regain confidence in our country’s abilities, particularly our national security capabilities. Sputnik was essentially a wake-up call for Americans. The United States suddenly seemed vulnerable to possible Soviet attack. So we shifted our priorities and started stressing the development of satellites.
It is important to note that despite CORONA’s initial failures, Eisenhower always said, “Let’s not worry about it. Let’s stay with it. It’s so important, and we need it. We need to just keep going with it.” One of the reasons he wanted to continue with the program, despite its initial failures, was because he had seen how beneficial and clear the U-2 photos were. The first U-2 photo he saw was an image of Dallas or Fort Worth as I recall, and you could see the dividing lines in a parking lot on that photo. Because of that photograph, it was immediately apparent to Eisenhower that high-altitude reconnaissance imaging was an instrument of tremendous power.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower with his son John during a television address to the nation following the downing of Gary Powers’s U-2 reconnaissance aircraft in May 1960. To President Eisenhower’s right is a U-2 image of San Diego. CIA photo-interpreters prepared numerous images of both U.S. and Soviet strategic facilities to demonstrate the capabilities of the U-2. Eisenhower rejected all but one of these images for his presentation, preferring not to demonstrate the intelligence coup achieved by the U-2. (Photo courtesy of Dino Brugioni)
One of the reasons Eisenhower authorized the CIA to oversee the U-2’s operations was because he thought that U-2 flights could be considered a violation of Soviet airspace, a provocation, in other words, and he did not want that provocation made by military people in uniforms—it had to be carried out on the basis of plausible denial. In other words, he was very aware of the risks involved and weighed them very carefully.
Finally, it’s important to mention that President Eisenhower had a great respect for photo interpretation and analysis. He liked the degree of confidence it provided and found it very valuable for fighting off a lot of the crash proposals that people wanted to initiate in order to supposedly close the “missile gap.” Those types of proposals were
absolutely anathema to him, and when anybody came in with such a proposition, I’d try to warn them that they’d better have their flak suit on because as Eisenhower usually told them, “Don’t come in here and try to force me to accept this proposal now. Where the hell were you six months ago when we could have initiated this program on a more orderly basis?”
President John F. Kennedy examining the film-return bucket from Discoverer XIV. Kennedy continued the American photoreconnaissance satellite program and increased its scope. He classified all military space launches in order to protect the reconnaissance program from public discussion. (Photo courtesy of A. Roy Burks)
Like Eisenhower, President John F. Kennedy had a keen interest in CORONA intelligence and relied on it heavily when making strategic decisions. One of the men who helped Kennedy assess CORONA’s information was General W. Y. Smith, a member of Kennedy’s White House National Security Staff.2 As Smith explains, CORONA imagery played a vital role in reassessing the strength of Soviet long-range missiles in September 1961 and in estimating the size and capabilities of Soviet forces during the Berlin crisis of October that same year. He also believes that it was President Eisenhower who led us into a whole new era with CORONA. For example, as Smith notes:
Eisenhower deserves a lot of credit for the program because it was his understanding of the value of intelligence, his willingness to take the risks to get that intelligence, his acceptance of CORONA’s initial failures in order to gain an eventual payoff, and his ability to use intelligence once he got it, that made the program a reality.3
CORONA imagery quickly came into play during the Kennedy administration because of the big dispute that was going on about what size the United States’ strategic forces should be. For example, one of my colleagues at the White House, Carl Kaysen, was having this big discussion with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on the subject. The argument was about how much we should escalate in 1963 and 1964, a period when both the Polaris and the Minuteman would proliferate. So Kaysen wrote this memorandum to [National Security Adviser McGeorge] Bundy that said, “You know, McNamara’s numbers are too high.” Kaysen suggested that the figures in the National Intelligence Estimate 11-8-61 indicated a much lower Soviet force level than McNamara thought there was; 11-8-61 suggested a much slower rate of buildup than we had projected. That conclusion not only raised the question of whether our target figures were too high, but also, and more important, suggested that if we escalated our weapons systems, it might trigger a Soviet weapons buildup. So Kaysen used CORONA data to try to hold the Minuteman down to 1,000 and the Polaris down to a smaller number than the Navy wanted.
A couple of months later, in October 1961, when the Soviets cut off our road access to Berlin and began harassing us in the air, CORONA once again came into play. For example, Bill Kaufman, who was with RAND and had been working at the Pentagon on a counterforce study on the Soviet Union’s forces, sent an overly confident strategy memo to Bundy, with Kaysen’s help, which stressed: “You don’t need to worry about Berlin. We’ve got the Soviets over a barrel—just look at these figures. So take any action you want against them.” But Bundy thought twice about the memo.
Fortunately, he consulted CORONA intelligence before making a recommendation to the president and realized that Kaufman and Kaysen’s suggestion was a bit too ferocious. Consequently, CORONA data strongly influenced the way that White House advisors and many American defense strategists viewed the Berlin crisis. CORONA gave them some confidence in their estimates and decisions.
However, I would also like to note that sometimes we relied on CORONA’s data too much. I guess part of my view on this subject stems from my observations about Vietnam, where I think that we mistakenly believed that if we could see enemy targets and count them, we understood their strength and our objective. Nevertheless, we found out that wasn’t the case at all. Just seeing and counting didn’t tell us the whole story. I think that although photography is very helpful, it is not the only solution. You need to back it up with other things like HUMINT [Human Intelligence].4
The third and final advisor, Richard Helms, served as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) from 1966 through 1972 and was a key figure in determining how CORONA intelligence affected national security plans. Helms was consequently privy to many of the decisions that Presidents Johnson and Nixon made using CORONA information.5 Interestingly, Helms notes that President Johnson, unlike Eisenhower, did not have much interest in intelligence and only gradually learned to use it. Nixon, on the other hand, realized its importance from the beginning and used it to negotiate an important part of the SALT I treaty. For example, Helms believes:
The nuclear test site at Lop Nur, China, on October 20, 1964. CORONA imagery allowed the United States to announce that China was about to detonate an atomic device, undercutting the propaganda value of the event for the Chinese. (Photo courtesy National Photographic Interpretation Center)
When President Johnson first came to office [in November 1963], he was not very interested in intelligence. However, [DCI John] McCone thought that he could convert Johnson to intelligence, so he used to go down to the White House every morning and brief the president. The briefings only lasted about two weeks because Johnson put an end to them.
It would be quite some time—until the Six-Day War in June 1967 to be precise—before President Johnson would finally realize that intelligence had an important role to play in foreign affairs. Why the sudden change? Well, the CIA had correctly predicted how long an Arab-Israeli war would last, and Johnson was impressed with our prediction. The agency hadn’t predicted the conflict down to the hour, mind you, but it had correctly predicted that it would occur and how long it would last. So Johnson liked the way we had handled the situation and called me a little bit after the crisis to thank me and ask me if I’d join his weekly lunch group. Now I’ve mentioned this fact because I want to tell you a story about the luncheon group that is very relevant to the CORONA program.
On August 21, 1968, the Chief of Current Intelligence [CCI] walked into my office and said that the Politburo was meeting in Moscow. Now that really wasn’t a secret because it was on the UPI [United Press International] wire. However, since everybody in the Politburo was supposed to be vacationing at the Black Sea that August, we were troubled. We were also worried because we had known for days that the Warsaw Pact forces were maneuvering in East Germany. So the CCI and I put our heads together and figured out that the Warsaw Pact forces were probably going to invade Czechoslovakia.
At 12:30 P.M., I went to the luncheon group at the White House and told them that the Warsaw Pact forces were probably going to invade Czechoslovakia. In fact, I stressed that we were almost sure of it. To support my claim, I started giving some statistics that I had compiled about the Soviets’ maneuvers, but President Johnson interrupted and said that the Politburo wasn’t meeting to plan an invasion of Czechoslovakia. He claimed that the Politburo was meeting to talk about us. Well, I hadn’t the faintest idea what he meant, so as soon as the lunch was over, and we had picked the Vietnamese bombing targets for the day, I cornered Thomas Johnson, President Johnson’s note-taker and the current head of CNN, and asked what the heck was going on, and he said, “I’ll tell you if you promise not to say anything.” I assured him that I wouldn’t, and then he told me that we were planning to meet with the Russians the following day to prepare for arms control negotiations. He told me that President Johnson hadn’t said anything because he didn’t want any leaks.
Well, despite President Johnson’s hunches, it seems that my notions about the Politburo were correct, because when my beeper went off, and I rushed down to the White House for a 9:00 P.M. emergency meeting that evening, I learned that the president had had a visit from the Soviet ambassador. He had come to inform us that the Warsaw Pact forces had invaded Czechoslovakia.
Now, back to CORONA. One frustrating aspect of the program that is important to mention was that it took a long time to get the film from the Pacific Oce
an to Eastman Kodak for processing, and then to NPIC for analysis. Consequently, by the time we usually got the photos, it was sometimes too late. During the aforementioned Czech invasion, it wasn’t until we got the photos that we discovered that the Russians had put large white crosses on all of their invasion equipment in order to distinguish their equipment from the equipment that the Czechs had gotten from them years before. If we would have had real-time readout at that time, we would have known exactly what the Russians were doing the minute they put those white crosses on their equipment.
A somewhat similar problem occurred during the Six-Day War. About the third day of the war, when the Israelis were taking over the Golan Heights, President Johnson turned to me and asked me how accurate the information was that we were getting, and because we were still only getting daily coverage at that time—instead of hourly coverage—I half-jokingly said that it was very accurate as long as the Israelis were still winning. When Dean Acheson heard that, I thought he was going to explode with laughter. Obviously, although CORONA was highly beneficial, it still had certain limitations.
Finally, I’d just like to mention that when it came time to negotiate the SALT I Treaty of 1972, CORONA was indispensable. President Nixon, for example, had told me, “If you can’t verify an arms control treaty, we’re not going to hold any arms control negotiations.” Well, although I didn’t believe that any analysts in those days felt so secure in their figures that they were willing to say, “Of course we can verify everything,” I still felt confident enough to push forward. So off we went to the arms control negotiations. One of the pivotal points of the negotiations rested on mutual verification; we were trying to match the Soviets’ figures with ours. Fortunately, the Soviets said that they’d agree to use our projections about their forces, which we had, unbeknownst to them, compiled using CORONA. So, in other words, CORONA produced the arms control statistics that we used to resolve the SALT I negotiations.