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THE NRO AT FORTY: 

ENSURING GLOBAL INFORMATION SUPREMACY

R. Cargill Hall

Forty years ago United States leaders created a hybrid National Reconnaissance Office

(NRO) to meet the unusual intelligence demands of the nuclear age and the Cold War. In so doing, 

they bound together for the first time in one organization all the major elements of the Intelligence

Community, the military services, and numerous industrial firms in what would become a

continuing partnership. The chain of events began when President Dwight D. Eisenhower and a few 

confidants undertook national and international initiatives between 1953 and 1961 intended to

reduce military uncertainty and help preclude a surprise nuclear attack. Among them, they approved 

for development remarkable overhead technical systems that could collect reliable intelligence

about the military equipage and disposition of Soviet strategic forces; in the process they opened the 

Soviet Union to American scrutiny. During this period they also established the national policy and 

organizations needed to guide and execute a newly emergent enterprise: astronautics.

Eisenhower's strategic intelligence collection systems included high altitude balloons

(Project GENETRIX), airplanes (Projects AQUATONE U-2 and OXCART A-12/SR-71), and,

moving above airspace into outer space, reconnaissance satellites. The United States Air Force had 

begun the latter effort independently and by 1956 had contracted with industry for its

reconnaissance satellite program, first known as Weapon System (WS)-117L. Although a classified 

program, after the launch of Sputnik I in October 1957 WS-117L (later renamed SAMOS) was

widely and accurately reported by the media to be a reconnaissance vehicle. This distressed the

President, who insisted on absolute secrecy in matters of intelligence. In early 1958 he ordered the 

film recovery element removed from SAMOS, (an element that appeared most promising for rapid

development), and named a CIA-Air Force team to manage it—a team similar to the one that had 

managed the U-2. With that action he established an unacknowledged, classified reconnaissance

satellite program to become known publicly as the DISCOVERER biomedical research project,
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Joseph V. Charyk, Undersecretary of

the Air Force and first Director of the

National Reconnaissance Office, 1961-

1963.

GRAB SIGINT satellite employed to

locate and identify Soviet air defense

radar in the early 1960s. 

and, to those witting of its true purpose, as CORONA. A 

year later in 1959, Eisenhower approved a second

unacknowledged reconnaissance satellite program

eventually known as GRAB (Galactic RAdiation and

Background) experiment, designed to collect electronic

intelligence (ELINT) from Soviet air defense radar. This 

reconnaissance satellite mounted two payloads: one of

them, announced publicly, measured Solar Radiation

(SolRad) and served as a cover for the second,

unannounced and highly classified ELINT package. 

Launched on 22 June 1960, GRAB operated on orbit for

a number of months and thus has the distinction of being the country’s first successful

reconnaissance satellite. The Naval Research Laboratory managed GRAB for the Director of Naval 

Intelligence and the National Security Agency (NSA). Finally, in late August 1960, after the loss of 

a U-2 airplane inside the USSR provoked an international furor, Eisenhower removed the SAMOS 

program from Air Force military control and placed custody of it in a civilian-directed office in the 

Department of the Air Force—an office that reported directly to the Secretary of Defense.

The man selected to head the new Pentagon office

and the Air Force reconnaissance satellite program was Air

Force Undersecretary Joseph V. Charyk. A small contingent 

of military officers and government civilians who ran it now 

reported directly to him, bypassing entirely the Air Force

chain of command—much to the dismay of some Air Force 

leaders. When in January 1961 John F. Kennedy succeeded

Eisenhower as President, a newly appointed Secretary of

Defense, Robert S. McNamara, asked Charyk to remain as

director of the Defense Department's satellite

reconnaissance office. On 6 September, McNamara

formally established the National Reconnaissance Program (NRP) that would consist of "all

satellite and overflight reconnaissance projects whether overt or covert," and he converted the

civilian Air Force office into the National Reconnaissance Office to manage that program. This
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SECDEF Robert McNamara who

established the National Reconnaissance 

Program (NRP) and the National

Reconnaissance Office to manage it,

and approved the 1961 NRO charter for 

the DOD.

Richard M. Bissell, Jr., CIA Deputy

Director (Plans), Director of Project

CORONA, and temporarily Codirector of the NRO in late 1961,

before resigning from the CIA in

early 1962.

directive also made the NRO a classified organization whose

existence was known only to those directly involved. (For

many years even the name of the office was classified Secret

within compartmented channels.) An accompanying

agreement with the CIA named as the NRO's joint directors

Under Secretary of the Air Force Charyk, and the CIA's

Deputy Director (Plans), Richard M. Bissell, Jr., who together 

had full authority to execute the effort. In the charter and

interagency agreement, control of the CIA-managed 

CORONA film recovery satellite program also transferred to

the NRO, now to be funded through the NRP budget—much 

to the dismay of some CIA leaders—while the Navy's GRAB

satellite program required another agreement before it, too,

moved to the NRO and NRP funding in May 1962. 

At that time Charyk, a Department of Defense (DOD) civilian, was formally named sole

Director of the NRO (DNRO). Another charter agreement

between the CIA and Defense Department in 1963

identified the NRO Deputy Director (DDNRO) as a CIA

billet. A few years later, on 11 August 1965, DCI William

Raborn and Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance

signed what is the current NRO charter. It reaffirmed the

NRO to be a “separate agency of the DOD” responsible for 

“the management and operation” of the National

Reconnaissance Program. Most important, it established an 

Executive Committee to approve or modify the NRP and

its budget, and allocate development responsibilities and

corresponding funds for specific reconnaissance programs

to the CIA or Defense Department components of the NRO 

“best equipped with facilities, experience and technical

competence to undertake the assignment.” The EXCOM, as 

it came to be called, consisted of the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Director of Central
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DDCI Pearre Cabell signed the 1961

NRO charter for the CIA.

Mys Shmidta Air Field: First Image of an

Intelligence Target taken by CORONA 14

(Mission 9009), on 14 August 1960.

Intelligence, and the Special Assistant to the President for

Science and Technology. Other non-voting attendees

included the DNRO and the Director of the Bureau of the

Budget, or his designee. This three-person Board of

Directors met periodically to address program demands. By

deciding key issues, such as the assignment of new space

reconnaissance starts, it administered the affairs and budget

of the NRP successfully for a number of years.

In succeeding years the NRO and its contractorteam designed, built, launched and operated various highpriority reconnaissance satellites. Together, the NRO's

confederated Satellite Programs A (Air Force), B (CIA), C

(Navy), and its aerial systems comprising Program D

(transferred to the USAF in 1974) revolutionized

strategic intelligence collection, made possible

verifiable arms control treaties, and set the Cold War

firmly on course to its denouement in 1989-1991. In

fact, the first images of the Soviet Union returned by

CORONA satellites in August and December 1960

all but eliminated the prevailing supposition that a

“missile gap” favored the USSR—an assessment

publicly acknowledged to be erroneous by Secretary

of Defense Robert McNamara in early February 1961. 

Nevertheless, a high percentage of cloud-covered 

pictures retrieved from film-limited spacecraft cost dearly—a fact made plain by the returns from

early CORONA flights.

Beginning in 1962, an NRP-funded low altitude weather satellite, the first operational

system of its kind, orbited the Eurasian land mass in front of imaging satellites, transmitted vital

meteorological information, and made possible cloud-free photography over areas of interest. In the 

early 1970s this program would be identified publicly as the Defense Meteorological Satellite

Program, DMSP. (At century’s end DMSP would be combined with its civil counterpart to form a
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An artist’s rendition of the early NRO-Air 

Force meteorological satellite, 1962-1965.

Yurya ICBM Complex, USSR, imaged by a

CORONA (Mission 9038) on 28 June 1962. 

Note clouds nearby the facility.

single program, the National Polar-Orbiting 

Operational Environmental Satellite System

[NPOESS].) In the mid 1970s the film-limited 

CORONA-type capsule recovery satellites were

succeeded by near-real time electro-optical imaging

satellites, limited now almost solely by auxiliary 

power. The GRAB Signals Intelligence satellites

likewise led to successors far more technically

sophisticated and powerful. Contemplating these

changes in 1977, Miles Copeland, a retired

intelligence officer, reflected: "a satellite circling the

world . . . will pick up more information in a day than 

the espionage service could pick up in a year." Indeed, by the 1980s improved technology applied in 

space and on Earth opened the way to using overhead intelligence for tactical support of military

forces. Though tested successfully in the 1991 Gulf War, that support was found wanting in various 

respects; a system architecture designed to furnish national leaders strategic intelligence was not so 

easily adapted to support combat commanders engaged in the field. 

For the NRO and the entire Intelligence

Community, 1991 marked a sea state change in

intelligence requirements, customers, and

technology applications. The Gulf War early in the

year focused national attention on delivering

tactical intelligence to war-fighters quickly and in

the form they desired. Later that year, the collapse

of the Soviet Union, which was superceded by the

Confederation of Independent States, greatly

reduced the strategic threat to the United States.

Responding to the lessons of the Gulf War, the NRO established the Operational Support Office

(OSO) in 1992 that addressed directly tactical military concerns. Service TENCAP (Tactical

Exploitation of National Capabilities) organizations working with the NRO and its mission partners 

created new and improved mobile vans and receiving equipment that brought satellite imagery and
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signals intelligence directly to deployed American forces at the Corps, Division, and even Brigade

level, as well as to combatant ships at sea. The Secretary of Defense and the Director of Central

Intelligence, with the approval of Congress, subsequently consolidated existing assets and

established the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) in 1996 to improve still further

intelligence support to war-fighters. Undergirding these efforts, the use of improved land lines and

the launch of new communications relay satellites, both military and civil, provided a wideband

electronic highway over which immense amounts of intelligence moved around the world swiftly

and securely. The demise of the USSR and reduction in the strategic threat, however, caused some

U.S. officials to question openly whether America’s reconnaissance satellites were not surplus Cold 

War artifacts that could be correspondingly reduced in number, if not eliminated entirely.

As events transpired, post Cold War threats to the nation’s security unfolded in ways not

foreseen. After 1991, the Cuban Missile Crisis and other super power confrontations of the mid-tolate twentieth century might be forgotten, but, if anything changed, the uncertainties in international 

affairs increased. International terrorists and drug and crime cartels became more sophisticated and

virulent. They, too, made use of the electronic highway, the internet, and new encryption

technology to secure communications. Rogue states frequently aided these forces, while they

exported arms and worked to perfect and hide from view weapons of mass destruction. Vehicular

bombing attacks killed U.S. citizens at home and abroad. American leaders now focused

intelligence collection assets, including NRO satellites, to monitor this mushrooming array of

dynamic, unpredictable, and globally dispersed targets. NRO reconnaissance satellites also were

recruited to help federal and international agencies deal with natural and man-made disasters

(volcanic eruptions, earth quakes, and oil spills for example), smuggling, and diplomatic and

peacekeeping activities among other evolving intelligence requirements. Security policy changes

allowed the NRO to downgrade and declassify certain intelligence-derived products, making them

widely available and increasing their value to the government and the public. The Departments of

the Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, and Transportation joined the NRO’s growing list of

customers. By the turn of the Millennium, the nation’s civil and military leaders had answered the

question posed just a few years before: In no way could reconnaissance satellites be considered

surplus to anything, much less a declining asset.

The NRO itself also changed significantly in the last decade of the twentieth century. The

existence of the NRO was made known publicly in 1992 and some of the early NRO space projects 
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DNRO Keith R. Hall

NRO Headquarters consolidated in Chantilly, Virginia, 1995-96.

DDNRO David A. Kier

were declassified. The competitive

NRO Programs A, B, and C were

combined into a single team of

teams and organized functionally

into directorates: Imaging, Signals

Intelligence, Communications, and

Space Launch; competition in

future would take place among the

industrial contractors that built the

reconnaissance satellites. The

NRO’s headquarters staff at the

Pentagon, together with office elements located elsewhere around the country, moved to a new

headquarters complex in Chantilly, Virginia. These corporate changes were overshadowed in 1995

when auditors discovered NRO obligated funds (committed but not yet spent) carried forward from 

one fiscal year to the next by the formerly separated alphabetic programs. The amount of this

“forward funding,” over three billion dollars, had not been reported to the Comptroller at NRO

headquarters. It caused a media sensation and hurt seriously the NRO’s credibility among

government officials at home and abroad.

A new NRO Director Keith R. Hall and Deputy

Director David A. Kier, appointed by the Secretary of Defense

and Director of Central 

Intelligence and approved 

by Congress, set to work

to ensure financial

accountability and speed

delivery of intelligence

products to the NRO’s

civil and military

customers. They established a Deputy Director for Resource

Oversight Management (DDROM), and by 1999 that office

had made the NRO a model of superior financial management 
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in the federal government. They established a single Contracting Center to manage NRO contracts, 

and a Deputy Director for National Support (DDNS) to work closely with the civil organizations

now using NRO intelligence products. The DDNS joined a Deputy Director for Military Support

(DDMS) created earlier to support the military services. They also formed an office of Advanced

Systems and Technology (AS&T) to pursue revolutionary research and development efforts, long a 

hallmark of the NRO alphabetic programs, and committed to it ten percent of the NRO’s resources. 

Finally, together with other NRO leaders, they completed plans for the future overhead imaging and 

signals intelligence satellites that will replace existing NRO overhead assets early in the twenty-first 

century. With these changes in place, NRO personnel are positioned to ensure global information

supremacy for the United States in the years ahead. In that endeavor, each will contribute to an

intelligence enterprise with a heritage second-to-none—whose lineage can be traced to a 

small civilian-directed office established in the Department of Defense forty years ago, on 

31 August 1960.