Secrecy and U.S. Satellite Reconnaissance, 1958-1976

Source: National Security Archive
Kind permission of the National Security Archive

Throughout the 1960s and most of the 1970s, while the U.S. government conducted its space reconnaissance program under a veil of absolute secrecy, officials debated whether information about the program (including the "fact of" its existence and certain photographs) should be disclosed to other elements of the government, public, allies, and even the Soviet Union, according to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and archival research and posted today by the National Security Archive.

The documents published today show that some officials argued that even with a program as sensitive as satellite reconnaissance, greater openness, both within and outside the government, could help a variety of U.S. policy objectives. A certain degree of transparency, these officials believed, would legitimize space reconnaissance (by removing the stigma of espionage), allow more extensive use of satellite imagery for both national security and civilian purposes, and preserve the credibility of the classification system. As the documents demonstrate, other officials naturally raised objections, often citing the likely unfavorable reactions from the Soviet Union and other nations as well as operational security concerns.

Compiled by National Security Archive Senior Fellow Dr. Jeffrey T. Richelson, the documents in this briefing book include National Security Action Memoranda, national intelligence estimates, and other sensitive internal records produced by the White House, the CIA, the United States Intelligence Board, the National Photographic Interpretation Center, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Department of Defense, and the Air Force.

Secrecy and U.S. Satellite Reconnaissance, 1958-1976
Edited by Jeffrey Richelson

In its May 2, 1946 report, "Preliminary Design for an Experimental World Circling Spaceship," the Douglas Aircraft Corporation examined the potential value of satellites for scientific and military purposes. Possible military uses included missile guidance, weapons delivery, weather reconnaissance, communications, attack assessment, and "observation." A little less than nine years later, on March 15, 1955, the United States Air Force issued General Operational Requirement No. 80, which established a high-priority requirement for an advanced reconnaissance satellite.

Over the next five years, the U.S. reconnaissance satellite program evolved in a number of ways. The Air Force program was first designated the Advanced Reconnaissance System (also known as 'Pied Piper'), then SENTRY. Management responsibility for SENTRY was transferred from the Air Force to the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), established on February 7, 1958, and then back to the Air Force in late 1959, by which time the program had been renamed SAMOS. That program would, for periods of time, involve electronic readouts of imagery, physical recovery of images in a capsule, and electronic intelligence payloads - the latter directed primarily at Soviet and Chinese radar systems.

Concerns over delays in the primary objective of SAMOS - the development and operation of an electronic readout satellite - led President Dwight D. Eisenhower to approve (also on February 7, 1958), a Central Intelligence Agency-led program to develop a reconnaissance satellite that would record its images on film and return them in a capsule. The program, which would soon be designated CORONA, became the responsibility of the CIA's Richard Bissell, the DCI's special assistant for planning and development, who had also served as the chief of the U-2 program.

It would not be until 1960 that U.S. efforts to exploit space for intelligence purposes began to yield positive results. In June of that year, a Naval Research Laboratory-designed payload, designated Galactic Radiation and Background (GRAB), was orbited with a secret mission - to intercept the emanations of Soviet radar systems. In August 1960, the first successful CORONA mission, lasting one day and conducted under cover of an alleged scientific satellite program designated DISCOVERER, yielded more imagery of the Soviet Union than was produced in all four years of U-2 missions. The same year, President Eisenhower also approved a program to develop a high-resolution satellite to complement the CORONA satellites, which covered wide swaths of territory but with insufficient resolution to allow imagery interpreters to extract as much intelligence about facilities and weapons as they needed. This program would be designated GAMBIT.

These activities were conducted in as much secrecy as was feasible, particularly after the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. Both Eisenhower and Kennedy were influenced by the May 1960 shoot-down of the U-2 flown by Francis Gary Powers - an event which resulted in the termination of U-2 missions over Soviet territory. There was concern that any acknowledgment of U.S. capabilities would serve as a catalyst to the Soviet leadership to go beyond their protests at assumed U.S. space espionage and take more effective political and military measures to interfere with the American spy satellites. Thus, each use of the GRAB satellite to intercept Soviet radar signals had to be personally approved by President Eisenhower, just as he had to approve U-2 missions that crossed over Soviet territory.

During its first year in office, the Kennedy administration approved the creation of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the National Reconnaissance Program (NRP), entities whose existence was classified Secret and Top Secret, respectively. The NRP comprised the satellite reconnaissance and aerial overflight programs conducted by the CIA, Air Force, and Navy. For its part, the NRO served as the institutional home for those programs, reviewed proposals for new systems, set common security standards, arranged for launches, and provided other services and forms of oversight.

Over the next 15 years, the United States would develop and deploy a number of satellites to produce images; intercept radar signals, communications, missile telemetry; and detect infrared signals that could be exploited for intelligence purposes. During this period secrecy and security would continue to be a concern, and would involve a number of different dimensions.

One of the problems that arose at this time was the appearance of press disclosures concerning the U.S. satellite reconnaissance effort - not only in 1958 but in 1976. An even more pressing issue was the potential international reaction to the reconnaissance program. U.S. officials looked for the best way to reduce the program's political vulnerability to Soviet or other nations' objections to U.S. "spies in the sky" overflying their territory and photographing (or intercepting signals from) key military installations. Whether public acknowledgment or secrecy would best protect the program was the subject of intelligence estimates and policy memoranda from the years before the first launch till the late 1970s.

Aside from these studies and memos, other studies focused solely on the Soviet Union - on its awareness and understanding of U.S. reconnaissance, its probable reaction to any public acknowledgment of the program, and the wisdom (or lack thereof) of disclosing certain details to Soviet officials.

U.S. intelligence and policy officials also had to make choices concerning how much they should reveal about the program to allies and how much of the product they should share with individual governments (particularly Britain) and NATO. (Documents 19, 24, 27). At times, one or more officials raised the prospect of releasing satellite imagery to the public at large.

Another set of issues concerned the security measures taken to protect details about the programs and their product. Thus, a Department of Defense directive established policy and procedures designed to protect data about all military space programs as a means of safeguarding the reconnaissance programs, (See also Documents 14, 21, 36a, 36b). U.S. officials were especially concerned with the creation, operation, and impact of compartmented security systems - the TALENT-KEYHOLE and BYEMAN control systems - established for shielding information about, or produced by, reconnaissance satellites.

A final category of concerns related to internal disclosure of the "fact of" satellite reconnaissance, or provision of some of the product to a broader set of individuals and organizations within the government, at the Secret or Top Secret level. In some instances, the purpose was to remove impediments to performance of other agencies' missions. In others it was to curb statements made by uncleared personnel about U.S. reconnaissance efforts.

Throughout this time, proposals for greater disclosure - whether to the American public or within the government - almost always met significant resistance. Such reluctance, often based on the argument that the risks of change outweighed the expected benefits, was generally decisive in blocking more liberal disclosure policies. So great was the resistance to disclosure that even the "fact of" U.S. satellite reconnaissance would not be declassified until 1978.

Documents available for reading

There are 38 documents available for reading on the National Security Archive website. These are sourced from, CIA Records Search Tool (CREST), National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) II, College Park, CIA Historical Release Program, Source: Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Freedom of Information Act, Thomas D. White Papers, Library of Congress, John F. Kennedy Library, NRO Reading Room, LBJ Library, Austin, Texas.