3
The National Reconnaissance Office at 50 Years:

A Brief H istor y

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
i

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 make 

effective 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 the 

present, 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

Published by

National Reconnaissance Office

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance

14675 Lee Road

Chantilly, Virginia 20151-1715

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-937219-00-0

Contents

iii Foreword 

iv Preface

v Introduction

1 The Need for Intelligence Against a Hard Target

1 The Fear of Surprise Attack

3 Experts and Technology Step In

7 Grab, Corona and the Establishment of the National 

Reconnaissance Office

8 The Beginning of SIGINT Collection From Space

9 Corona: The First IMINT Satellite

15 Verifying Arms Control

16 Beginning the Reduction of Secrecy

17 Launch Vehicle Problems

18 Desert Storm, Post-Cold War Drawdown, Declassification, 

and Controversy

19 Consolidating the “Alphabet Programs” and Declassifying “Fact Of”

21 The Funding and the Headquarters Controversies

24 Redesign of the Overhead Architecture

26 The NRO in the Twenty-First Century

27 Support to Current Military Operations

29 Support to Arms Control and Other Missions

29 New Requirements for Information Sharing, New

Approaches to Secrecy

30 Looking to the Future

31 References 

35 Appendix A: Timeline of Major Events in NRO History

43 Appendix B: Directors of the National Reconnaissance Office

 Illustrations

2 Figure 1: Original National Reconnaissance Staff, 1961

4 Figure 2: The U-2 Aircraft

6 Figure 3: The SR-71 Aircraft

8 Figure 4: Reid D. Mayo

8 Figure 5: Grab, Piggybacked Atop TIROS 

10 Figure 6: Engineers Ready Corona

12 Figure 7: Dr. Joseph V. Charyk

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

21 Figure 9: NRO Headquarters Under Construction

25 Figure 10: NRO Headquarters Today

28 Figure 11: IED Munitions in Baghdad
iii

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 the 

age: 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 the 

Soviet Union, NRO systems later became the primary means that made possible 

the arms control agreements that defused U.S.–Soviet tensions. After the collapse 

of the Soviet Union, NRO systems became ever more integrated into U.S. military 

capabilities, playing a critical role in the Gulf War, peacekeeping operations, and 

most 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 technologically 

challenging American space program proceeding along a parallel path—but in 

strictest secrecy. Indeed, it was not until 1978 that a President acknowledged the 

basic 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 that 

exceed 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 who 

created the NRO in the first place will inspire their successors, who will take the 

organization to even greater achievements.

Robert A. McDonald, Ph.D.

Director, Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance

National Reconnaissance Office

ii
iv v

Preface

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 fiftieth 

anniversary. It draws on the extensive body of unclassified and declassified material 

about the NRO that is available today to examine the agency’s accomplishments and 

the 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.

Bruce Berkowitz, Ph.D.

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance

National Reconnaissance Office

Introduction

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 United 

States would never again face a devastating, surprise attack.

Three forces molded the subsequent chapters in the National Reconnaissance Office’s 

history: brilliant scientists and engineers, stunning reconnaissance technology, and 

hard 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 the 

last fifty years of air and space advances. 

A highly talented group of individuals with diverse backgrounds played important 

roles 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 and 

President of the Polaroid Corporation, who became an influential advocate for the 

use of new technology to solve intelligence puzzles. Dr. Richard Bissell, the talented 

Marshall Plan administrator, applied those management skills to develop two 

early successful reconnaissance programs—the U-2 high-altitude spy plane and the 

nation’s first photoreconnaissance satellite—Corona. Dr. Joseph Charyk, who would 

later lead one of the nation’s largest commercial satellite companies, provided early 

and 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 the 

launch 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 that 

environment. Consequently, scientists and engineers developed new materials: film, 

lenses, antennas, and other components to survive in space. The U-2, the nation’s 
vi 1

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 the 

President was scheduled to attend a meeting of the National Security Council. One 

of the scientists, Polaroid Corporation’s CEO Edwin H. “Din” Land, unrolled a spool 

of 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 installations 

in the Soviet Union. President Eisenhower had approved the project two and half 

years before. (McDonald, 2002, p. 34)

Land and another advisor attending the meeting, James R. Killian, Jr., President 

of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had championed Corona through 

its 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 established 

the 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 the 

establishment of the National Reconnaissance Office. (McElheney, 1999; Hall and 

Laurie, 1999)

The NRO can trace its heritage to World War II, when U.S. forces used aircraft to 

collect 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 potential 

of a Soviet surprise attack. In February 1946, Joseph Stalin had declared war with 

first high-altitude aircraft; Grab, the first signals intelligence system; and Corona, 

the first photoreconnaissance system, exemplify technology’s successful response to 

these challenges. For these systems, existing technology was reshaped to operate 

in 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 faced 

questions 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 from 

national reconnaissance systems. By the mid-1950s controversies arose whether 

long-range bombers in the Soviet arsenal exceeded the number of those in the United 

States. 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 intelligence 

challenges from space. 

Although this is an unclassified history of national reconnaissance, and 

consequently an incomplete history, it nonetheless provides glimpses into the force 

of 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 such 

challenges 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
2 3

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 fall 

of China to communism. Pearl Harbor was still a fresh memory; these fears grew 

even 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 for 

recruiting 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 the 

invasion of South Korea, British Prime Minister Clement Atlee met with President 

Harry Truman in Washington. Some historians believe that it was at this meeting 

that the two leaders, fearing imminent war with the Soviet Union, agreed to 

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 the 

production 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, and 

Minsk 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 east 

of the Urals, were not imaged at all.

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 emerge 

that 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 reconnaissance 

aircraft 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 a 

significant step, bringing the CIA into the development of large-scale technical 

Figure 1: Original National Reconnaissance Staff, 1961

1 See, in particular, Hall and Laurie, 2003. The two scholars report that they could find documentation of the 

agreement, noting the extreme sensitivity of the proposed operations, but argue that this was when it was 

made on the basis of later events and circumstantial evidence. 

Photo/CSNR Reference Collection
4 5

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,” he 

wrote, “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 (now 

Yekaterinburg) 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 aircraft 

with 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 to 

1959 to review proposals from several aerospace contractors. (Robarge, 2009)

Lockheed, led by its chief engineer Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, proposed a series of 

concepts 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 

surface would continue to circle it forever in a closed orbit; it would 

become an ‘artificial satellite’ ... It would thus be possible to have 

a hundred-weight of instruments circling the earth perpetually 

outside the limits of the atmosphere and broadcasting information 

as long as the batteries lasted. Since the rocket would be in 

brilliant sunshine for half the time, the operating period might 

be indefinitely prolonged by the use of thermocouples and photoelectric elements ... .

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 that 

An ‘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 lean 

post-war years, these were just shoestring efforts.

The Army, working with German scientists who had surrendered at the end of the 

war, 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 and 

NASA have often worked together. In the 1960s for example, NASA used technology 

that NRO had developed for earth imaging systems in its Lunar Orbiter camera, and 

the 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 Design 

of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship, was an engineering analysis for a 

generic launch vehicle and satellite. It speculated that such a system might serve 

as a communications or a scientific research platform. However, it also mentioned 

Figure 2: The U-2 Aircraft

Photo/CSNR Reference Collection
6 7

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 ran 

out, 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 the 

hardest technical challenge in developing a satellite was not the spacecraft, but the 

launch 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 to 

establish 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 the 

highest priority U.S. defense program. It also started development of the Thor, a 

smaller 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.

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 for 

reconnaissance satellites based on Lockheed’s Agena upper stage, and incorporating 

a 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 first 

intercontinental ballistic missile in August 1957, and a month later, Sputnik-1, the 

first 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 for 

satellite 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, the 

Vanguard 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).

Figure 3: The SR-71 Aircraft

2 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 in 

a 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 

Photo/CSNR Reference Collection
8 9

combining SIGINT and IMINT that provided the foundation for the Air Force’s space 

reconnaissance program. These three programs, together with the CIA’s A-12 and 

Air 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 for 

electronic intelligence collection at least as early as 1957, along with other military 

missions such as communications, navigation, and scientific measurements of 

atmospheric and space phenomenon that might affect military operations. 

NRL had previously developed crystal video technologies deployed on submarines to 

intercept 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 of 

mounting 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)

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 equipped 

with 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 the 

entire 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 was 

within 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 were 

for 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 of 

Consultants 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 in 

which 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 an 

interim 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, head 

of the Air Force’s ICBM and WS-117L projects. They agreed that the best course 

of action was to break up the WS-117L project and concentrate on the film recovery 

Figure 4: Reid D. Mayo Figure 5: Grab, Piggybacked Atop TIROS Photo/CSNR Reference Collection

Photo/CSNR Reference Collection
10 11

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 political 

sensitivity of overhead reconnaissance. Bissell was appointed to manage the 

program, 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 entered 

service. 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 the 

KH-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, the 

final 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 the 

remainder 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 Force 

Joseph 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. 

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

Figure 6: Engineers Ready Corona Photo/CSNR Reference Collection
12 13

Company, generally wanted to streamline the Defense Department’s structure by 

consolidating organizations with like functions; the Defense Intelligence Agency and 

the Defense Supply Agency were examples. Since space reconnaissance activities 

were already under a civilian chief in the Department of the Air Force, it was natural 

for 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 the 

Intelligence 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 separate 

organizations, 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 the 

Secretary of Defense control a CIA program as part of the NRO? Making the NRO 

part of the Intelligence Community created even more issues. Should the Director of 

Central 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, 

CIA, and Navy components within NRO inevitably competed when an opportunity 

emerged to build a new kind of system. All three organizations were hungry for 

a 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 reasons 

for being in the satellite business, and thus different priorities. The Air Force was 

most 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 their 

requirement 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 and 

communications 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 other 

promised a high payoff, but also higher risks. The decision of which approach to 

use in any particular case was likely to go to the White House and, in this case, the 

President 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. This 

agreement also added the Navy’s Grab program to the NRP.

Two months later, on 23 July 1962 Charyk, now the sole director, established the 

basic 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 the 

northern Virginia suburbs of Washington; 

• Program C, the Navy program, comprised of personnel from NRL, the 

Navy 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 were 

transferred to the Air Force when the CIA’s A-12s were deactivated 

on 1 October 1974).

Figure 7: Dr. Joseph V. Charyk Figure 8: Dr. Richard M. Bissell, Jr. Photo/CSNR Reference Collection

Photo/CSNR Reference Collection
14 15

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, and 

program 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 and 

pressed for a third agreement, dated 13 March 1963, shortly after the second NRO 

Director, Brockway McMillan, took office. (Hall, 2002) This agreement designated 

the 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, in 

practice, 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 that 

deal 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.

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 the 

authority 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 the 

Intelligence Community.

The most recent turn in the relationship between the Defense Department and 

Intelligence Community in running the NRO occurred on 21 September 2010, 

when the Director of National Intelligence and Secretary of Defense signed a new 

memorandum of agreement. Under this agreement, which effectively serves as a new 

charter 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 and 

the 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 their 

funds but once a program is approved, the NRO Director has milestone decision 

authority 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 for 

running the organization today. It will not go away because it is driven by a budget 

that is inevitably finite, and differences in organizational priorities, which are 

themselves 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 feasibility 

of a treaty depended on whether U.S. intelligence could detect potential Soviet 

violations. Several events had combined to put satellite reconnaissance at the 

center of the negotiations.
16 17

First, the Soviets had themselves established the right to orbit satellites across 

national 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 the 

natural 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 this 

period, 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 the 

volume of Soviet silos. The treaty language, in effect, became requirements for the 

capabilities of NRO satellites.

Beginning the Reduction of Secrecy

Arms control also triggered a process in which the NRO and its activities gradually 

became 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 was 

more 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 become 

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 to 

persuade skeptics and give officials greater leeway in discussing U.S. intelligence 

capabilities.

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 to 

Russian 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 to 

retrieve 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-optical 

systems, introduced when James Plummer served as NRO Director and then fully 

implemented under his successor, Thomas Reed, were a major breakthrough that 

revolutionized 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 come 

to 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 this 

policy. 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 

4 See Richard Garwin’s account in McDonald, R.A., Ed. (2002). “Recollections of the Pioneers and Founders 

of National Reconnaissance.” Bethesda, MD. American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 

p. 20. 
18 19

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 launch 

pad, 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 of 

satellites, 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 loss 

of 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 and 

the lives of astronauts to launch satellites and the NRO returned to relying mainly 

on expendable launch vehicles. Fortunately, when the Shuttle program began to 

encounter delays in the early 1980s, NRO Director Edward “Pete” Aldridge had 

proposed retaining expendable vehicles as an alternative to the Shuttle; it was in 

large part because of Aldridge’s efforts that the Titan production line continued to 

operate.

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 more 

reliable, 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 Force 

awarded 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 intelligence 

systems 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 

agreements, were often ill-suited to support combat operations. Gen H. Norman 

Schwarzkopf, commander of the Coalition forces, told members of Congress that 

damage 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 intelligence 

community,” he said, “should be asked to come up with a system that will, in fact be 

capable 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 military 

forces 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. Many 

of 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 on 

these ideas.
20 21

One step was to consolidate the “Alphabet Programs” into a structure with 

less redundancy and more central control. NRO Director Faga accepted the 

recommendations, 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 three 

functional directorates, all to be located at the NRO’s new headquarters complex to 

be 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 other 

electronic emissions. 

• The IMINT Systems Acquisition and Operations Directorate 

(IMINT) responsible for acquiring and operating satellites that 

collect 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 military 

forces, 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 reconnaissance 

research 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 already 

recognized as a “national technical means” to monitor arms control, and by 1992 

more countries were developing satellite reconnaissance systems. Companies such 

as 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 the 

fact of an organization that produced them. Finally, the Senate Select Committee 

on Intelligence (SSCI) informed the Intelligence Community that it wanted to 

declassify 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.

The Funding and the Headquarters Controversies

After the Fuhrman Commission had recommended consolidating the newly created 

directorates into a single headquarters, numerous NRO documents throughout the 

early 1990s referred to the coming “collocation” in the Washington area. Some 

referred to the site of the new headquarters, planned for the Westfields office 

complex 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 and 

dismayed 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 the 

magnitude 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 treated 

the 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 the 

committee members two days later that, in hindsight, “the building costs should 

have 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

5 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 even 

more capable systems. 

Photo/CSNR Reference Collection
22 23

Congress when specifically requested. It also found that Congress approved the 

purchase 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 another 

spending 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 spent 

and 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 estimate 

of the total carryover funds was as damaging as their initial discovery. Some 

journalists reported that the NRO had “lost” the money in “a complete collapse 

of 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 to 

build. 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 on 

orbit.

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 and 

procured just enough hardware to ensure that it would not run short of critical 

components. It also funded enough activity to sustain its “industrial base,” which 

might 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 than 

planned, 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 in 

a 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 across 

programs. 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 historically 

built 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 the 

prototype 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 a 

deficiency. 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 a 

contractor’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 Perry 

and 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)
24 25

The NRO began to develop a corporate accounting system to avoid similar situations 

in the future. Perry appointed a new NRO Director, Keith Hall, who ordered a 

comprehensive 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 that 

today 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 then 

manages budget margins to limit carryover funds to a few months.

In many respects, the practices criticized in the forward funding controversy—a 

highly compartmented process that minimized administration in favor of success 

on 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 the 

usual 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 and 

1980s monitoring arms was considered just as important. But by 1995, events 

made clear that support for this approach had waned.

Redesign of the Overhead Architecture

In the mid-1990s the NRO began an effort to fundamentally redesign its overhead 

architecture. Deputy Director Jimmie Hill described this effort in 1994. “At no 

other 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)

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 direction 

of 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 onto 

a 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 the 

earlier systems. The relay satellite component of the plan also proceeded smoothly, 

as it was also an incremental change.

The IMINT components—the Future Imaging Architecture (FIA)—were much more 

problematic. FIA was the first IMINT system NRO developed after the dissolution 

of the alphabet programs. The reorganization had broken up the Program A and 

Program 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 and 

reduce costs), and encouraged the contractors to propose smaller, lighter vehicles 

(again, to reduce costs).

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 proposed 

a more innovative design than its competitor, Lockheed Martin. He also recalled 

that the NRO doubted Lockheed Martin could meet the cost ceiling with the 

system 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 the 

past to accommodate such problems, and, to make matters even worse, the NRO 

had difficulty assessing the problems and directing corrective action because so 

much responsibility for the program had been given to the contractor.

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 

Figure 10: NRO Headquarters Today Photo/CSNR Reference Collection
26 27

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 future 

of the NRO. The commission, chaired by Senator Robert Kerrey (D-Neb.) and 

Representative Porter Goss (R-Fl.), reported in November 2000 that the NRO was 

facing the challenge of supporting a growing number of users and missions with 

a budget that had not grown proportionately. The commission concluded that 

the NRO needed more funding to carry out its mission; a more effective means to 

prioritize 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

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 ground 

stations. 

NRO signals intelligence satellites, tracing their origin to Grab, continue to collect 

a variety of forms of information across the electromagnetic spectrum. These 

include FISINT, (shorthand for “foreign instrumentation signals intelligence” or 

data collected during the test or operation of aircraft, missiles, or other systems); 

COMINT (communications intelligence taken from voice, text, or pictoral 

transmissions); and ELINT (electronic intelligence from non-literal transmissions, 

such as radar).

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 forms 

of 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 is 

used to characterize foreign weapons systems, and is also used in conjunction with 

IMINT 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.

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. This 

is 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)

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.

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 these 

locations through the provision of technical systems and shared research and 

development. The NRO’s participation is achieved with the consent of the host 

governments and contributes to the national security of the countries involved.

In addition to its intelligence collection systems, the NRO maintains an extensive 

global communications network that supports both NRO operators and other 

military 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.

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, and 

a 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 military 

forces require. To do this, the NRO has had to rethink its operations to deal with 

these new threats.
28 29

The NRO routinely collects intelligence for U.S. military operations, and in today’s 

environment 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 are 

often 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 more 

than 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 the 

communications 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 designing 

and building a new satellite today can require several years, it is often possible to 

develop 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 segment 

of a system, NRO can make more frequent modifications and add additional 

capabilities more easily. This was one reason why NRO Director Scott Large 

established 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, and 

the new Mission Support Directorate (MSD) to better understand the specific needs 

of users.

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 played 

a larger role in verifying compliance, overhead systems are still important to 

provide U.S. officials assurance that treaty partners are not concealing undeclared 

facilities or capabilities.

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). Through 

the CAC, the NRO can provide products to the Departments of Agriculture, 

Commerce, Interior, Transportation, Health and Human Services, NASA, the 

Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, 

the National Science Foundation, and the Coast Guard. The CAC process ensures 

that 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 the 

southeastern United States in August 2005, for example, the Federal Emergency 

Management Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers used NRO imagery to 

assess 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 to 

conceal 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 in 

Figure 11: IED Munitions in Baghdad Photo/Department of Defense
30 31

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 and 

technology with greater security and speed, and then make information about each 

system available to larger groups of users gradually, as each becomes more widely 

used 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 unique 

organization. Key technologies—launch vehicles and sensors—had just reached a 

level 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 discretion 

in finance and management. Since relatively few individuals needed access to 

satellite 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 a 

single, slowly changing, existential threat, now the United States faces a variety of 

changing 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 kind 

of 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 commercially 

available 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 with 

new 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, access 

to personnel, and mission.

After fifty years, the challenge for the NRO is to maintain the reliability and contain 

the costs of its current systems, while at the same time providing the opportunity 

and challenge that attracts the nation’s top minds to imagine new ways to protect 

American security with overhead reconnaissance.

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34 35

Appendix A

Timeline of Major Events in NRO History

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 in 

overflights 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 collect 

imagery of the Soviet Union.

1956

13 January: President Eisenhower establishes the President’s Board 

of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities (PBCFIA), the 

predecessor 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.
36 37

Date Event

1957 3 August: Soviet Union tests the SS-6/R-7, the first ICBM. 

1957 4 October: Soviet Union orbits Sputnik 1, first artificial satellite.

1957

24 October: President’s Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence 

Activities recommends early consideration of a rush project to de-

velop a space imaging capability.

1957 18 December: President Eisenhower ends the SENSIT airborne recon

-

naissance program.

1958 31 January: Army launches Explorer-1, the first successful U.S. satellite.

1958 8 February: President Eisenhower approves the Corona program; 

Corona is split off from WS-117L.

1958 17 March: First successful Vanguard mission.

1958 28 March: Naval Research Laboratory begins development of Grab, 

the first SIGINT satellite.

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 pro

-

ceed with development of Grab under Project Tattletale.

1960 1 May: CIA U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers is shot down over the Soviet 

Union. 

1960 22 June: Grab, the first successful reconnaissance satellite, is launched 

from Cape Canaveral. 

1960

18 August: Corona-14 collects the first reconnaissance imagery from 

space, depicting Mys Shmidta, a Soviet bomber base in northeast 

Siberia. 

1960

31 August: President Eisenhower creates a civilian-led office, the USAF 

Office of Missile and Satellite Systems, responsible for the Air Force 

space-based reconnaissance satellite program; this office later serves 

as the organizational basis of the NRO.

Date Event

1961

6 September: SECDEF Robert McNamara establishes the National 

Reconnaissance Office, responsible for managing the National Recon-

naissance Program. Joseph V. Charyk and Richard M. Bissell, Jr. are the 

first NRO co-directors; Bissell serves until 28 February 1962, Charyk 

serves until 1 March 1963.

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).

1962 26 April: CIA’s A-12/Oxcart reconnaissance aircraft makes first flight.

1962

23 July: Charyk establishes the “alphabet structure” that the NRO will 

use until 1992: Program A (Air Force satellites), Program B (CIA satel-

lites), Program C (Navy satellites), and Program D (Air Force and CIA 

reconnaissance aircraft).

1962 13 December: First Poppy mission.

1963 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.

1963 24 August: First KH-4A (dual film bucket) Corona mission. 

1963 22 December: First flight of SR-71, the Air Force version of Oxcart.

1964

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 ap-

plications.”

1965

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.
38 39

Date Event

1965 1 October: Alexander Flax becomes NRO Director; serves until 17 

March 1969.

1966 President Johnson decides to terminate A-12 program by January 

1968; later extended to July.

1967 15 September: First KH-4B Corona mission.

1968 21 June: Final A-12 flight is completed.

1969 17 March: John McLucas becomes NRO director; serves until 20

December 1973.

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.

1971 14 December: Final Poppy mission.

1972 25 May: Final Corona mission.

1973

12 October: First known reference to the NRO in a public record, 

inadvertently made in a report by the Special Senate Committee to 

Study Questions Related to Secret and Confidential Government 

Documents.

1973 21 December: James Plummer becomes NRO Director; serves until 28 

June 1976.

1974 1 October: Program D is disbanded; all of its aircraft are transferred to 

the U.S. Air Force for tactical missions .

1975

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.

1976

18 February: President Ford issues EO 11905, “United States Foreign 

Intelligence Activities,” formally establishing the National Foreign 

Intelligence 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 special-

ized intelligence through reconnaissance programs.” 

Date Event

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

August 1976.

1976 9 August: Thomas Reed becomes NRO Director; serves until 7 April 

1977.

1977 20 January: First NRO electro-optical satellite system is declared 

operational by President Carter.

1977 24 January: President Carter designates the NRO as part of the Na

-

tional Foreign Intelligence Program.

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

August 1977.

1977 3 August: Hans Mark becomes NRO Director; serves until 8 October 

1979.

1978

24 January: President Carter signs EO 12036, “United States Intelli-

gence Activities,” giving “full and exclusive authority” over the prepara-

tion of the National Foreign Intelligence Program budget (including 

the NRO) to the DCI.

1978 1 October: To support ratification of SALT II, President Carter confirms 

that 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 Intelli-

gence 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.
40 41

Date Event

1985

28 August: A Titan 34-D launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base 

fails during ascent, resulting in the loss of the payload. This begins a 

string 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 of 

design review and modifications following the Challenger loss.

1988 17 December: Jimmie Hill becomes Acting NRO Director; serves until 

27 September 1989.

1989 3 July: The Geiger-Kelly Study, led by RADM Robert Geiger and D. 

Barry Kelly, recommends a more integrated NRO.

1989 28 September: Martin Faga becomes NRO Director; serves until 5 

March 1993.

1992

5 March: The DCI Task Force on the National Reconnaissance Office, 

chaired by former Lockheed CEO Robert Fuhrman, recommends 

disbanding the “alphabet structure.”

1992

30 March: President George H.W. Bush signs National Security Direc-

tive 67, “Intelligence Capabilities 1992-2005,” which approves the DCI’s 

recommendation to realign the NRO.

1992 18 September: Government declassifies “fact of” the NRO. 

1992 31 December: NRO realignment is put into effect reorganizing along 

functional lines with directorates for SIGINT, IMINT, and COMMS.

1993 6 March: Jimmie Hill becomes Acting NRO Director; serves until 19 

May 1994.

1994 19 May: Jeffrey Harris becomes NRO Director; serves until 26 February 

1996.

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 size 

and cost of the Westfield HQ, then under construction.

1995 22 February: President Clinton issues Executive Order 12951 declas

-

sifying 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 Act-

ing NRO Director.

1996

26 August: Commission chartered by Acting NRO Director Hall and 

chaired by retired Adm. David Jeremiah issues its report on the future 

of the agency.

1996 18 December: First public notification of an NRO launch.

1997 28 March: Keith Hall becomes NRO Director; serves until 13 December 

2001. 

1997 31 March: Advanced Systems and Technology Directorate (AS&T) is 

stood up.

1998 17 June: Grab, the first reconnaissance satellite, is declassified in con

-

junction with the 75th anniversary of the Naval Research Laboratory.

1999 3 September: The NRO announces the award of the Future Imagery 

Architecture contract to Boeing.

2000

1 November: National Commission for the Review of the National 

Reconnaissance Office, established by Congress in early 2000, recom-

mends that a portion of the NRO return to its more secretive, compart-

mented approach.

2001 13 December: Peter Teets becomes NRO Director; serves until 25 

March 2005.
42 43

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 the 

Intelligence 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 the 

Intelligence Community, and transferring the DCI’s authorities over 

the NRO to the DNI.

2005 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.

2005 28 September: Boeing received from the NRO partial stop-work 

order on the Future Imaging Architecture.

2007 19 October: Scott Large becomes NRO Director; serves until 18 April 

2009.

2008 1 April: NRO establishes Ground Enterprise Directorate (GED).

2009 12 June: Gen. Bruce Carlson, USAF (Ret) becomes NRO Director.

2010

21 September: Director of National Intelligence and Secretary 

of Defense sign an agreement on the mission, authorities, and 

responsibilities of the NRO and the NRO Director, superseding the 

agreement of 11 August 1965.

Appendix B

Directors of the National Reconnaissance Office

Name Tour of Duty

Richard M. Bissell, Jr. and

Joseph 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 1973

James W. Plummer Dec 1973 – June 1976

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

Thomas C. Reed Aug 1976 – Apr 1977

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

Hans M. Mark Aug 1977 – Oct 1979

Robert J. Hermann Oct 1979 – Aug 1981

Edward C. Aldridge, Jr. Aug 1981 – Dec 1988

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

Martin C. Faga Sept 1989 – Mar 1993

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
44

“We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.”

— Dwight D. Eisenhower