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The National Reconnaissance Office at 50 Years:

A Brief History

by Dr. Bruce Berkowitz
Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance
National Reconnaissance Office
Chantilly, Virginia
September 2011

Center for the Study of

National ReconnaissanceCenter for the Study of National Reconnaissance (CSNR)
The Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance is an independent
National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) research body reporting to the NRO Deputy
Director, Business Plans and Operations. Its primary objective is to ensure that
the NRO leadership has the analytic framework and historical context to makeeffective policy and programmatic decisions. The CSNR accomplishes its mission
by promoting the study, dialogue, and understanding of the discipline, practice,and history of national reconnaissance. The Center studies the past, analyzes thepresent, and searches for lessons-learned.
Contact Information: To contact the Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance,
please phone us at 703-488-4733 or email us at csnr@nro.mil
To Obtain Copies: Government personnel can obtain additional printed copies
directly from CSNR. Other requestors can purchase printed copies by contacting:Government Printing Office
732 North Capitol Street, NW
Washington, DC 20401-0001
http://www.gpo.gov

Contents
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Foreword
Preface
Introduction
The Need for Intelligence Against a Hard Target

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Grab, Corona and the Establishment of the National
Reconnaissance Office

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3

The Fear of Surprise Attack
Experts and Technology Step In

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The Beginning of SIGINT Collection From Space
Corona: The First IMINT Satellite

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Beginning the Reduction of Secrecy
Launch Vehicle Problems

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Consolidating the “Alphabet Programs” and Declassifying “Fact Of”
The Funding and the Headquarters Controversies
Redesign of the Overhead Architecture27

Support to Current Military Operations

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Support to Arms Control and Other Missions

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Verifying Arms Control

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Desert Storm, Post-Cold War Drawdown, Declassification,
and Controversy

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The NRO in the Twenty-First Century

29 New Requirements for Information Sharing, New		 Approaches to Secrecy
30 Looking to the Future

References
Appendix A: Timeline of Major Events in NRO History
Appendix B: Directors of the National Reconnaissance Office		
Illustrations
Published by
National Reconnaissance Office
Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance14675 Lee Road
Chantilly, Virginia 20151-1715

Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-937219-00-0

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Figure 1: Original National Reconnaissance Staff, 1961
Figure 2: The U-2 Aircraft
Figure 3: The SR-71 Aircraft
Figure 4: Reid D. Mayo
Figure 5: Grab, Piggybacked Atop TIROS
Figure 6: Engineers Ready Corona
Figure 7: Dr. Joseph V. Charyk
Figure 8: Dr. Richard M. Bissell, Jr.
Figure 9: NRO Headquarters Under Construction
Figure 10: NRO Headquarters Today
Figure 11: IED Munitions in BaghdadiForeword
The history of the National Reconnaissance Office is a story of how opportunity,
necessity, and determination converged to produce an intelligence organization
unlike any that had come before. In the late 1950s, rocket and sensor technologies
were just reaching a level of maturity so that, if pushed to the limit, they could assist
the United States in facing the most challenging national security problem of theage: how to analyze Soviet military forces and avert a potential nuclear war.
After providing the hard data that made it possible to understand and deter theSoviet Union, NRO systems later became the primary means that made possible
the arms control agreements that defused U.S.–Soviet tensions. After the collapseof the Soviet Union, NRO systems became ever more integrated into U.S. militarycapabilities, playing a critical role in the Gulf War, peacekeeping operations, andmost recently, global operations against terrorists.
In retrospect, it seems remarkable that even as the United States was achieving its
goal of putting a man on the moon, there was an equally ambitious and technologicallychallenging American space program proceeding along a parallel path—but instrictest secrecy. Indeed, it was not until 1978 that a President acknowledged thebasic fact that the United States carried out reconnaissance from space, and not until
1992 that the government acknowledged the NRO’s existence.
Until recently, it would have been impossible to publish an official, authoritative,
unclassified history of the NRO. The fact that we can tell the history of this second
space program today shows how much the NRO has evolved. Originally the NRO
and its mission were totally unacknowledged, first to protect the source and method;and second, in deference to the sensitivity that some countries might have to U.S.
satellites orbiting over their territory. Today we take such activities for granted,
and the NRO and its mission can be much more open, and focus its measures for
secrecy on those areas in which the organization is developing technologies thatexceed the public’s imagination and the expectations of our adversaries.
In thinking about how far the NRO has come in the past fifty years, the challenge
for the reader is to imagine how this national resource can continue to support U.S.
security by testing the limits of technology in an era in which the American public
expect greater openness and in which space operations have become commonplace.
Hopefully, the lessons of scientists, engineers, and intelligence officers whocreated the NRO in the first place will inspire their successors, who will take theorganization to even greater achievements.
Robert A. McDonald, Ph.D.
Director, Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance
National Reconnaissance Office

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Preface

Introduction

The objective of this monograph is to provide an account of the establishment, evolution,
and accomplishments of the National Reconnaissance Office as it marks its fiftiethanniversary. It draws on the extensive body of unclassified and declassified material
about the NRO that is available today to examine the agency’s accomplishments andthe challenges it will face in the future. This monograph would not have been possible
without the support of others. In particular, thanks are due to Robert A. McDonald,James D. Outzen, and Jimmie D. Hill for comments on the manuscript and to Karen
Early for guiding it through production.

Nearly twenty years after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, one of the final
chapters of World War II history opened when acting CIA Director, Gen Charles
Cabell established the National Reconnaissance Office by concurring with Deputy
Secretary of Defense, Roswell Gilpatric’s 6 September 1961 memorandum. The
ghosts of Pearl Harbor loomed large indeed as teams of extraordinary scientists
developed high-altitude and satellite technology, hoping to assure that the UnitedStates would never again face a devastating, surprise attack.

Bruce Berkowitz, Ph.D.
Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance
National Reconnaissance Office

Three forces molded the subsequent chapters in the National Reconnaissance Office’s
history: brilliant scientists and engineers, stunning reconnaissance technology, andhard intelligence challenges. In his brief history of the National Reconnaissance
Office, Bruce Berkowitz presents unclassified glimpses of the scientists and engineers,
reconnaissance technologies, and intelligence issues that drove the development of
the National Reconnaissance Office and its efforts to defend the nation during thelast fifty years of air and space advances.
A highly talented group of individuals with diverse backgrounds played importantroles in the establishment of the National Reconnaissance Office. These individuals
include Dr. James Killian, science advisor to President Eisenhower and President of
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who provided critical support for national
reconnaissance systems. Dr. Edwin “Din” Land, inventor of instant photography andPresident of the Polaroid Corporation, who became an influential advocate for theuse of new technology to solve intelligence puzzles. Dr. Richard Bissell, the talented
Marshall Plan administrator, applied those management skills to develop twoearly successful reconnaissance programs—the U-2 high-altitude spy plane and thenation’s first photoreconnaissance satellite—Corona. Dr. Joseph Charyk, who would
later lead one of the nation’s largest commercial satellite companies, provided earlyand essential leadership for the nation’s first overhead reconnaissance organization.
President Dwight Eisenhower is perhaps most important of all. Driven by his desire
to avoid “another Pearl Harbor,” Eisenhower provided presidential leadership that
accelerated overhead reconnaissance efforts and protected those early efforts when
failures occurred more frequently than successes.
Developing national reconnaissance technology provided an unprecedented vantage
point for the United States, but also posed unprecedented technological challenges.
One of the most significant early challenges included developing a plane that could
fly in the thin atmosphere of high altitudes. Another significant challenge was thelaunch of large objects into space on a regular basis without failure. Once in space,technological challenges existed for retrieving information—pictures and signals—
from space. Space is a harsh environment and space technology must persist in thatenvironment. Consequently, scientists and engineers developed new materials: film,
lenses, antennas, and other components to survive in space. The U-2, the nation’s

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first high-altitude aircraft; Grab, the first signals intelligence system; and Corona,the first photoreconnaissance system, exemplify technology’s successful response tothese challenges. For these systems, existing technology was reshaped to operatein space. Technological breakthroughs allowed the United States to gather signals
and photograph adversaries from high altitudes and the far reaches of space. Early
efforts brought disappointment as often as success, but as technology matured,
overhead reconnaissance proved to be a reliable asset in the defense of the nation.
Leaders of the United States struggled with difficult national security questions
when the Soviet Union emerged from the aftermath of World War II as the nation’s
most formidable foe. With its August 1949 nuclear test, the Soviet Union became
the world’s second nuclear power. From that point forward, the United States facedquestions about Soviet capabilities for delivering nuclear weapons in an attack on
the United States. Although Soviet leadership intentions remained largely opaque,Soviet capabilities became more transparent as a result of intelligence gained fromnational reconnaissance systems. By the mid-1950s controversies arose whether
long-range bombers in the Soviet arsenal exceeded the number of those in the UnitedStates. The U-2 would largely settle that question. Shortly thereafter, questions
arose about the Soviet’s capabilities to deliver nuclear weapons on intercontinental
ballistic missiles. Corona and subsequent photoreconnaissance and signals
intelligence satellite systems would help settle those questions. As the United States
gained more insight into Soviet military capabilities, new intelligence challenges
arose in the 1970s when arms limitation treaties required verification. Scientists
and engineers would once again leverage technology to answer these intelligencechallenges from space.
Although this is an unclassified history of national reconnaissance, andconsequently an incomplete history, it nonetheless provides glimpses into the forceof human intellect in shaping technology to address difficult questions. National
reconnaissance systems would not only prove essential in winning the Cold War, but
in combating other adversaries faced by the United States. The tides of history set a
regular pattern where such forces of intellect will no doubt be required to meet suchchallenges in the future. Accordingly, space will remain a critical vantage point for
ongoing vigilance in defense of the United States.
James D. Outzen, Ph.D.
NRO Historian, Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance
National Reconnaissance Office

The Need for Intelligence Against a Hard Target
The Fear of Surprise Attack
On 25 August 1960, President Eisenhower greeted several of his top science advisors
in the Oval Office with Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles, just before thePresident was scheduled to attend a meeting of the National Security Council. Oneof the scientists, Polaroid Corporation’s CEO Edwin H. “Din” Land, unrolled a spoolof film across the floor.
Land said, “Here are your pictures, Mr. President.” The film was from Corona 14,
the first successful satellite photoreconnaissance mission, which had flown the week
before. Corona 14 had captured images of airfields and other military installationsin the Soviet Union. President Eisenhower had approved the project two and halfyears before. (McDonald, 2002, p. 34)
Land and another advisor attending the meeting, James R. Killian, Jr., Presidentof the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had championed Corona throughits difficult development. At the time, the United States had several satellite
reconnaissance programs underway. The Air Force and Central Intelligence Agency
were both developing imagery intelligence, or “IMINT” systems. The Navy had
already orbited the first signals intelligence, or “SIGINT” satellite in June.
The experience of Corona led Land and Killian to conclude that a new organization
was needed for overhead reconnaissance that minimized bureaucracy. They also
believed it should be civilian, and classified. Although the Soviets had establishedthe precedent for passing over national borders in orbit with Sputnik 1, overflight
was still sensitive and the prospect of a military spacecraft openly passing over
Soviet territory might have been provocative.
Land and Killian had proposed a new national office responsible for the design,acquisition, and operation of reconnaissance satellites. President Eisenhower had
agreed, saying that he regretted not having made the decision two years earlier,when he had approved the Corona program. The group then went to an adjoining
room for the NSC meeting, where the President gave his formal approval for theestablishment of the National Reconnaissance Office. (McElheney, 1999; Hall andLaurie, 1999)
The NRO can trace its heritage to World War II, when U.S. forces used aircraft tocollect imagery and signals intelligence to plan military operations against Germany
and Japan. As the Cold War heated up, U.S. officials discovered that overhead
reconnaissance was one of the few options available to discover basic facts about the
military and industrial capabilities of the new opponent the nation faced, the Soviet
Union.
The greatest fear of U.S. officials in the early years of the Cold War was the potentialof a Soviet surprise attack. In February 1946, Joseph Stalin had declared war withvi

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cooperate in overflights of Soviet territory.1
That month, President Truman approved two flights over Eastern Siberia from
Alaska, and the Air Force pulled one of the first of its new B-47 bombers from theproduction line to modify it for reconnaissance missions. The program expanded
over the next several years, with missions flying out of bases in Alaska, Greenland,
Britain, and West Germany. These “SENSINT” flights continued through 1955
under the Eisenhower administration.
These missions were dangerous, as the Soviet PVO Strany (National Air Defense
Forces) regularly attempted to intercept the flights. Several aircraft were downed;
others returned damaged. The American and British flyers collected valuable
information, but in very limited quantities. Targets like Vladivostok, Shanghai, andMinsk were imaged just a handful of times during the entire life of the program.
Targets deeper in denied territory, like Moscow or most Soviet military factories eastof the Urals, were not imaged at all.

Figure 1: Original National Reconnaissance Staff, 1961

Photo/CSNR Reference Collection

the West inevitable; the next few years were marked by espionage cases involving
Soviet spies, Soviet expansion into Eastern Europe, the Berlin blockade, and the fallof China to communism. Pearl Harbor was still a fresh memory; these fears greweven more after the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb on 29 August 1949.
The problem was, the United States was largely ignorant about its new adversary.
Today, more than two decades after the end of the Cold War, it is hard to appreciate
just how little data was available about the Soviet Union at the time. The Soviet
government controlled virtually all significant information. It was a major challenge
just to find accurate maps of the country, basic economic data, or even a Moscow
telephone directory. And the Soviets were especially secretive about their military.
There were almost no public data on Soviet forces or weapons systems. Information
about Soviet nuclear weapons was nearly nonexistent.
To make matters worse, the Soviet Union was a difficult target for traditional
human intelligence operations. The Soviet government limited travel by foreigners,
monitored visitors closely, and discouraged their interaction with Soviet citizens.
All of this made the Soviet Union an exceptionally challenging environment forrecruiting and running assets.
With few alternatives, American leaders turned to high-altitude aircraft flying
near—and sometimes over—Soviet territory. On 4 December 1950, following theinvasion of South Korea, British Prime Minister Clement Atlee met with President
Harry Truman in Washington. Some historians believe that it was at this meetingthat the two leaders, fearing imminent war with the Soviet Union, agreed to

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The Air Force also attempted to image Soviet targets with high-altitude balloons in
a series of activities that eventually evolved into the Genetrix program. It launched
the first of 516 balloons on 10 January 1956, but President Eisenhower cancelled
the program just a month later, after the Soviets downed one of the balloons, put
its payload on display, and issued an official protest of the American violation of its
airspace. (Welzenbach, 1986)

Experts and Technology Step In
Facing this intelligence vacuum, American leaders looked for new options. President
Eisenhower and a small circle of scientists and industry advisors became personally
immersed in solving the problem. As it happened, new technologies—high-altitude
aircraft, long-range rockets, satellites, and sensors—were just beginning to emergethat offered opportunities for intelligence collection far beyond anything that had
been achieved before.
On 26 July 1954 President Eisenhower appointed a “Technical Capabilities Panel,”chaired by Killian to study options to deal with the threat. The TCP’s Intelligence
Projects Committee, chaired by Land, recommended that the government proceed
on a previously offered plan by the Lockheed Corporation to build a reconnaissanceaircraft specifically designed to fly above Soviet air defenses. (Pedlow and Welzenbach,1998, p. 27)
This aircraft became the U-2, which President Eisenhower approved in November
1954. To build the aircraft quickly, the panel recommended using the CIA’s special
authorities to use “unvouchered funds” and streamlined contracting. This was asignificant step, bringing the CIA into the development of large-scale technical1See, in particular, Hall and Laurie, 2003. The two scholars report that they could find documentation of theagreement, noting the extreme sensitivity of the proposed operations, but argue that this was when it wasmade on the basis of later events and circumstantial evidence.

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surface would continue to circle it forever in a closed orbit; it would
become an ‘artificial satellite’ ... It would thus be possible to havea hundred-weight of instruments circling the earth perpetuallyoutside the limits of the atmosphere and broadcasting information
as long as the batteries lasted. Since the rocket would be inbrilliant sunshine for half the time, the operating period might
be indefinitely prolonged by the use of thermocouples and photoelectric elements ... .

Figure 2: The U-2 Aircraft

Photo/CSNR Reference Collection

collection systems for the first time. Another reason for using the CIA was to avoid
provoking Soviet leaders during an especially tense period of the Cold War. President
Eisenhower believed that the overflight had to be conducted as a classified operation.
“If uniformed personnel of the armed services of the United States fly over Russia,” hewrote, “it is an act of war, legally and I don’t want any part of it.”A joint Air Force-CIA team developed the U-2 with Lockheed under Project Aquatone.
Richard Bissell, the Special Assistant for Planning and Coordination at the CIA,
directed the project with his deputy director, Osmund J. Ritland, then a colonel in
the Air Force. Lockheed built the first aircraft in eight months. The first mission
was flown on 4 July 1956. A total of 24 successful missions were completed, until 1
May 1960 when CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down near Sverdlovsk (nowYekaterinburg) by an SA-2 surface-to-air missile.
Early in the U-2 program it became clear that the improving Soviet air defense
system would make U-2 missions over the Soviet Union too risky. U.S. officials
searched for new alternatives. One was to build a faster, even higher-flying aircraftwith a smaller radar signature. Bissell assembled an expert committee to investigate
a follow-on to the aircraft. The committee was chaired by Land and met from 1957 to1959 to review proposals from several aerospace contractors. (Robarge, 2009)
Lockheed, led by its chief engineer Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, proposed a series ofconcepts it called “Archangel,” a play on the company’s original name for the U-2,
“Angel.” When the twelfth concept was adopted, the aircraft became known as the
A-12, or by its CIA project name, Oxcart. As with the U-2, the Air Force was a partner
throughout the project, providing pilots, training, bases, and logistical support. The
Air Force also later developed its own two-seat version of the A-12, the SR-71.
The other option for replacing the U-2 was to develop an orbiting satellite. Science
fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke may have been one of the first to propose the basic
idea of a satellite and its varied uses. Even before World War II was over, Clarke
speculated how one might use the German V-2 as a satelite launch vehicle. In the
February 1945 edition of Wireless World Clarke wrote,“A rocket which can reach a speed of 8 km/sec parallel to the earth’s

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Clarke anticipated the idea of using geosynchronous satellites for receiving and retransmitting radio signals from space—the basic concept for both a communications
satellite and a satellite for collecting SIGINT. He observed thatAn ‘artificial satellite’ at the correct distance from the earth would
make one revolution every 24 hours; i.e., it would remain stationary
above the same spot and would be within optical range of nearly
half the earth’s surface. Three repeater stations, 120 degrees
apart in the correct orbit, could give television and microwave
coverage to the entire planet.” (Clarke, 1945, p. 58)
All of the American armed services saw the potential for using space for military
purposes and began programs to develop rockets and spacecraft. But in the leanpost-war years, these were just shoestring efforts.
The Army, working with German scientists who had surrendered at the end of thewar, concentrated on missiles to supplement traditional artillery. The Army’s efforts
eventually led to Explorer-1, the first successful American satellite, and later evolved
into the nucleus of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA)
Marshall Space Flight Center, which developed the Saturn moon rocket. NRO andNASA have often worked together. In the 1960s for example, NASA used technologythat NRO had developed for earth imaging systems in its Lunar Orbiter camera, andthe NRO has used NASA’s Space Shuttle to launch satellites.
The Navy was also developing space technology. The Naval Research Laboratory(NRL) had conducted upper atmosphere experiments since 1946, using captured
German V-2s as “sounding rockets” to carry telemetered instrumentation to altitudes
of more than one hundred miles. A space program was the next logical step; in
October 1945 the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics had proposed a satellite program.
The following year, the Navy floated the idea of a multi-service effort.
The Army Air Forces, soon to become a separate service, had also experimented with
captured V-2s and was considering a satellite program. To prepare for a meeting with
his Navy counterparts to discuss their proposal, Maj Gen Curtiss LeMay directed the
RAND Corporation to develop a feasibility study. The report, Preliminary Designof an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship, was an engineering analysis for ageneric launch vehicle and satellite. It speculated that such a system might serve
as a communications or a scientific research platform. However, it also mentioned

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hardest technical challenge in developing a satellite was not the spacecraft, but thelaunch vehicle. Smaller warheads made nuclear-armed, intercontinental missiles
feasible, and these missiles provided the basis for orbital launch vehicles. (Greer,
1973)
The AFSAB recommendation led to the decision by the Air Force on 1 July 1954 toestablish the Western Development Division (WDD) under the command of Brig Gen
Bernard Schriever and assign it the responsibility for long-range ballistic missile
development. The Air Force contracted with Convair to build the Atlas, the first
operational American intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which became thehighest priority U.S. defense program. It also started development of the Thor, asmaller intermediate-range missile built by Douglas Aircraft Corporation, and the
Titan, a much larger missile built by the Martin Company, the contractor on the
Navy’s Viking. All three were later used as launch vehicles for NRO satellites.

Figure 3: The SR-71 Aircraft

Photo/CSNR Reference Collection

in a single paragraph that such a “satellite offers an observation aircraft that cannot
be brought down by an enemy who has not mastered similar techniques.” (Douglas
Aircraft Company, 1946)
Although the Air Force rejected the Navy’s proposal for a multi-service space program,
NRL continued its upper atmosphere research. In 1949, as the supply of V-2s ranout, NRL developed the Viking, the first large launch vehicle combining the familiar
elements we recognize today: cylindrical cross section, monocoque construction,
gimbaled engines, and a separable payload section. Some Navy personnel who
worked on the Viking went on to develop the Delta launch vehicle at NASA. This
rocket evolved into today’s Delta-4, a mainstay launch vehicle for the NRO.
The Viking also led to the first American satellite program. In 1954 the International
Council of Scientific Unions, an association of national science organizations,designated 1957 as the “International Geophysical Year,” or IGY, when countries
would carry out a coordinated program of earth science studies. The organizing
committee for the IGY proposed that countries might develop a scientific satellite
as part of the effort. On 26 May 1955 the Eisenhower administration accepted the
proposal in the first U.S. national space policy, and selected NRL to lead Vanguard,
a program to develop a research satellite and a Viking-based orbital launch vehicle.
At the same time, the Air Force began the first steps in developing long-range missiles.
A June 1953 Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (AFSAB) report had concluded that
it was possible to build small, lightweight nuclear warheads.2 This recommendation
indirectly accelerated the development of reconnaissance satellites. At the time the2

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See Greer, K.E. (Spring 1973), “Corona,” Studies in Intelligence, reprinted in Ruffner, K.C., Ed. (1995) Corona:
America’s First Satellite Program. Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, pp 3-39. Although no official
record of the meeting seems to exist, but the Air Force Vice Chief of Staff, Gen T.D. White, referred to it ina letter dated 8 June 1953 to Theodore von Karman, cited in Jacob Neufeld, Center for Air Force History,“Technology Push,” www.history.mil/colloquia/cch9c.html

From the beginning, Air Force missile and satellite programs were closely linked.
With the availability of a launch vehicle imminent, the Air Staff issued an operational
requirement for a means to provide continuous surveillance of an enemy’s warmaking capability. Under this requirement, the Air Research and Development
Command (which had taken over the RAND satellite studies in 1953) approved
the WS-117L program.3 From 1954 to 1957 the WS-117L developed studies forreconnaissance satellites based on Lockheed’s Agena upper stage, and incorporatinga variety of IMINT and SIGINT payloads. On 2 April 1956 the Air Force completed
its development plan for a reconnaissance satellite.
Even so, WS-117L languished until the Soviet launch of the world’s firstintercontinental ballistic missile in August 1957, and a month later, Sputnik-1, thefirst artificial satellite. Sputnik created a new sense of urgency. The “missile gap”
became one of the hottest issues in American politics as legislators such as Sen.
Stuart Symington (D-Mo.) and Sen. Henry Jackson (D-Wash.), along with newspaper
columnists such as Stewart Alsop warned that the United States had fallen behind
the Soviet Union in strategic nuclear forces. The Sputnik launch boosted support forsatellite programs by both Congress and the American public.

Grab, Corona, and the Establishment of the
National Reconnaissance Office
By 1958 there were two satellite efforts within the Defense Department. One, theVanguard research satellite program at the Naval Research Laboratory, would
provide the basis for Grab, the first SIGINT satellite. The other, the Air Force’s
WS-117L military system, would provide the basis for two later programs: Corona,developed by the CIA as the first IMINT satellite; and Samos, a satellite program

3

See Hall, R.C. (Fall 1963), “Early U.S. Satellite Proposals,” Technology and Culture, pp. 410-434, cited in
Haines (1996).

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Photo/CSNR Reference Collection

Photo/CSNR Reference Collection

Figure 4: Reid D. Mayo

Figure 5: Grab, Piggybacked Atop TIROS

combining SIGINT and IMINT that provided the foundation for the Air Force’s spacereconnaissance program. These three programs, together with the CIA’s A-12 andAir Force’s SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft programs, were the building blocks of what
would become the National Reconnaissance Office.

The Beginning of SIGINT Collection From Space
Grab evolved directly from NRL’s Vanguard program. Laboratory officials had
discussed plans for using technology from Vanguard to develop space systems forelectronic intelligence collection at least as early as 1957, along with other military
missions such as communications, navigation, and scientific measurements ofatmospheric and space phenomenon that might affect military operations.
NRL had previously developed crystal video technologies deployed on submarines tointercept and analyze Soviet radar sites. Passing time as he was stuck in a Pennsylvania
snowstorm in March 1958, Reid D. Mayo, an NRL engineer, came up with the idea ofmounting a solid state version of the periscope-mounted radar detector in a Vanguardlike satellite. Returning to Washington, he proposed the idea to Howard Lorenzen,
chief of the NRL electronic countermeasures branch. The lab began developing the
project for the Director of Naval Intelligence. (McDonald and Moreno, 2005)
When President Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration on 1 October 1958, most NRL technicians working on Vanguard
transferred to what is today’s Goddard Space Flight Center. However, Robert Morris
Page, NRL’s Director of Research, believed the Navy still needed a space engineering
capability. Some Vanguard technicians remained with NRL, forming the Satellite
Technologies Branch, which evolved into today’s Naval Center for Space Technology.
(van Keuren, 1987)

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President Eisenhower approved Mayo’s program, by then designated “Tattletale,” on
24 August 1959. Grab (“Galactic Radiation and Background,” a name referring to
the satellite’s cover as a research project measuring radiation in space) was equippedwith both scientific instruments and a receiver that detected pulsed-radar signals
emitted from Soviet air defense systems.
Launched into a 600 mile high, 63.4 degree inclination orbit, Grab passed over theentire territory of the Soviet Union. As the satellite detected signals from air defense
radars, it transmitted a corresponding signal to a ground control “hut” that waswithin line of sight of the satellite, but in friendly territory. The signals were recorded
on tapes, which were sent back to NRL, and ultimately, the National Security
Agency and the Air Force Strategic Air Command for analysis. The recorded data
revealed the location and capabilities of each Soviet radar installation, which werefor planning missions to penetrate Soviet airspace in wartime.
The Air Force launched Grab 1 on a Thor Able Star vehicle on 22 June 1960, becoming
the world’s first successful reconnaissance satellite. The program ended with two
successful missions and three failures. NRL went on to develop Poppy, a larger,
more capable satellite, first launched on a Thor Agena-D vehicle on 13 December
1962. A total of seven Poppy missions were launched, the last one reaching orbit
on 14 December 1971. Grab remained secret to the public until 1998, when its
existence was declassified as part of the commemoration of NRL’s 75th anniversary.
Poppy was declassified in 2004. Both systems proved essential in tracking Soviet air
defense radar capabilities.

Corona: The First IMINT Satellite
In January 1956 President Eisenhower had established the President’s Board ofConsultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities (PBCFIA), a predecessor of today’s
President’s Intelligence Advisory Board. It included members of the TCP, including
Killian, who chaired the board, and Land. By this time, the Air Force’s WS-117L
project included plans for a SIGINT payload, a payload in which film from an IMINT
payload would be scanned and transmitted to ground stations, and a payload inwhich film would be returned to earth via a reentry capsule.
Killian and Land doubted it was possible to develop a scanning and readout imagery
system with the needed resolution or data volume using the technology available
at the time. They were also concerned with the pace of the program, which they
believed was too slow to meet the threat presented by the Soviets. These issues
came to a head in October 1957 when the PBCFIA issued its semi-annual report to
the President, emphasizing the need for a faster approach that would provide aninterim capability.
In December 1957 the two men met at the White House with Bissell; the President’s
staff assistant, Brig Gen Andrew Goodpaster; and Maj Gen Bernard Schriever, headof the Air Force’s ICBM and WS-117L projects. They agreed that the best courseof action was to break up the WS-117L project and concentrate on the film recovery

9approach as a separate “crash” effort. President Eisenhower approved this new
program, Corona, on 8 February 1958. (Hall, 1997, p. 45)
The media had linked WS-117L to satellite reconnaissance shortly after the Sputnik
launch, so President Eisenhower directed the Air Force to ostensibly kill the film
recovery segment, and then secretly transfer it to the CIA. As with the U-2, using
the CIA allowed the government to use the agency’s special contracting authorities
and keep the effort classified, which was critical because of the continuing politicalsensitivity of overhead reconnaissance. Bissell was appointed to manage theprogram, and Ritland again joined him as his deputy, along with other members of
the U-2 team. (Greer, 1973)
Corona, a complex system using new technology, proved challenging to develop. Twelve
missions failed due to launch vehicle, satellite, or recovery system malfunctions. A
thirteenth spacecraft was successful, but as a test vehicle, carried no film. The first
fully successful mission was launched on 18 August 1960 and recovered a week later.
The first mission returned with 3,000 feet of film (more than the entire U-2 program
up to then), imaging 1.65 million square miles of Soviet territory.
Corona was originally intended as a stopgap until more capable systems enteredservice. But the program proved so productive that it was kept in service for almost
twelve years and 145 missions, the last being launched on 25 May 1972. The
NRO operated several different versions of Corona during the program’s lifetime,
introducing different camera systems and making incremental improvements. The
earliest missions produced imagery with a ground resolution of 40 feet, using theKH-1 camera (KH denoted Keyhole, the name of the program’s security system).
Later cameras, the KH-2 and KH-3, improved resolution to 10 feet. The KH-4, thefinal Corona camera system, ultimately produced imagery with 5-7 foot resolution.
NRO also provided Corona with multiple film return capsules that extended the film
capacity of each mission. (Ruffner, 1995, pp. xiv-xv)
Corona imagery showed that the Soviets had far fewer strategic missiles than was
thought and dispelled the notion in the early 1960s of a “missile gap.” For theremainder of the Cold War, satellite IMINT, combined with SIGINT, consistently
gave U.S. officials accurate estimates of how many missiles, bombers, and submarines
the Soviet Union had at any point in time. The Corona program, along with most of
its imagery, was declassified in 1995 by an executive order from President Clinton.
President Eisenhower had moved the remainder of WS-117L, by then renamed
Samos, to a new civilian Air Force office headed by Under Secretary of the Air ForceJoseph V. Charyk, who reported directly to the Secretary of Defense. Like the Corona
program, Charyk’s office was made classified, hidden within the Air Force’s Space
Systems Division. When President Kennedy entered office in 1961, his Secretary of
Defense, Robert McNamara, asked Charyk to remain.
Figure 6: Engineers Ready Corona

10

Photo/CSNR Reference Collection

McNamara, a management expert who came to the government from Ford Motor

11

Photo/CSNR Reference Collection

Photo/CSNR Reference Collection

Figure 7: Dr. Joseph V. Charyk

Figure 8: Dr. Richard M. Bissell, Jr.

Company, generally wanted to streamline the Defense Department’s structure byconsolidating organizations with like functions; the Defense Intelligence Agency andthe Defense Supply Agency were examples. Since space reconnaissance activities
were already under a civilian chief in the Department of the Air Force, it was naturalfor McNamara to form a consolidated NRO around that office. So, on 6 September
1961 Secretary McNamara and Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles agreed
to establish the NRO, jointly managed by Charyk and Bissell. The new office would
be responsible for the newly-created National Reconnaissance Program (NRP), which
subsumed both Corona and Samos.
The relationship of the NRO to the Secretary of Defense and to the head of theIntelligence Community has evolved throughout the organization’s existence. Many
scholars and former officials have written about this relationship, often emphasizing
the conflict between various components, or between individuals. Make no mistake;this conflict was real. But its actual impact has probably been overstated. In
reality, the Air Force, CIA, and Navy programs, though distinctly separateorganizations, often worked together, drawing on common technology and support
infrastructure. Contractors often worked for more than one organization.
Nevertheless, putting the CIA’s space system activities into a Defense Department
organization did create turf issues and chain of command questions. Should theSecretary of Defense control a CIA program as part of the NRO? Making the NROpart of the Intelligence Community created even more issues. Should the Director ofCentral Intelligence control a Defense Department agency as part of the Intelligence
Community? This issue continues even today, with the Director of National
Intelligence filling the role that the DCI formerly played.
Also, since there was always a finite budget for satellite reconnaissance, the Air Force,

12

CIA, and Navy components within NRO inevitably competed when an opportunity
emerged to build a new kind of system. All three organizations were hungry fora new challenge and the opportunity to contribute to the nation’s security. This
competition became more intense during periods of declining defense spending. And
in addition to all of this, the Air Force, CIA, and Navy each had different reasonsfor being in the satellite business, and thus different priorities. The Air Force wasmost concerned with supporting U.S. strategic nuclear force targeting, the CIA
with intelligence estimates of the Soviet Union, and the Navy with supporting fleet
operations. When the three programs were combined, they had to reconcile theirrequirement priorities, and this was often a competitive process.
This competition was not necessarily bad. At the time, space reconnaissance was
the only effective means to monitor Soviet nuclear forces. Competition encouraged
multiple solutions to a problem like anticipating the capabilities of a new Soviet
weapon system. In one case, Program A proposed a concept to collect electronic andcommunications intelligence to assess new Soviet force developments, while Program
B proposed a different concept based on collecting instrumentation data from Soviet
tests. One offered a lower risk of failure but also a lower payoff; while the otherpromised a high payoff, but also higher risks. The decision of which approach touse in any particular case was likely to go to the White House and, in this case, thePresident decided to proceed with both concepts, each of which proved productive.
Bissell resigned from the CIA in February 1962 following the failed invasion of the
Bay of Pigs; Dulles had resigned the previous November, being replaced by John
McCone. Bissell’s departure left Charyk the sole director of the NRO. A second
agreement between DOD and CIA, signed on 2 May 1962 formalized this fact by
establishing a single director for the NRO, who would be a Defense Department
civilian designated by the Secretary of Defense with the agreement of the DCI. Thisagreement also added the Navy’s Grab program to the NRP.
Two months later, on 23 July 1962 Charyk, now the sole director, established thebasic organizational structure that the NRO would keep for the next thirty years:•

Program A, the Air Force satellite reconnaissance program based in
El Segundo, California;•

Program B, the CIA satellite reconnaissance program based in thenorthern Virginia suburbs of Washington;•

Program C, the Navy program, comprised of personnel from NRL, theNavy Security Group, and NSA, based in southeast Washington, DC;
and•Program D, the Air Force and CIA aerial reconnaissance program,comprising all national assets, including the U-2 and A-12/SR71 programs. (This program was dissolved and its assets weretransferred to the Air Force when the CIA’s A-12s were deactivatedon 1 October 1974).

13

This structure reflected the fact that the NRO was, in practice, a highly decentralized
federation of several existing programs. The NRO Director acted as a “corporate
CEO,” supported by a small staff, making major decisions on budgets, policy, andprogram starts. Most of the action involved in planning and building satellites took
place in the “alphabet programs.” Geographically separated and linked to its own
parent organization, each developed its own culture. Organizational boundaries
were also reinforced by security regulations, since in the early years of the NRO
satellite programs were more strictly compartmented from each other. As a result,most personnel probably thought of themselves as Air Force, CIA, or Navy as much—or more—than as members of the NRO.
McCone reportedly regretted the CIA’s diminished role in the second agreement andpressed for a third agreement, dated 13 March 1963, shortly after the second NRO
Director, Brockway McMillan, took office. (Hall, 2002) This agreement designatedthe Secretary of Defense as the Executive Agent for the NRP, and established the
NRO as an agency within the Defense Department. But it also created an NRO
Deputy Director, who would be a CIA official. The Director would be appointed by
the Secretary of Defense with the agreement of the DCI, and the Deputy Director
would be appointed by the DCI with the agreement of the Secretary of Defense. The
Director was to report directly to the Secretary of Defense, while keeping the DCI
informed.
A fourth agreement was signed on 11 August 1965, two months before McMillan
stepped down as NRO Director and was replaced by Alexander Flax. This agreement
returned influence back to the Defense Department. The agreement reaffirmed
the NRO as a Defense Department agency, and that the Secretary of Defense was
responsible for its operation and had “final approval” of its budget. The DCI was
no longer required to approve the director selected by the Secretary of Defense,
although the Secretary of Defense was still required to approve the DCI’s selection
for the deputy director.
This fourth agreement also established a National Reconnaissance Program
Executive Committee (EXCOM), initially consisting of the Deputy Secretary of
Defense as chair, the DCI, and a senior representative of the Office of the President.
The EXCOM met at least twice a year, with the final meeting occurring in December,when it would approve the NRO’s budget in time for it to be incorporated into the
Defense Department’s budget just before it was submitted to the White House.
These four agreements were sometimes referred to as the NRO “charter.” But, inpractice, the rules that governed the NRO evolved continuously. The central issue
has been whether the Secretary of Defense or the head of the Intelligence Community
should have greater say over NRP planning. Some histories (especially those thatdeal with the NRO’s early years) argue that the Defense Department prevailed
over the Intelligence Community. In reality the balance has shifted back and forth.
Statutes and policies created overlapping authorities.

14

For example, the agreements of the 1960s made the NRO a Defense Department
agency and gave the Secretary of Defense authority to appoint the NRO Director.
But in 1976, just a decade later, President Ford designated the NRO under Executive
Order 11905 as one of the agencies brought together into the U.S. Intelligence
Community. The following year President Carter designated the NRO as part of the
National Foreign Intelligence Program (NFIP) under Executive Order 12036, which
also gave the DCI “full and exclusive authority” over the preparation of the NFIP
budget (including the NRO). Both of these steps brought the NRO further under theauthority of the DCI.
In 1986, the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reform Act created a statutory process
for reviewing defense programs—by definition, including the NRO—and an
Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition) responsible for implementing it, again
strengthening the authority of the Defense Department. But in 2004 the Intelligence
Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 gave the new Director of National
Intelligence (DNI) “milestone decision authority,” or the prerogative to decide
whether to allow a major intelligence program—including those run by the NRO—
to proceed to the next acquisition phase, again strengthening the authority of theIntelligence Community.
The most recent turn in the relationship between the Defense Department andIntelligence Community in running the NRO occurred on 21 September 2010,
when the Director of National Intelligence and Secretary of Defense signed a newmemorandum of agreement. Under this agreement, which effectively serves as a newcharter for the NRO, the NRO Director is responsible for managing and operating
NRO programs and serves as the principal advisor to the Secretary of Defense andthe DNI on overhead systems. The agreement also stipulates that the NRO Director
will have direct access to both the Secretary and the DNI. The Defense Department
and Intelligence Community must validate requirements for a system that uses theirfunds but once a program is approved, the NRO Director has milestone decisionauthority for it, unless it is withheld on a “by exception” basis. (Clapper and Gates,
2010)
A certain amount of conflict between the Defense Department and Intelligence
Community is an inherent part of the NRO’s history, and remains a challenge forrunning the organization today. It will not go away because it is driven by a budgetthat is inevitably finite, and differences in organizational priorities, which arethemselves inevitable and which also change over time.

Verifying Arms Control
Arms control—specifically, ceilings on strategic weapons—became the lynchpin of
U.S.–Soviet relations after President Nixon took office in 1969. The feasibilityof a treaty depended on whether U.S. intelligence could detect potential Soviet
violations. Several events had combined to put satellite reconnaissance at thecenter of the negotiations.

15

First, the Soviets had themselves established the right to orbit satellites acrossnational boundaries by launching Sputnik 1 in 1957. Then, during the early 1960s
the Soviets gained parity with U.S. reconnaissance capabilities when they developed
their own intelligence satellites. As Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev reportedly
told Charles DeGaulle at the 1960 Paris Four Power Summit, “Airplanes nyet;
Sputniks, OK.”4 By 1963 Soviet Premier Khrushchev told an interviewer that onsite inspection was no longer a barrier to an arms control agreement because the“function can now be assumed by satellites.” (Klass, 1972, p. 31)
Because both the United States and the Soviet Union accepted satellite
reconnaissance (or realized they could not prevent it), overhead systems became thenatural solution for monitoring an arms control agreement that both governments
wanted. Thus, Article V of the 1971 Strategic Arms Limitation Agreement (SALT)
said that “each Party shall use national technical means of verification,” referring
to IMINT and SIGINT, usually collected through overhead systems.
Arms control became a critical factor in the planning of NRO programs during thisperiod, as John L. McLucas became NRO Director in 1969. The various treaties
established specific numerical ceilings or design limits on each country’s weapons.
These drove requirements for NRO systems. For example, SALT had different
limits for large ICBMs and small ICBMs, and stipulated that neither country
could enlarge its missile silos by more than 15 percent. NRO systems thus had
the task of distinguishing between large and small missiles, and assessing thevolume of Soviet silos. The treaty language, in effect, became requirements for thecapabilities of NRO satellites.

Beginning the Reduction of Secrecy
Arms control also triggered a process in which the NRO and its activities graduallybecame less secret. When the Nixon administration prepared SALT for Senate
ratification in 1971, senior officials debated whether to acknowledge that satellite
reconnaissance was a “national technical means” referred to in the treaty.
President Nixon decided not to, concerned that countries other than the Soviet
Union might object to U.S. surveillance. The Senate ratified the treaty without
explicitly discussing the exact definition of national technical means, or the NRO
and its capabilities.
As arms control became more contentious in the 1970s, however, there wasmore disagreement over whether the United States could monitor an agreement
effectively. This was the main reason President Carter officially acknowledged
U.S. satellite imagery systems on 1 October 1978. Near the end of a seemingly
routine speech about U.S. achievements in space at Kennedy Space Center,
President Carter mentioned that “photoreconnaissance satellites have become416

See Richard Garwin’s account in McDonald, R.A., Ed. (2002). “Recollections of the Pioneers and Foundersof National Reconnaissance.” Bethesda, MD. American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing,p. 20.

an important stabilizing factor in world affairs in the monitoring of arms control
agreements,” and that the United States would continue to develop them. The
Senate was considering SALT II for ratification, and the comment was intended topersuade skeptics and give officials greater leeway in discussing U.S. intelligencecapabilities.
Additional information about the NRO surfaced during this period at the espionage
trial of William Kampiles in November 1978. Kampiles, a former CIA employee,
was convicted for stealing a manual to the KH-11 system and selling part of it toRussian officials in Athens. The government acknowledged during the trial that
the KH-11 was a satellite-based electro-optical imagery system. Eight years later,
an actual example of overhead imagery appeared in the press when Samuel Loring
Morison, an analyst at the Naval Intelligence Support Center, sold a KH-11 image
he had stolen to a defense publication. (Morison was also convicted.)
The NRO had pioneered electro-optical systems in the 1970s when it became
clear that both political officials and military planners needed a more responsive
photoreconnaissance satellite. The Intelligence Community had not been able toretrieve satellite imagery of Soviet forces preparing to invade Czechoslovakia in
August 1969 until after the crisis was over. Similarly, the Intelligence Community
was surprised by the strike on Israel by Egypt and Syria in October 1973 in part
because the attackers acted faster than the NRO’s imaging systems could respond.
The NRO greatly expanded its capabilities during this period. Electro-opticalsystems, introduced when James Plummer served as NRO Director and then fully
implemented under his successor, Thomas Reed, were a major breakthrough thatrevolutionized satellite photoreconnaissance, totally replacing film return systems.
The NRO also developed new SIGINT collection systems and programs to support
military operations under Robert Hermann, who served previously at the National
Security Agency.

Launch Vehicle Problems
In the mid-1980s, a string of events demonstrated how much the nation had cometo depend on NRO systems, despite the high risk associated with developing,launching, and operating the nation’s reconnaissance satellites.
During the 1970s U.S. policy made the Space Transportation System—better known
as the Space Shuttle—the primary means for launching government payloads.
The Shuttle promised lower costs and more frequent launch opportunities. NRO
Director Hans Mark, an advocate of reusable launch vehicles, endorsed thispolicy. The NRO (along with other government agencies) began to wind down
their expendable launch vehicle programs, and began to optimize their satellites
for launch on the Shuttle.
Then, on 28 August 1985, a Titan 34-D launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base
failed during ascent, resulting in the loss of the payload. Five months later, on 28

17

January 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart catastrophically during
launch. On 18 April 1986, another Titan 34-D failed when a solid fuel booster
exploded shortly after liftoff at Vandenberg.
The August 1985 launch failure grounded the Titan vehicle for eight months while
investigators analyzed the cause. The April 1986 failure damaged the launchpad, taking it out of operation for more than a year. After the Challenger loss,
the Shuttle did not return to operation until September 1988. Although there
was no immediate threat to the NRO’s mission capability, these launch failures
highlighted the potential fragility of its constellation, and thus the need for reliable,
redundant launch systems. The NRO had come to rely on smaller numbers ofsatellites, partly because satellites had become bigger and more reliable, and thus
had longer operational lives. The new satellites were more capable, but because
they were fewer in number, the loss of one or two represented a major loss in total
capacity for the NRO. Since most satellites at the time had to be launched on a
specific launch vehicle or from a specific pad, the grounding of a vehicle or the lossof a pad could cause significant complications in NRO operations.
The Shuttle presented its own issues. Following the investigations of the Challenger
loss, the Reagan administration decided that it was unwise to risk the Shuttle andthe lives of astronauts to launch satellites and the NRO returned to relying mainly
on expendable launch vehicles. Fortunately, when the Shuttle program began toencounter delays in the early 1980s, NRO Director Edward “Pete” Aldridge had
proposed retaining expendable vehicles as an alternative to the Shuttle; it was inlarge part because of Aldridge’s efforts that the Titan production line continued tooperate.
The launch crisis of the late 1980s was one reason for the decision to develop
the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV). The goal was to create a morereliable, flexible, and less expensive family of launch systems by building on
the experience of the existing Atlas, Titan, and Delta vehicles. The NRO began
announcing launches on an unclassified basis beginning in 1996. The Air Forceawarded contracts for the EELV to Lockheed Martin and Boeing in late 1998,
which developed the Atlas V and Delta IV launch vehicles, respectively. Even with
the new generation of vehicles, launch capability remains a critical link and the
NRO is often stressed to maintain its planned constellation because of the limited
capacity of the ground infrastructure. (Carlson, 2010)

Desert Storm, Post-Cold War Drawdown,
Declassification, and Controversy
Operation Desert Storm, the 1991 campaign to liberate Kuwait after its invasion
by Iraq, marked the first “high tech” war. NRO imagery and signals intelligencesystems had played an important role in the decisive U.S.-led victory. But the war
also showed that NRO systems, which had been optimized to monitor arms control

18agreements, were often ill-suited to support combat operations. Gen H. Norman
Schwarzkopf, commander of the Coalition forces, told members of Congress thatdamage assessments were “one of the major areas of confusion.” (Moore, 1991) He
said that CIA and DIA analysts, using satellite imagery, underestimated bomb
damage by Coalition strikes, causing him to err too often on the side of caution as
the battle evolved.
Schwarzkopf also said that intelligence arrived too slowly. “The intelligencecommunity,” he said, “should be asked to come up with a system that will, in fact becapable of delivering a real-time product to a theater commander when he requests
that.” The House Armed Services Committee later cited “significant problems in
intelligence support” in which imagery “was often late, unsatisfactory, or unusable.”
It predicted that “The need for intelligence will grow as next generation weapons
enter the inventory. And as the sophistication of weapons increases, deficiencies
in intelligence support will proportionally constrain their effectiveness.” (House
Armed Services Committee, 1991)
Reflecting the experience of the Gulf War, President Clinton issued Presidential
Decision Directive 35 in March 1995. This directive codified support to militaryforces as a new top intelligence priority. Throughout the decade, the need to locate
specific targets and provide data directly to U.S. warfighters shaped the planning,
design, and operation of NRO systems.
Yet even as demands for NRO support grew, budgets got tighter. During the 1980s
and the early 1990s, the NRP had grown annually, even accounting for inflation.
With the Cold War over, Democrats and Republicans both supported a “peace
dividend” by cutting defense and intelligence spending. Between Fiscal Year 1990
and 1997 the budget of the National Foreign Intelligence Program declined by 14
percent. (see Combest, 1996)
This pressed the NRO to reduce costs by consolidating programs, building smaller,
less expensive satellites, and adopting contracting practices that reduced paperwork
and gave contractors incentives to work more efficiently. All of these choices, together
with the need to support a growing number of users and missions, led to decisions—and controversies—that affect almost every aspect of NRO operations even today,
two decades later.

Consolidating the “Alphabet Programs” and Declassifying “Fact Of”
In 1991 DCI Robert Gates appointed a commission chaired by former Lockheed
CEO Robert Fuhrman to review the structure and operation of the NRO. Manyof the Fuhrman Commission’s recommendations had circulated in the satellite
reconnaissance community for some time. Two years earlier NRO Director Martin
Faga had commissioned a study panel headed by RADM Robert Geiger and Barry
Kelly, former Special Assistant to the President, to consider how to improve
efficiency at the NRO. The end of the Cold War provided the opportunity to act onthese ideas.

19One step was to consolidate the “Alphabet Programs” into a structure withless redundancy and more central control. NRO Director Faga accepted therecommendations, and they were adopted as part of National Security Directive 67,
which President George H.W. Bush signed on 30 March 1992. The reorganization
took effect on 31 December 1992. Programs A, B, and C were replaced with threefunctional directorates, all to be located at the NRO’s new headquarters complex tobe constructed in Chantilly, Virginia. The three directorates were:•

The Signals Intelligence Systems Acquisition and Operations
Directorate (SIGINT), responsible for acquiring and operating
satellites that collect communications, telemetry, and otherelectronic emissions.

•

The IMINT Systems Acquisition and Operations Directorate(IMINT) responsible for acquiring and operating satellites thatcollect electro-optical imagery.

•

The COMM Directorate, responsible for the NRO’s information
technology and communications systems, as well as security for both
space-based and ground-based communications used by militaryforces, the Intelligence Community, and other government users.

The NRO established the Advanced Systems and Technology Directorate (AS&T)
as a fourth directorate in March 1997, responsible for new satellite reconnaissanceresearch and development.
The Fuhrman Commission had also recommended declassifying the “fact of” the
NRO’s existence. As we have seen, by 1978 satellite reconnaissance was alreadyrecognized as a “national technical means” to monitor arms control, and by 1992
more countries were developing satellite reconnaissance systems. Companies suchas France’s SPOT even sold imagery products commercially that were comparable
in resolution to Corona imagery from the 1960s.5
Also, the emphasis on support to military operations that followed Desert Storm
meant more people would have access to satellite reconnaissance products. It would
be hard to plan and disseminate these products without at least acknowledging thefact of an organization that produced them. Finally, the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence (SSCI) informed the Intelligence Community that it wanted todeclassify the existence of the NRO unless the President could certify that it would
cause “serious damage” to the nation (the standard for classifying information as“Secret” under Executive Orders). The existence of the NRO was declassified on 18
September 1992.

5

20

The U.S. government began to purchase intelligence imagery from commercial operators beginning in 2000,
following the launch of Ikonos by Space Imaging. Since then the National Geo-Spatial Imagery Agency has
greatly expanded this initiative, and the U.S. Government has licensed commercial operators to operate evenmore capable systems.

The Funding and the Headquarters Controversies
After the Fuhrman Commission had recommended consolidating the newly createddirectorates into a single headquarters, numerous NRO documents throughout theearly 1990s referred to the coming “collocation” in the Washington area. Some
referred to the site of the new headquarters, planned for the Westfields officecomplex in Chantilly, Virginia although this location remained classified.
On 8 August 1994, SSCI Chairman Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.) and Vice Chairman
John Warner (R-Va.) released a letter saying that they were “shocked anddismayed to learn that the cost of the new NRO headquarters at Westfields may
reach $350 million by completion, nearly double the amount most recently briefed
to the committee.” They said that “the total anticipated cost was never effectively
disclosed to our committee…” Sen. Warner said “I was absolutely astonished at themagnitude and proportions of this structure.”
Members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI)
disagreed with their Senate counterparts. HPSCI Chairman Larry Combest(R-Tex.) said “Charges of CIA or NRO deception are absolutely erroneous.” Ranking
minority member Norman Dicks (D-Wash.) said that his staff had been informed
about the cost of the building and that “It’s an open and shut case that they were
properly briefed.” DCI R. James Woolsey insisted that documents submitted to the
SSCI over four years had shown the size and cost of the new facility.
NRO Deputy Director, Jimmie Hill, testified to the SSCI that the NRO had treatedthe building as part of the costs of supporting the operation of the agency, rather
than as a separate project, consistent with an understanding he had reached earlier
with staffers of the committee. Even so, NRO Director Jeffrey Harris told thecommittee members two days later that, in hindsight, “the building costs shouldhave been broken out specifically” in the budget (Thomas, 1994; Weiner, 1994a;
Weiner 1994b; Pincus, 1994; and Laurie 2001).
A joint review carried out by the Defense Department and CIA found no intent
by NRO officials to mislead Congress and that the NRO had provided cost data to

Figure 9: NRO Headquarters Under Construction

Photo/CSNR Reference Collection

21

Congress when specifically requested. It also found that Congress approved thepurchase of property for a new headquarters and funds for starting construction
when it approved the reorganization of the NRO, and that the new building was no
more expensive than one would expect for a structure its size. However, the review
also concluded that the NRO failed to follow Intelligence Community budgeting
guidelines, and that by leaving funds for the building in the agency’s “base” budget
for operations, the total cost of the project was unclear to an outside observer.
Whatever the merits of the case, the incident fixed an unfavorable image of the
NRO in the public’s mind. This was compounded the following year when anotherspending controversy erupted.
The SSCI had begun to investigate the NRO’s accounting practices in 1992 when
it determined that the agency had accumulated unusually large sums in carryover
accounts—money appropriated for a program but which the NRO had not yet spentand held for the following year. The NRO had assured the SSCI that it would
eliminate such excessive “forward funding.” In September 1995 Senator Arlen
Specter (R-Pa.), now chairman of the SSCI, said that the NRO had failed to do so(Specter, 1995). An initial survey that summer estimated that carryover funds
across the entire NRO totaled $1.7 billion. After further review, this estimate rose
to $3.7 billion. (Laurie, 2001)
These changing estimates and the NRO’s inability to provide a single, firm estimateof the total carryover funds was as damaging as their initial discovery. Somejournalists reported that the NRO had “lost” the money in “a complete collapseof accountability.” Another SSCI member, Sen. Richard Bryan (D-Nev.) said that
there was “rampant mismanagement” at the NRO. DCI John Deutch said that
he was unaware of the surplus, as did White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta.
(Weiner, 1996; Bryan, 1995)
However, the SSCI’s Vice Chairman, Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) said that, based on the
hearings that the SSCI had held, the public accounts of the forward funding were
not accurate. Kerrey said that the funds were maintained in accord with DOD
regulations, and that Defense Department officials had known about the funds
since at least 1989, when the DOD Inspector General audited the NRO and agreed
with the size of the fund and its method of accounting. (Laurie, 2001)
The accumulated funds were a result of several factors. As satellite technology
matured, NRO satellites grew larger, became more complex and took longer tobuild. As noted previously, they also became more reliable and thus often lasted
longer, although it was hard to forecast how long. By the 1990s planning, building,and launching a satellite had become a process that extended over several years,
with more uncertainty in knowing exactly when the satellite would be needed onorbit.
If it appeared that a satellite was not needed when originally planned, the NRO
would hold off procuring the replacement. It put most of the funds in reserve and22

procured just enough hardware to ensure that it would not run short of criticalcomponents. It also funded enough activity to sustain its “industrial base,” whichmight atrophy if programs were simply deferred and skilled contractor personnel
had to find other work. There was an implicit assumption that the laws of probability
would rule, so that as some launches failed and some satellites expired earlier thanplanned, the funding flow would balance. The “forward funding” provided a buffer.
In any case, the NRO did not spend the funds on programs other than what had
been authorized.
One reason the NRO was unable to quickly provide Congress a specific figure
for exactly how much spending authority it had accumulated was because of
the organization’s history. The NRO had inherited an assortment of highly
compartmented budgeting systems from Programs A, B, and C—each based ina different department or agency—the Air Force, CIA, and Navy. Each had its
own procedures for managing secret operations. As a result, there was no single
accounting system for NRO officials to readily monitor unspent funds acrossprograms. Indeed, few persons had the authority to gather all of the information.
In addition to all of this, some officials and legislators seemed to expect NRO
programs to operate like a typical Defense Department weapons acquisition
program. In fact, there are important factors that make the two very different.
A typical military acquisition program has a development phase and a production
phase. The development phase might involve building one or two prototypes,
and inevitably requires solving unexpected problems as they are encountered.
Budgets for such development efforts usually contain a margin to accommodate
the uncertainty that comes with building a new system. Later, in the production
phase, budgets require less margin as the contractor gains experience and costs
become more predictable.
NRO programs usually do not follow this pattern. The NRO has historicallybuilt satellites in small numbers; the main exceptions were the early film return
IMINT satellites. So, the first satellite of an NRO program was in effect, both theprototype and a production item. It is also common for the NRO to make changes—
often major—from one satellite in a series to the next to add a capability or fix adeficiency. In effect, NRO programs never really went into production, at least in
the way most military systems did; they were always in the development phase.
This was why NRO program managers had typically added 20 to 30 percent to acontractor’s bid—a level of margin acceptable for a development program, but far
more than one would expect for a typical DOD acquisition. (See Fitzgerald, 2005a,
2005b, 2005c; Kohler, 2005; and Nowinski and Kohler, 2006)
As a result of the forward funding controversy, Secretary of Defense William Perryand Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch directed Director Harris and
Deputy Director Hill to resign. Congress passed legislation to recoup the carryover funds, which it applied to U.S. operations in the Balkans, the B-2 bomber
program, and other defense projects. (Morgan and Pincus, 1996)

23

The NRO began to develop a corporate accounting system to avoid similar situationsin the future. Perry appointed a new NRO Director, Keith Hall, who ordered acomprehensive review of NRO finances (Hall had previously served at the SSCI,
as well as the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of the Secretary of
Defense, and the CIA). Hall led an effort to set up a new financial system so thattoday NRO acquisition operates more like other DOD organizations. The current
system requires programs to use independent cost estimates when formulating
budget requests. It also uses metrics to measure progress in a program, and thenmanages budget margins to limit carryover funds to a few months.

The IMINT components—the Future Imaging Architecture (FIA)—were much more
problematic. FIA was the first IMINT system NRO developed after the dissolutionof the alphabet programs. The reorganization had broken up the Program A andProgram B teams that had developed the earlier systems. The NRO required
the FIA contractor to build the system to a specified, not-to-exceed cost (a direct
result of policies resulting from the forward funding controversy), gave more
responsibility to the contractor to manage the program (to improve efficiency andreduce costs), and encouraged the contractors to propose smaller, lighter vehicles(again, to reduce costs).

In many respects, the practices criticized in the forward funding controversy—ahighly compartmented process that minimized administration in favor of successon a tight schedule—were the very practices that had originally justified the
NRO’s establishment. President Eisenhower had taken the WS-117L out of the
Air Force chain of command, and then assigned what became Corona to the CIA
because he wanted a classified, more urgent program that was not bound by theusual constraints of the federal acquisition process. Several administrations
and Congress had supported this approach because in the 1950s and 1960s they
believed assessing the Soviet strategic threat was so important. In the 1970s and1980s monitoring arms was considered just as important. But by 1995, events
made clear that support for this approach had waned.

The NRO announced on 3 September 1999 that Boeing had won the FIA contract.
Hall, NRO Director at the time of the award, recalled later that Boeing proposeda more innovative design than its competitor, Lockheed Martin. He also recalledthat the NRO doubted Lockheed Martin could meet the cost ceiling with thesystem it proposed, but believed Boeing could (Taubman, 2007). The program soon
encountered technical problems, leading to a major spacecraft redesign, resulting
in delays and overruns. The program lacked the margin the NRO had used in thepast to accommodate such problems, and, to make matters even worse, the NRO
had difficulty assessing the problems and directing corrective action because somuch responsibility for the program had been given to the contractor.

Redesign of the Overhead Architecture
In the mid-1990s the NRO began an effort to fundamentally redesign its overheadarchitecture. Deputy Director Jimmie Hill described this effort in 1994. “At noother time since the creation of the NRO,” Hill told legislators, “has the government
embarked upon such a significant change in all of its satellite capabilities.” (Hill,
2001)

FIA became a continuing problem for the NRO. In May 2003, a joint Defense Science
Board and Air Force Scientific Advisory Board task force found that FIA was“significantly underfunded and technically flawed.” In 2005, DNI John Negroponte

Several factors were behind the redesign. First, and possibly most important,
the general drawdown in defense and intelligence spending pressed the NRO to
reduce costs. In 1996 a panel commissioned by DCI John Deutch at the directionof the HPSCI concluded that, in general, it was possible and desirable to build
smaller, less expensive reconnaissance satellites (Deutch, 27 June 1996). Also,
some critics claimed the NRO was losing its reputation for innovation, and pressed
it to introduce systems as ground-breaking as Corona and Grab had been in the
1960s, and electro-optical systems had been in the 1970s.
The SIGINT component of NRO’s plan, the Integrated Overhead Signals
Intelligence Architecture (IOSA), proceeded relatively smoothly. IOSA was mainly
a process of consolidating payloads that had been operated in similar orbits ontoa smaller number of satellites and integrating the ground stations. The satellites
themselves were either incrementally improved versions of existing systems, or
new systems using contractors that had many years of experience building theearlier systems. The relay satellite component of the plan also proceeded smoothly,as it was also an incremental change.

24

Figure 10: NRO Headquarters Today

Photo/CSNR Reference Collection25

decided the issue and terminated FIA as it had originally been constituted. The
NRO began developing a new strategy for IMINT. In 2009 NRO Director Bruce
Carlson described in general terms a new electro-optical system, Next Generation
Electo-Optical (NGEO) that will be a lower-risk modular system, capable of being
modified in increments over its lifetime. (Carlson, 2009)
As a difficult decade ended, Congress chartered a commission to study the futureof the NRO. The commission, chaired by Senator Robert Kerrey (D-Neb.) and
Representative Porter Goss (R-Fl.), reported in November 2000 that the NRO wasfacing the challenge of supporting a growing number of users and missions witha budget that had not grown proportionately. The commission concluded that
the NRO needed more funding to carry out its mission; a more effective means toprioritize its limited budget; and a new capability to do high priority, tight security
projects, as it had in the 1960s.

The NRO in the Twenty-First Century

To support this constellation, the NRO depends on a network of ground stations.
This network includes the Aerospace Data Facility–East at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia;
the Aerospace Data Facility–Southwest at the White Sands Missile Test Range,
New Mexico; and the Aerospace Data Facility–Colorado at Buckley Air Force
Base, Colorado. Each is a multi-mission facility that supports worldwide defense
operations and the collection, analysis, reporting, and dissemination of intelligence
information for multiple agencies.

Fifty years after its establishment, the NRO has become a global organization,
managing a complex system of satellites and ground stations that provides
intelligence support to an ever-expanding number and variety of users. The NRO
today operates a highly integrated architecture of satellites for signals intelligence,
imagery intelligence, and communications, in addition to its network of groundstations.

The NRO also maintains a presence at several locations overseas. These include
the Joint Defense Facility Pine Gap in Alice Springs, Australia and RAF Menwith
Hill, in Harrogate, United Kingdom. The NRO supports joint missions at theselocations through the provision of technical systems and shared research anddevelopment. The NRO’s participation is achieved with the consent of the hostgovernments and contributes to the national security of the countries involved.

NRO signals intelligence satellites, tracing their origin to Grab, continue to collecta variety of forms of information across the electromagnetic spectrum. These
include FISINT, (shorthand for “foreign instrumentation signals intelligence” ordata collected during the test or operation of aircraft, missiles, or other systems);
COMINT (communications intelligence taken from voice, text, or pictoraltransmissions); and ELINT (electronic intelligence from non-literal transmissions,such as radar).

In addition to its intelligence collection systems, the NRO maintains an extensive
global communications network that supports both NRO operators and othermilitary and intelligence users. The NRO’s communications infrastructure
includes for example, its encrypted satellite data relay system and messaging
systems essential for the organization to function, such as the Special Operations
Communications (SOCOMM) system.

NRO imagery systems, tracing their origin to Corona, today include both electrooptical and synthetic aperture radar satellites. These satellites provide a nearreal-time capability and provide U.S. military forces information for indications
and warning, as well as for planning and conducting military operations. In
addition, these imaging systems can be used to collect scientific and environmental
data and data on natural or man-made disasters.
The NRO constellation today also provides a capability to collect various formsof MASINT, or “measurement and signature intelligence.” MASINT is based on
the analysis of characteristics associated with specific targets or classes of targets.
MASINT has generally become more important to U.S. military forces because it isused to characterize foreign weapons systems, and is also used in conjunction withIMINT to program of the precision-guided munitions, which have become a larger
part of U.S. military operations. MASINT collected from satellites also provides
intelligence used for indications and warning.

26

One challenge that the NRO grapples with today is the increasing age of its
satellite systems. Currently some NRO satellites are more than 20 years old. Thisis partly good news, because it reflects the improvements in satellite lifetime that
the NRO has achieved. The design margins originally needed to meet minimum
requirements for reliability have typically allowed a satellite to greatly exceed its
planned lifespan. However, it also means that the level of service that the NRO
currently provides depends on an aging, and thus increasingly fragile, constellation.
(Carlson, 2010)

Support to Current Military Operations
The NRO has played a key role in operations against al-Qa’ida and other terrorist
organizations, as well as U.S.-led military operations against insurgencies in Iraq
and Afghanistan. These new adversaries often operate as dispersed, clandestine
networks and use geography to their advantage by blending in among the local
population, hiding in isolated, rugged locales like the Afghan-Pakistani border, or in
hostile, ungoverned regions like Somalia or North Yemen. Also, these adversaries
are successful in their use of technology; the Internet is a key recruitment tool, anda favored weapon is the improvised explosive device (IED).
In these new conflicts U.S. forces often must find specific individuals—terrorist
leaders, financiers, bomb-makers and other “high value targets” (HVTs)—or
specific objects, such as a WMD components. Often the NRO has had the only
collection capability that could provide intelligence U.S. officials and militaryforces require. To do this, the NRO has had to rethink its operations to deal withthese new threats.

27

Support to Arms Control and Other Missions
In addition to supporting military operations such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan,
the NRO continues to monitor arms control treaties and other international
agreements. Although the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START-1), which
went into effect in 1994, began a process in which on-site inspections have playeda larger role in verifying compliance, overhead systems are still important toprovide U.S. officials assurance that treaty partners are not concealing undeclaredfacilities or capabilities.

Figure 11: IED Munitions in Baghdad

Photo/Department of Defense

The NRO routinely collects intelligence for U.S. military operations, and in today’senvironment this support is more likely to be “multi-INT,” combining overhead
intelligence with other data. The NRO’s workforce today thus includes personnel
from throughout the Intelligence Community. NSA and NGA personnel areoften assigned to NRO facilities. Similarly, because U.S. forces are most likely
required to operate as members of a coalition, the NRO workforce also includes
representatives from the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.
NRO personnel themselves today more frequently deploy “downrange” with morethan 40 people typically deployed in combat theaters. (Sapp, 2010)
In addition to intelligence collection, the NRO also provides communications
support to U.S. and Coalition forces. For example, in one recent initiative NSA,
NGA, and the NRO combined their capabilities to develop an integrated counterIED capability. One of the NRO’s key contributions in this effort was providing thecommunications backbone for the system.
Because today’s threats can change tactics and methods so quickly, the NRO has
put greater emphasis on the ground segment of its systems. Though designingand building a new satellite today can require several years, it is often possible todevelop a new data processing system or software tool in a few months to exploit
data from the existing satellite constellation. By focusing on the ground segmentof a system, NRO can make more frequent modifications and add additional
capabilities more easily. This was one reason why NRO Director Scott Largeestablished a new Ground Enterprise Directorate (GED) in 2008, incorporating the
ground system elements of the SIGINT and IMINT Directorates, along with other
NRO components. GED works closely with NGA and NSA, as well as NRO’s own
Advanced Systems and Technology (AS&T) Directorate and other NRO components
to develop new multi-INT processing applications. GED also works with the COMM
Directorate to find new ways to use the NRO communications infrastructure, andthe new Mission Support Directorate (MSD) to better understand the specific needsof users.

28

Today the NRO also supports many domestic users. NRO imagery has been
available to users outside the national security community since October 1975,
when President Ford chartered the Civil Applications Committee (CAC). Throughthe CAC, the NRO can provide products to the Departments of Agriculture,
Commerce, Interior, Transportation, Health and Human Services, NASA, theFederal Emergency Management Agency, the Environmental Protection Agency,
the National Science Foundation, and the Coast Guard. The CAC process ensuresthat NRO products can be used more widely, while also ensuring compliance to
U.S. privacy statutes and regulations. During the 1990s NRO imagery was also
used in the MEDEA project, an Intelligence Community pilot study to assess how
intelligence projects could be used in long-term environmental studies.
More recently, the NRO has provided intelligence and information to law
enforcement, counterterrorism, and border protection organizations. The NRO has
also supported security planners for major public events to ensure public safety.
U.S. reconnaissance satellites have provided critical information to first responders
and relief operations during natural disasters. After Hurricane Katrina struck thesoutheastern United States in August 2005, for example, the Federal Emergency
Management Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers used NRO imagery toassess flooded areas and identify the location of hazards.

New Requirements for Information Sharing, New Approaches to Secrecy
As the users of NRO-derived intelligence grew, it became impractical for the NRO toconceal the basic features of its systems and operations as it had in its early years.
However, some experts believed that opening up the NRO had the unintended
effect of making it harder to protect truly sensitive capabilities, and this, in turn,made it harder for the NRO to develop the kinds of breakthrough systems that it
was known for in its early years.
The NRO Commission captured this sentiment in its November 2000 report,
recommending that the NRO strike a more nuanced balance between openness
and secrecy. NRO Director Peter Teets and his successor, Donald Kerr adopted
these recommendations with an approach that would ultimately make most NRO
program information more widely available, while compartmenting a much more
limited set of information related to new or especially sensitive systems.
Under its new policy, the NRO put most information that had been protected in29the BYEMAN control system into the TALENT KEYHOLE control system, a larger
compartment that most NRO consumers with clearances could already access.
The new policy then established a new, smaller, and more limited control system,RESERVE. This approach has allowed the NRO to develop new systems andtechnology with greater security and speed, and then make information about eachsystem available to larger groups of users gradually, as each becomes more widelyused and more individuals are aware of its existence.

Looking to the Future
When the NRO was established in 1961, several factors combined to create a uniqueorganization. Key technologies—launch vehicles and sensors—had just reached alevel of maturity that allowed some visionaries to imagine how they might solve
the problem of monitoring the Soviet Union. Because the Soviet nuclear threat
was so menacing, U.S. officials were prepared to give the NRO enormous discretionin finance and management. Since relatively few individuals needed access tosatellite intelligence and because the technology was so sensitive, these officials
were also prepared to allow the NRO to work in strict secrecy.
Today at the fifty-year mark, the nature of the threat has changed. Instead of asingle, slowly changing, existential threat, now the United States faces a variety ofchanging threats. Many can cause significant harm, but nothing on the scale of a
Soviet nuclear strike. American politics has changed, too. Congress expects much
more information, and more influence over national security decisions than was
the case in 1961. It is unlikely that any government program could enjoy the kindof autonomy and maintain the blanket secrecy that the NRO did in its early years.
Moreover, after five decades the NRO supports many more users. Overhead
reconnaissance is one of several capabilities that must be integrated into
intelligence. Many of the technologies the NRO pioneered are now commerciallyavailable and widely known. As a result, the NRO is constantly challenged to
identify when and how it can make its unique contribution to U.S. security withnew capabilities that our adversaries are unaware of, or at least unable to counter.
Partly because the NRO has been so successful, more users depend on it. This
has raised the potential costs of a failure. This makes it harder for the NRO to
take some of the risks it took in its early years. Yet few organizations are better
situated for taking those risks. The NRO has its own authorities, budget, accessto personnel, and mission.
After fifty years, the challenge for the NRO is to maintain the reliability and containthe costs of its current systems, while at the same time providing the opportunityand challenge that attracts the nation’s top minds to imagine new ways to protect
American security with overhead reconnaissance.

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33

Appendix A
Timeline of Major Events in NRO History

34

Date

Event

1949

29 August: Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb.

1950

4 December: Fearing imminent war with the Soviet Union after the
North’s invasion of South Korea on 25 June, British Prime Minister
Clement Atlee and U.S. President Harry Truman agree to cooperate inoverflights of Soviet territory.

1953

8 June: Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (AFSAB) reports that it
is possible to build small, lightweight nuclear warheads; this leads
to the approval of the Air Force’s ballistic missile program, which
provides the future launch vehicles for NRO satellites.

1953

12 August: Soviet Union tests a rudimentary hydrogen bomb, which
prompts President Truman to establish a “Technical Capabilities
Panel” one year later in order to address this new threat. The panel’s
proposal serves as the foundation for U-2 development.

1954

25 November: President Eisenhower approves the development of
the U-2 aircraft.

1955

26 May: President Eisenhower selects NRL to lead the Vanguard
research satellite program for the International Geophysical Year.

1956

10 January: Air Force launches the first of 516 high-altitude
reconnaissance balloons as part of the Genetrix program to collectimagery of the Soviet Union.

1956

13 January: President Eisenhower establishes the President’s Boardof Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities (PBCFIA), thepredecessor of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.

1956

5 February: Genetrix program conducts last launch; the program ends
after Soviet protests.

1956

2 April: WS-117L program office completes the first comprehensive
development plan for a reconnaissance satellite.

1956

4 July: First U-2 mission is flown.

35

36

Date

Event

1961

4 October: Soviet Union orbits Sputnik 1, first artificial satellite.

6 September: SECDEF Robert McNamara establishes the National
Reconnaissance Office, responsible for managing the National Reconnaissance Program. Joseph V. Charyk and Richard M. Bissell, Jr. are thefirst NRO co-directors; Bissell serves until 28 February 1962, Charyk
serves until 1 March 1963.

1957

24 October: President’s Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence
Activities recommends early consideration of a rush project to develop a space imaging capability.

1962

2 May: Second agreement between the Defense Department and CIA
organizing the NRO; this agreement provides for a single NRO Director
to be appointed by the Secretary of Defense, with the concurrence of
the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI).

1957

18 December: President Eisenhower ends the SENSIT airborne reconnaissance program.

1962

26 April: CIA’s A-12/Oxcart reconnaissance aircraft makes first flight.

1958

31 January: Army launches Explorer-1, the first successful U.S. satellite.
1962

1958

8 February: President Eisenhower approves the Corona program;Corona is split off from WS-117L.

23 July: Charyk establishes the “alphabet structure” that the NRO will
use until 1992: Program A (Air Force satellites), Program B (CIA satellites), Program C (Navy satellites), and Program D (Air Force and CIA
reconnaissance aircraft).

1962

13 December: First Poppy mission.

1958

17 March: First successful Vanguard mission.
1963

1958

28 March: Naval Research Laboratory begins development of Grab,
the first SIGINT satellite.

1 March: Brockway McMillan becomes NRO Director; serves until 1
October 1965.

1963

13 March: Third agreement between Defense Department and CIA,making the NRO a separate operating agency with the Defense
Department, authorizing the Secretary of Defense to appoint the
NRO Director with the concurrence of the DCI, and establishing a NRO
Deputy Director to be appointed by the DCI with the concurrence of
the Secretary of Defense.

Date

Event

1957

3 August: Soviet Union tests the SS-6/R-7, the first ICBM.

1957

1958

29 July: President Eisenhower establishes the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration.

1959

25 June: First Corona test fails.

1959

24 August: President Eisenhower gives final approval for NRL to proceed with development of Grab under Project Tattletale.

1963

24 August: First KH-4A (dual film bucket) Corona mission.

1960

1 May: CIA U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers is shot down over the Soviet
Union.

1963

22 December: First flight of SR-71, the Air Force version of Oxcart.

1960

22 June: Grab, the first successful reconnaissance satellite, is launchedfrom Cape Canaveral.

1964

1960

18 August: Corona-14 collects the first reconnaissance imagery fromspace, depicting Mys Shmidta, a Soviet bomber base in northeast
Siberia.

29 February: National Security Council approves acknowledging
existence of Oxcart; later that day it is announced as the “A-11,” an“advanced experimental aircraft” with “military and commercial applications.”

1965

1960

31 August: President Eisenhower creates a civilian-led office, the USAF
Office of Missile and Satellite Systems, responsible for the Air Forcespace-based reconnaissance satellite program; this office later serves
as the organizational basis of the NRO.

11 August: DCI William Rayburn, Jr. and Deputy Secretary of Defense
Cyrus Vance sign agreement under which the NRO currently operates,
removing the requirement for concurrence by the DCI in appointing
the NRO Director.

37

Date

Event

Date

Event

1965

1 October: Alexander Flax becomes NRO Director; serves until 17
March 1969.

1976

28 June: Charles Cook becomes acting NRO Director; serves until 8
August 1976.

1966

President Johnson decides to terminate A-12 program by January
1968; later extended to July.

1976

9 August: Thomas Reed becomes NRO Director; serves until 7 April
1977.

1967

15 September: First KH-4B Corona mission.

1977

20 January: First NRO electro-optical satellite system is declared
operational by President Carter.

1968

21 June: Final A-12 flight is completed.

1977

24 January: President Carter designates the NRO as part of the National Foreign Intelligence Program.

1969

17 March: John McLucas becomes NRO director; serves until 20
December 1973.

1977

7 April: Charles Cook becomes acting NRO Director; serves until 3
August 1977.

1971

22 January: First known mention of the NRO in the press, an article by
Benjamin Welles, “Foreign Policy Disquiet Over Intelligence Setup” in
New York Times.

1977

3 August: Hans Mark becomes NRO Director; serves until 8 October
1979.

1971

14 December: Final Poppy mission.

1978

24 January: President Carter signs EO 12036, “United States Intelligence Activities,” giving “full and exclusive authority” over the preparation of the National Foreign Intelligence Program budget (including
the NRO) to the DCI.

1972

25 May: Final Corona mission.
1978

1 October: To support ratification of SALT II, President Carter confirmsthat the US possesses and uses intelligence collection satellites.

1978

22 December: Former CIA employee William Kampiles sentenced to
40 years imprisonment for espionage committed in March-April 1977,
when he stole a KH-11 manual and sold it to Russian officials in Athens
for $3,000.

1979

8 October: Robert Hermann becomes NRO Director; serves until 2
August 1981.

1981

3 August: Edward “Pete” Aldridge becomes NRO Director; serves until
16 December 1988.

1981

4 December: President Reagan signs EO 12333, “United States Intelligence Activities,” the current charter (with modifications) under which
the U.S. Intelligence Community, including the NRO, operates.

1982

4 July: President Reagan signs National Security Decision Directive 42,
designating the Space Shuttle as the primary launch system for U.S.
government payloads; it directs Defense Department (including NRO)
payloads to be compatible with the Shuttle.

1973

1973
1974

1975

1976

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12 October: First known reference to the NRO in a public record,
inadvertently made in a report by the Special Senate Committee toStudy Questions Related to Secret and Confidential Government
Documents.
21 December: James Plummer becomes NRO Director; serves until 28
June 1976.
1 October: Program D is disbanded; all of its aircraft are transferred to
the U.S. Air Force for tactical missions .
3 October: President Ford charters the Civil Applications Committee(CAC), making NRO imagery available to users outside the national
security community for the first time.
18 February: President Ford issues EO 11905, “United States ForeignIntelligence Activities,” formally establishing the National ForeignIntelligence Program and publicly defining for the first time the U.S.
Intelligence Community, including the NRO, which is euphemistically
identified with the label “special offices for the collection of specialized intelligence through reconnaissance programs.”

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Date

Event

1994

8 August: Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.) Chairman of the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence, and Sen. John Warner, (R-Va.), Vice
Chairman, release letter asserting that the NRO concealed the true sizeand cost of the Westfield HQ, then under construction.

1995

22 February: President Clinton issues Executive Order 12951 declassifying Corona and releasing most Corona imagery to the public.

1995

2 March: President Clinton is reported to have issued Presidential
Decision Directive 35, establishing support to military forces as a top
intelligence priority.

1995

24 September: Press reports that the NRO accumulated unused funds
from programs. The reports say that DCI John Deutch had responded
to complaints from congressional committees in June. Investigations
would later place the total “carry over” funds at $3.8 billion.

1996

27 February: DCI John Deutch directs resignation of NRO Director
Harris and NRO Deputy Director Jimmie Hill; Keith Hall becomes Acting NRO Director.

3 July: The Geiger-Kelly Study, led by RADM Robert Geiger and D.
Barry Kelly, recommends a more integrated NRO.

1996

1989

28 September: Martin Faga becomes NRO Director; serves until 5
March 1993.

26 August: Commission chartered by Acting NRO Director Hall andchaired by retired Adm. David Jeremiah issues its report on the futureof the agency.

1996

18 December: First public notification of an NRO launch.

1992

5 March: The DCI Task Force on the National Reconnaissance Office,chaired by former Lockheed CEO Robert Fuhrman, recommends
disbanding the “alphabet structure.”

1997

28 March: Keith Hall becomes NRO Director; serves until 13 December
2001.

1992

30 March: President George H.W. Bush signs National Security Directive 67, “Intelligence Capabilities 1992-2005,” which approves the DCI’s
recommendation to realign the NRO.

1997

31 March: Advanced Systems and Technology Directorate (AS&T) is
stood up.

1992

18 September: Government declassifies “fact of” the NRO.

1998

17 June: Grab, the first reconnaissance satellite, is declassified in conjunction with the 75th anniversary of the Naval Research Laboratory.

1992

31 December: NRO realignment is put into effect reorganizing alongfunctional lines with directorates for SIGINT, IMINT, and COMMS.

1999

3 September: The NRO announces the award of the Future Imagery
Architecture contract to Boeing.

1993

6 March: Jimmie Hill becomes Acting NRO Director; serves until 19
May 1994.

2000

1994

19 May: Jeffrey Harris becomes NRO Director; serves until 26 February
1996.

1 November: National Commission for the Review of the National
Reconnaissance Office, established by Congress in early 2000, recommends that a portion of the NRO return to its more secretive, compartmented approach.

2001

13 December: Peter Teets becomes NRO Director; serves until 25
March 2005.

Date

Event

1985

28 August: A Titan 34-D launched from Vandenberg Air Force Basefails during ascent, resulting in the loss of the payload. This begins astring of mid-1980s launch vehicle problems.

1986

28 January: Loss of Space Shuttle Challenger during launch.

1986

18 April: A Titan 34-D fails when a booster explodes shortly after liftoff
at Vandenberg Air Force Base, resulting in the loss of the payload.

1986

1 October: Goldwater-Nichols Reform Act establishes the current
statutory process for Defense Department acquisition.

1988

29 September: Space shuttle returns to operation after two years ofdesign review and modifications following the Challenger loss.

1988

17 December: Jimmie Hill becomes Acting NRO Director; serves until
27 September 1989.

1989

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Date

Event

2004

11 May: DCI authorizes the NRO to declassify the fact of the Poppy
ELINT satellite.

2004

17 December: President George W. Bush signs into law theIntelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004,
reaffirming the NRO as a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community,
establishing the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) as head of theIntelligence Community, and transferring the DCI’s authorities over
the NRO to the DNI.

Appendix B
Directors of the National Reconnaissance OfficeNameTour of Duty

Richard M. Bissell, Jr. andJoseph V. Charyk (Co-directors)

Sept 1961 – Apr 1962

Joseph V. Charyk

Apr 1962 – Mar 1963

Brockway McMillan

Mar 1963 – Oct 1965

Alexander H. Flax

Oct 1965 – Mar 1969

John L. McLucas

Mar 1969 – Dec 19732005

26 March: Dennis Fitzgerald becomes Acting NRO Director; serves
until 25 July 2005.

2005

20 May: NRO retires the BYEMAN control system.

2005

26 July: Donald Kerr becomes NRO Director; serves until 4 October
2007.

James W. Plummer

Dec 1973 – June 1976

28 September: Boeing received from the NRO partial stop-workorder on the Future Imaging Architecture.

Charles W. Cook (Acting)June 1976 – Aug 1976

2005

Thomas C. ReedAug 1976 – Apr 1977

2007

19 October: Scott Large becomes NRO Director; serves until 18 April
2009.

Charles W. Cook (Acting)Apr 1977 – Aug 1977

Hans M. MarkAug 1977 – Oct 1979

2008

1 April: NRO establishes Ground Enterprise Directorate (GED).

Robert J. Hermann

Oct 1979 – Aug 1981

Edward C. Aldridge, Jr.

Aug 1981 – Dec 1988

2009

12 June: Gen. Bruce Carlson, USAF (Ret) becomes NRO Director.

Jimmie D. Hill (Acting)Dec 1988 – Sept 1989

Martin C. Faga

Sept 1989 – Mar 19932010

21 September: Director of National Intelligence and Secretaryof Defense sign an agreement on the mission, authorities, andresponsibilities of the NRO and the NRO Director, superseding theagreement of 11 August 1965.

Jimmie D. Hill (Acting)Mar 1993 – May 1994

Jeffrey K. Harris

May 1994 – Feb 1996

Keith R. Hall

Feb 1996 – Dec 2001

Peter B. Teets

Dec 2001 – Mar 2005

Dennis Fitzgerald (Acting)Mar 2005 – July 2005

Donald M. Kerr

July 2005 – Oct 2007

Scott F. Large

Oct 2007 – Apr 2009

Bruce A. Carlson

Apr 2009 – Present

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“We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.”— Dwight D. Eisenhower

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