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MANAGEMENT OF 

THE NATIONAL RECONNAISSANCE PROGRAM 

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VOLUME V IN 

A HISTORY OF SATBLLITE RECONNAISSANCE 

Robert L. Perl7 

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PREFACE 

I ORIGINS 

U A NATIONAL CONCEPT 

m THE CHARYK ERA 

CONTBw.rS 

IV THE WRO COMES OF AGE 

V YEARS OF ACRIMONY (1983-1985) 

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A PREFACE TO VOLUME V 

This portion of A History of Satellite Reconnaissance is concerned 

with the creation, growth, and travails of the National Reconnaissance 

Program in the years between 1960 and late 1965. Events and people, 

causes and effects that both call for and represent "management" are 

its substance. Its focus is the headquarters establishment -- the staff', 

and its activities -- although the account extends to events which bor~ 

on the central theme witho~t being essenti~1s of it. Mostly having to 

do with th~ management of indindual programs or with technical and 

operational aspects of those programs, these events are ,treated in 

.... 

other volumes in this set. In particular, the background of the CQRONA 

and GAMBIT programs and of orilinal SAMOS program must be appreciated if one is to understand the National Reconnaissance Program. 

The foundation of this account is the correspondence, reports, 

. studies, minutes and similar records left by participants. In the jar,oD 

of historians, these are primary sources. , Most are in the files of the· 

staff offices of the Director of the National Reconnaissance Office. 

Some few were drawn from the files of the Directorate of Special Pro-

• jects (SAF:sP) in Los Angeles. The sources aJ!8 abundant; the peculiar 

isolation of the sate1lite reconnaissance proaram hu protected them 

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from records controllers and other si1verworms of bureaucrac1, . while the unstinting cooperativeness of program personnel, both in 

Los Angeles and in the Pentagon has made them accessible. In m1 

judgment they artt more nearly complete, and more comprehensive 

in· content, than the records· of any other program manapd by the 

Air Force in the past two decades. 

Where there were laps in the contemporary papers, the participants have provided information. In the main, it has been background 

fill -- recollections of environment and the like -~ but in some few 

instances either discretion or haste prevemed the preparatiOD' of c~-

plete records of events and there waa no ~lternative to relJilll OD interviews. 1 have tried to treat such interview evidence criticu,ty, to 

the survivilll prim~y aourcea, and to UN it cautlouaq 

and fairly. T the best of my belief, I waa expos~d to DO deliberate . , 

fabrications ( cause of the rich fund of primar,. materials the,. would 

have been rea detectable) and ver,. few reconstructed viewpolata., 

was openly admitted, an occurrence 'sufficiently uncommon to de 

Second, no instance waa 1 asked elthe~ to present or to suppreaa 

a specific vie lat. to be selective in m1 uae of facta, or to alter all1 

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of the implied conclusions that all practioners of history are impelled. . . 

to state from time to time. Indeed, unless specifically asked for an 

opinion or a personal viewpoint, most of those involved in the program deliberateq avoided ,interpretative analysis in answerinl questions. Neither facts nor documents were withheld on the irounds of 

their sensitivity, their personal character, or the possible conaequences of their use in a history -- even a history that will have little 

circulation. There were, of course, records to which I did not have 

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access, notably the internal cqrrespondence at the Central Intelligence 

Agency (although I have perha~ seen more than will any other historian 

for a great many years). Not~thstanding that handicap, it is my ~UeI i 

, 

that the events of the period s~ak plainly enough for understanding. 

: . Motives and intent are anotherl matter. I have done my best and honeatq ; 

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believe that I have not dealt urfairlY with them. It is unlikely that all 

those here mentioned would aJ/ree, but that is a matter best set aside. , i 

Here and therethrough th+ narrative are scattered observations 

on personalities, on causes -+ effects, on the significance of certalD 

events. Some are implied rat~r than stated. Most sponsored his-

. tories of government aCtiviti~~ eschew all reference8 to PtrSOnalitie8 

and motives; I am persuaded +at they a1waY8 haft at least· .. much 

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relevance as the drab formalities of bureaucrac), so often detailed, 

and in this case a good deal more. I have tried to strike a proper 

balance, but the reader must be his own judge of m)' success. If it. 

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is an advantage, m)' observations and conclusions have the advantap . 

at being hindsight observations made b)' a non-participant. The)' are. 

as objective as I can make them, but they are not Decessarll), neqtral. 

. The first draft of this history was written in 1966. It was '98rJ 

modestly expanded in 196? and took its present form thr01Jlh an editi.., 

process of. early 1969. 

One comment on the temporal span covered by this narrative: it , 

begins with the first sugaestioil that a nati~l reconnailisance prop-am 

and an organization to control it were needed; it stops, but does not 

end, with the issuance of the third (1965) formal document definiq the . 

responsibilities and prerogatives of the national reconnaissance organization. That stopping point was selected for two reasons: first, 

when the third charter was issued there no longer was reason to 

question the permanence r1 the organization, though quite a lot of uncertainty about its span of authority and its relations with other a .. neles 

of government remained to be resolved. Second, in the Fall of 181" 

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the' or,anization -- and the proaraDl -- acquired a chief who could be 

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more concerned with continuing operations and long term plana thaD . with organizing and solidifying the organiZation itself. That the 

principal events of later years will also be chronicled seems inevitable, but that.the account will differ in empbasis and content from 

what follows seems equally c~rtain; 

RLP (January 1989). 

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I 

ORIGINS 

The concept of satellite reconnaissance as a means of overcoming a long evident problem of national security was refined well,in 

advance of any significant concern for its domestic or internattoDal 

implications. Until 1955, there was no serious consideration of how 

a reconn~sance satelUte effort might fit into the natloaal force 

structure, and apart from some generalized discusslona which were .. 

accorded more amused tolerance than serious attention, there wall no 

int~rest in defining a national policy on the use of space for military . 

or para-military purposes. 

o· 

The first impulse for a change coincided with siplficant improve.-

. ments in the supporting technololY and in the prospects of satellite 

recQnnaiasance. As the original WS-U7L ~econnaissance sateWte 

project made a tortuous transition from concept to modestly funded 

development in the years 1951-1858, so did appreciation of the potential 

• policy implications of peacetime sateWte reconnaissance become more 

widespr.ad. That there was no sudden or inte .... concern CaD be '. 

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reconnaissance might become an important intelligence resource was 

only of academic interest so long as there were no deployed or de-

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f ployable intercon~inental ballistic missiles in the world. The goal of r 

pre -1957 programs stemmed primarily from the assumption that a 

satellite-borne sensor might provide a useful gross warning of im- I 

pending attack by detecting troop concentrations or air fleet movements and thereafter from the Strategic Air Command's general interest in imprOving its target folders. In an era dominated b,. the 

doctrine of massive retaliation, cities were the main targets and ( 

bombers were the main threat. . For such a military outlook, reCODnaissance from space represented a useful but scarcely essential 

capability. 

Second, in the early 1950s, there seemed little likelihood that an 

operationally useful satellite system could be made available before 

1980. A reluctance to plan seriously for the relatively distant future 

characterized the outlook of operating forces, while within the research 

and development sector of the Air Force the reconnaissance satelUte 

• 

·remained but one of many promising systems competing for scarce funds • 

Third, the climate of Defense Department opinion was, to.., the 

least, unfavorable for seriOUll consideration of space program.. Neither 

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the Secretary of Defense nor his chief research and development 

advisor. in the period 1955-1957 had any special sympathy for a program as chimerical as space flight, whatever its purported application or theoretic~ value. In early 1957 this viewpoint became so 

pronounced as to oblige the Air Force to re-title, re-document, o~' 

camouflage moat of its scant space program. 

Finally, trom May 1955 onward, it became increasingly clear 

that the National Security Council and the President were committed 

to a policy of maldng space' a preserve for "peaceful" activities. That 

such a policy was inherently incompatible with satellite reconnaissance 

was apparent; the alternative to abandoning the concept was a premise . 

of covertly conducted satellite reconnaissance. There appears to haft· 

been little honest concern for. the inherent incompatibWty of· covert ' 

operations with the "space for peaceful pUrposeslt theme and virtually 

no concern for the pragmatic details of program control. Whether such 

a compartmentalization of viewpoints was deliberate ~r merelyeYidence of shortSightedness is difficult to determine. 

The National Security Council (NSC) first took up the matte~ Of a 

space policy in the spring of 1955, producing a paper (No. 5520),in 

*Defense Secretary C. B. Wilson and D. A. Quarles, erstwhile 

Secretary of the Air Porce and DepulJ Secretary of DefeDlle. 

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May of that year which set forth a national commitment to the "freedom of space" and an accompanying insistence that the United St~tes 

should avoid actions which would inhibit its right to act unilate.rally 

in developing or ~perating spacecraft. The "peaceful and scientific ' .. ; 

purposes" theme received further reinforcement and the unilateral- . 

right stand was weakened in November 1968 wben NSC took the position that the United $tates should seek international agreement on . 

prohibiting the production of "objects designed for ••• outer space foi"': 

military purposes ••• " That viewpoint was imbedded in position . 

papers submitted to the Untted Nations during the early months of 

1957. 1 

Although not explicitly so stated in the documents of the time, it 

appears that even this early there was some hedging on the question 

of what "peaceful and scientific purposes"might include or exclude. 

Within the military. however. and particularly within the fraterniv 

of those involved in the development of reconnaissance sateWtes, there 

arose the notion that international accept~ce of the U. S. viewpoint 

would cause the President to forbid space reconnaissance. The concern thus aroused led to a series of proposals tor the clandestine operation of space reconnaissance vehicles UDder CIA rather than Air Porce 

auspices. Those who favored such an approach COD8ide~d tbelllHlfts 

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political realists who clearly understood the rationale of current and 

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. recent clandestine overflight proarams. The)' included Major General 

B. A. Schriever. then head of the Air Force ballistic missile program, 

members of his immediate staff (including several who were intimately 

famUiar with earlier CIA support of covert overflight programs). Mr. 

R. M. Bissell of CIA, Dr. J. R. Killian (the President's chief adYisor 

on affairs of science). Air Force Assistant. Secretar)' (R.D) Richard 

Horner, and Lieutenant General Donald L. Putt, then Air Force Deputy 

Chief of Staff, Development. Outspoken supporters of a direct, frankly 

acknowledged satellite reconnaissa~ce effort included the commanders 

and most senior officers of the Air Research and Development Com~and. 

and the Strategic Air Command, the most influential members of the Air 

Force Headquarters Intelligence Directorate, and (by all subsequent 

indications) the Air Force Chief of Staff •• 

In October 1957, the Soviets put their first satellite into orbit • 

• It is perhaps a wr)' commentar), on the factionalism that developed 

in 1957 and later that. the adVocates of a "realistic" (b)' which was· 

meant "clandestine" program) were \bose who had the areateat faith 

in the technical feasibilit)' of satellite reconnaissance, while the supporters of an overt program tended to be most dubious about that 

feasibilit)'. It is also intereatiBI. thoup posaib17 not of .... at aqputicance, that the "realists" were members ~. the baw.uc miSs • 

clan in the Air Force and mo.t, thouah not aU, ~ the opposition discounted the missile approach. 

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Two months earlier. they had proclaimed the success of their earl,. 

ballistic missile trials. touching ofl a Senate debate on the "missile 

gap," an issue which until then the United States had largely ignored. 

In consequence ~ these developments. the Air Force decided to 

forego development of a scientific satellite and to accelerate the , 

existing. though lightly lunded. WS-l1'1L program. Somewhat haatU7, 

and without full appreciation of the force behind the "peaceful uses" 

doctrine. the Air Force concluded that aclmowledged overflig~t of 

denied areas by reconnaissance satellites must become accepted U. S. 

policy. 

COincidentally. RAND, Thompson-Ramo WOQldridge, Lockheed, 

and General Electric developed a pronounced interest in an interim 

reconnaissance satellite. one to become available sooner than the 

complex WS-l1'1L vehicle. The combination of a THOR missile with 

one or another of several adaptable upper stages was simultaneously 

advocated by a variety of boards. committees. special study tr.ou"" 

and contractors. All were confident that a relatively simple camera 

system could be put together, combined with a recOftrable re-entr,. . 

capsule, launched into polar orbit, operated over Soviet territorJ, 

and the exposed film s&le11 recovered. 

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Until that time, very little thought had been given to film retrieval 

from orbit by means of recoverable capsules. The contemporary 

WS-l17L approach was entirely focused on developing exposed fUm on 

orbit and transmit.ting the product to earth by means of a complex electronic scan and readout system, The ATLAS-boosted WS-117L was 

scheduled for initiat research and development operation in mid-1980i 

all concerned were confident that a THOR-boosted space reconnaissance 

system employing capsule recovery techniques could be launched by late 

1958.* 

. While such an approach was being evaluated, President Eisenhower 

urged the Soviet Premier again· to acceed to the "space for peaceful 

purposes" doctrine. If the Eisenhower thesis should be accepted and its 

enforcement should include both a broad definition of "peaceful purpoae." 

and provisions for inspected enforcement, space reconnaissance would 

almost certainly be prohibited. Contemporary Soviet opinion was unalterably hostile to "aerial inspection" of any sort. Enforcement seemed 

less probable than a set of bilateral pieties, however; Russian equating 

of inspection with espionage had not lessened since the first coupliDa of , 

the two during the abortive 1948 atomic weapons control debates in the 

U.N. 

*This resume is largely based on A History of Satellite RecoDDai.saace. 

Vol I, . Chapters I and D. . 

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Thus even though an acknowledged WS- 11 7L program had supporters, 

there was also some advocacy of a clandestine effort to be conducted as 

a parallel if not an eventual substitute program. In planning for develop· 

ment of an interim. reconnaissance device an open and a covert effort 

were simultaneously considered. Copies of an Eisenhower to Bul,anin \ 

. ~&r. wa<l 

open letter on international space polieies,as released on .12 Januat'¥; 

about two weeks earlier, while it was in the preparation.·stages,· 

Eisenhower's chief mllltar), aide (Major General A. J. Goodputer) and 1 

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his science advisor met with Dr. Edwin Land of Polaroid Corporation, 

and R. M. Bissell, to consider what approach should be spons~red. 

They decided, at least tentatively, that satellite reconnaissance was a 

national essential and that as insurance against the after-effects of a 

WS-I17L cancellation it would be desirable to create a covert protram. 

Generalities of a covert scheme were worked out by Colonel F. C. B. 

Oder, General Schriever's principal satellite program officer. He proposed the creation of an interdepartmental coordinating c;ommittee rep .. 

resenting the Air Force, the State Department, and CIA, that troUp to 

be responsible for broad-scale planning, security, public information, 

2 and obtaining approval at the President's level • 

. In the weeks immediately following, the sUlgestion of an iDterciepartmental board of governors dropped from siPl. Prop-am decialoaa were 

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made by Bissell for the CIA and Schriever for the Air Force, with . considerable assists from Dr. Land, who maintained direct contact 

with the White House. The CIA assumed general control of the covert 

arrangements, ac.quiring immediate technical assistance through .the 

assignment of one of Oder's principal aides, Captain R. C. Truax· 

(USN) to the Advanced Research Projects Agency; in actuality, . Truax 

served as Bissell's technical advisor. Within CIA, Bissell assumed· 

personal responsibility for keeping Allen Dullea briefed on syatem progress. The technical approach had been defined by April 1958, at 

which point Dulles, Killian, and Defenae Secretary Neil McElroy per- .' 

sonally briefed President Eiaenhower on the acheme. Eisenhower ap~. 

proved. Interestingly enough, the State Department waa then eDlaged 

in refining a joint Britiah-French-American proposal to create a bod7. 

of experts to work out the detaUs of a space vehicle inspection plan 

that would "assure that outer space ia used for peaceful purpose only •• i3 

The arrangements of 1958 put the bulk at policy management responsibUity in the hands of the CIA and left most of the technical maaaaement details to a small group of Air Force officera at the Ballistic 

Missile Division in Los Angeles. The CIA let the camera contracu, 

although an Air F .)rCe officer aerved aa a principal consultant on 

camera details. Lockheed, under contract to both CIA and USAF, per.-

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formed technical direction functions. The CIA handled all matters 

involving security, including the a~thority to approve or disapprove 

requests for access to program information. The only management . 

problems of any consequence arose well outside the program structure, 

chiefly from ARPA's efforts to re-orient the covert program (now called 

CORONA) toward some rather variable objectives of its own choosing. 

Concurrently, the CORONA program fell on difficult times when the 

original cost estimates -- those on which Eisenhower's approval had 

been based. -- proved characteristically optimistic. By late 1958,' 

program expenditures were some "'''',lIIsa1tAr than the original 

In some degree the cost increase could be charged to ARPA ~s 

intervention, although that target was so temptingly undefended that it 

probably got more attention than it deserved. There are some indicatioH 

that Lockheed was charging to CORONA expenses which more properly 

should have been itemized as part of the WS-117L bud,et. The entire 

aftair was settled by Gordian means on 4 December 1958, when' CORONA 

was set off from the remainder ot the WS-117L effort, with which it had 

been officially associated until that time. 

One justification for the establishment of an independent CORONA 

program (under the aegis of a "research satellite" etfort dubbed 

DISCOVERER) was the increasingly tense international.ituation with 

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respect to overflight. CORONA personnel believed that the President 

would or_~!i'! cancellation of the ~!'t~r.e effort if it continued to be popu- .,---'-'--

larly identified with an acknowledged reconnaissance development --

WS-117L -- now CJalled SENTRY. One product of this concern was an 

elaborate cover plan, a means of convincing suspicious but uninformed. 

onlookers that DISCOVERER was precisely what it pretended to be. 

Early in 1959 there arose the first of what was to be a long sequence 

of increaSingly acrimonious squa~bles over CORONA fundinl and management. About 90 percent of 'program costs were being paid by the Air 

Force, and so long as additional TROR'sand AGENA's were needed 

such costs would continue. It was not so much that the Air Porce could 

not afford the program as that concealing such large expenditures was 

abominably difficult. Consequently,' one faction in the Air Force urpd 

that the covert aspects of CORONA be dropped and that a carri-over, 

program be integrated with the remainder of the open Air Force space " 

activity • The CIA objected to any disclosure that DISCOVERBR bad ',; 

actually been a clandestine satellite reconnaissance program. Chief17 on 

the, argument that it was less dangerous to continue sponsorship of 

CORONA than to trust in Air Force discretion to conceal the Apncy's 

original role, CIA extended its sponsorship throup fiscal Jear 1880 , 

and continued the covert status of the program. Althoup DO lallDCbmc 

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had yet been attempted, and no assurance of CORONA' s utility was at 

hand, the basic program was expanded to include a total of 25 vehicles. 

Originally only ten launchings had been contemplated: the total had 

4 gradually climbed.toward 20 in the first year of development effort • 

. During the first six months of 1959, the CORONA program was 

more troubled by faulty technology than by institutional differences. 

DISCOVERER's I and II (which were U~gitimate orbital test vehicles) 

were modestly successful, although by a disconcerting mischance 01 

timer operation the second vehicle came down somewhere in northern 

Norway rather than in the central Pacific. DISCOVERER IV carried 

a CORONA camera, but its 25 June launching was unsuccessful, repeating the experience of DISCOVERER UI three weeks ·earlier.. There 

followed more than a year of frustration as one after another of ~~ programmed launchings and recoveries failed to com~ off properly. Perhaps more discouraging, telemetry records indicated that the camera 

system had been functioning no better than the recovery system. C~'s 

CORONA people were particularly discouraged. More and more openly 

were heard arguments for cancelling the entire effort. The Air Force 

program chief, now Colonel P. E. Worthman,. spent a great deal of 

time soothing strained tempers and calming disbeHevers, while B188811 

trudged to the White House time atter time to conYince an· aDJI"1' aad 

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despairing President that CORONA should not be can~elled. By the 

summer of 1960 he was standing almost alone -against the united adverse judgement of the President's principal advisors. 

On 15 AprU 1980, DISCOVERER XI was launched. For the first 

time there were telemetry indications that the camera had operated 

properly, but there was yet another faUure of the recovery devices. 

The Air Staff -- or that part of it aware of CORONA -- was convinced 

that such a "poor man's system" could not succeed. Bissell was 

nearly ready to concede the point. Further unbalancing the scales 

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was the recent course of events in the older reconnaissance program, 

now called SAMOS. Starting in- January 1960, both GeneralT. D. 

White, Air Force Chief of Staff, and General Schriever, now head of 

the Air Research and Development Command, had begun to -talk of 

SAMOS and its goals in public. Although a spotty record of match~g 

predictions with accomplishments tended to discount much of what was 

said, a wUlingness to speculate openly about the future of satellite reCOD-

. naissance raised the stock of SAMOS whUe- 4epres.ing that of CORONA. 

The Air Force seemed little concerned by the fact that the United Matlo ... 

had taken up the space-for-peace dirge and had by March 1960 adopted. 

a plan providing for inspection of all space vehicle launchiDg areas~ 

During the first wee .. Ji May, Eisenhower and MUdta Khrushchev were 

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scheduled to meet in Paris at a summit conference widely expected to 

lead to a bilateral disarmament agreement. 

Into such a setting trundled that paradoxical undercover agent, 

Gary Powers, abo,rd a U-2 which began ailing well inside the borders 

of the USSR. Overflight of Soviet Russia by American, reconnaissance 

aircraft became an instant sensation, debated by presidential cand~dates, 

denied, then aclmowledged, and ultimately cancelled. 

An untimely addition to the policy controversy stirred up by 1I1e 

U-2 incident was the disclosure that the Air Force had ,enerally mismanaged SAMOS since having recovered custody of that pro,ram from 

ARPA six months earlier. The Strate,ic Air Command, desi,..ted 

user of an operational SAMOS, and the Air Force directorate of intelligence, were harshly critical of a gradual shift of emphasis from 

readout to recovery as a data retrieval technique. Most program 

officers were by then thoroughly convinced that readout techniques 

would not do the job. Budget officials were appalled at the predicted 

costs of a deployed readout system and loudly protested recentl,. disclosed cost overruns in the development program. Troubled by the 

apparent failure of CORONA, alarmed at the declininl prospects 01 

SAMOS, seekin, a replacement source for the cancelled U-2 Oftrtu,ht 

data, the Air Staff concluded that the need for early satellite reconaaisHandl. Via 

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sance results justified extreme measures. Under Secretary 01. the . Air Force J. V. Charyk, relatively new to that office after s~rving 

first as Chief Scientist and then as Assistant Secretary (R&D) 01. the 

Air Force, heartily endorsed that viewpoint. But it rapidly became 

clear that to the Air Staff "extreme measures" meant acceleration 01. 

the ongOing program by providing more money and manpower, measures 

that Charyk and the President's closest advisors on such matters found 

inadequate. Before the end of May 1980, Charyk had forcefully turned 

the program away from readout and toward recovery. Early in JUDe, 

. the National Security·CoUDcll solicited the advice 01. the Director 01. 

Defense Research and Engineering on the proper future. conduct 01. 

SAMOS. 

By dispensation.of Dr. George .Kistiakowsky, the President's 

Special Assistant for Science and Technology, Charyk 'was made respoDsible for the study the NSC had requested. Sensing that Air Force motives and abilities were equally mistrusted, he began to move toward 

the idea of a compartmented satellite reconnaissance effort controlled 

immediately by a senior secretarial official. He also accepted a concept advanced by Dr. Bruce H. BUlings, that what was needed was a 

national intelligence capability rather than a reconnaissance system 

operated by the Strategic Air Command chiefly in support of missile 

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and bomber targeting requirements. Billings, in turn, had borrowed 

from Army and Navy arguments to the Joint Chiefs of Staff; for .reasoDa 

which could be presented as dispassionate but which almost certainly 

includeci a smattez:ing 01 partisanship, the other services had devoted 

much of the previous spring to opposing the concept at exclusive Air 

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and Engineering, had been constantly critical of Air Force management and program concepts over the same period. ' York was a dedicated 

cynic about concurrency, particularly as it was being appUed to SAMOEI. 

He agreed with Billings that the- best course for the moment would be to 

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remove SAMOS from Air Force keeping and entrust it to' some special., .- ' 

agency created for that purpose. There were indications that he :was 

thinking in terms of an organization reporting to his own direc~orate; 

quietly, but with some force, others suggested that the CIA should t~ke. "'; 

over the best of SAMOS and combine it with CORONA. Charyk, apparentlJ 

with the support of Kistiakowsky, took the'view that the program could 

best be managed by the Air Force, but directly under the Air Force' 

secretary -- or Under Secretary. 

Adding to the attractiveness of some such solution was the 1980 

apPearance .:>, two new system proposals composed in response to De~lJ 

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"l-'lH'(lVCd lnteiligence board requirements. All of the existing SAMOS· . , . 

techniques. even including the latest but exceedingly cumbersome E-5 

recovery system. were in substantial disfavor in one quarter or 

another. Both of the new proposals originated with contractors other· 

than those long engaged in SAMOS work. A clean break with the past 

seemed entirely possible. 

Tardily recognizing the strength of the opposition, the Air Force 

in late June 1960 began attempting to correct its past mistakes. The 

unacceptable expensive and'technically unattractive "Subsystem I. " . . 

which had been designed as a near-omnipotent data retriev.al and processing system, was radically cut back. (But it was not cancelled, 

though such a move would have been a far more convincing demonatration of reborn purity.) Simultaneously. General White told the Stratepc 

Air Command that SAMOS would be an Air Force rather than a SAC 

system. Here was another laggard appreciation of reality; there 

seemed little enough chance that the Air Force could preYent a transferot SAMOS to direct Department of Defense custody. The Ba1ll8tic 

Missile Division &uomitted a revised SAMOS development plan that 

accepted most of the precepts Dr. Billings had spelled out. Finally, 

General Schriever suggested to General White that he would be ap-eeable to the nomination of a bighly r~garded Air I'orce p_ra1 afficer to 

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h~ad a new "mana~ment by exception" SAMOS program. White thoueht 

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. this an excellent suggestion. proposed it to Charyk late in July, and 

later met with Charyk to evaluate candidates. Brigadier General R. E. 

Greer, who had aD exceptionally fine background in tecbnolol1 and ' 

management, a demonstrated ability to work successfully with Secretariatlevel officials, and no association with any of the identified SAMOS factf:0D8. 

was chosen. Charyk, who by then was well along in the construction of 

his presentation to the National Security Council, clearly foresaw a continuing role for Greer. white and Schriever took that as an indicator of 

the future, reassured that "management by exception" would give Greer 

a role and scope comparable to that of other key program directors iD . 

the Air Force Systems Command. They took Greer's appointment to . 

mean that the Air Force would not lose SAMOS to either the 'DOD or the 

CIA. 

General Schriever apparently had sufficient confidence in the 

strength of his position to attempt its fUrther improve~ent. Early in 

August he proposed a public statement covering General Greer's new 

assignment and including an announcement that the Air Force. was the 

executive agent for all reconnaissance satellite developments, a . 

generalization that apparently would include CORONA. Publication of 

such a statement would be interpreted to mean acceptance of its theSis. 

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But the planned news release did not survive review and a final reso- . lution of the imbroglio came to hinge on the outcome of the long pending 

presentation to the National 'Security Council. Actually, the main decision was made in advance of that event: as early as 15 August, C~aryk 

privately told Greer that the Air Research and Development Command 

would not retain any program management authority after program oyerhaul. 

Charykl s presentation to the National Security Council was superbi)' 

timed. On~y days earlier, the first set of CORONA photographs had 

been recovered from DISCOVERERXIV. DISCOVERER XIII had made' 

a still greater impact on the public at the time of its 12 August recovery, 

but XIII carried flight data instruments while XIV carried film. In C~ IS 

opinion, the prints were marvelous. The President was duly impre.~d. 

Charyk could pivot his presentation on a sparkling success .- not entirely 

the product of Air Force efforts, true,' but a reconnaissance satellite 

notwithstanding. 

The outcome of National Security Council deliberatioDs on that afternoon of 25 August was a directive assigning SAMOS prOilram responsibility to the Secretary of the Air Force. For practical purposes, that 

meant the Under Secretary. 

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During the next five days, directives enacting thf! approved program were drafted, approved, and circulated. Their effect was to 

set up a West Coast field office to service the entire Air Force space 

reconnaissance effort. Dr,. Charyk reported directly to the Secretary 

ot Defense in matters affecting SAMOS. 5 One of his first actions, ~~ 

an organizational sense, was to provide for the administrative reunion 

of the Air Force portion of CORONA with the balance ~ the original 

SAMOS project. The resulting arrangement was more nearly a l008e 

liaison than a structural integratton, however. Its purpose waa to 

insure some general coherence of objectives rather than to bring on 

a combination of programs. Most of the Air Force and some of ~ 

CIA retained the general impression that CORONA would serve as an 

interim predecessor of more refined s1stems to be developed in the 

course of SAMOS evolution. Although the technical approach of SAMOS 

and its schedules had been markedly altered in the 30 months since 

CORONA's gestatioli, no long. term' CORONA program had ever received 

approval. Procurement plans, the best indicators of program commitment, provided for CORONA launchings until mid-1981, at which time 

. (it was widely asaumed) SAM~ s1stems would begin doing the &8s1gnmente The original argument for CORONA, that its covert character 

was neceasary to offset the poaaibiUty of a prohibition on aclmowJedpcl 

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satellite reconnaissance, had become weaker with time and with th~ 

increasingly slight prospect of an international agreement on laun~~inI 

site inspection. Further erosion of that CORONA rationale had resulted from the September 1960 decision to bep an Air Force sponaored _------...... ~ ..... - ..... - ... ~ .... '.~~.,.."" ••••• ... I~ ..... - ...... •• - •••• :, ..... : ...... ,~~ ... , ••• "'i-....... "~"""'IiI-"' .. .-.....,..... ......... _._ .•.• , ..... _ •. ,, ..... _ •.. ,.~ ..... , ••. , .. 

covert reconnaissance program -- subsequently GAMBIT. 

Security Council approval of Charyk's proposal to establish a consolidated reconnaissance satellite program did not by any means end the 

agitation for a different solution. Within the Air Force, the Air Research 

and Development Command continued to press fora share of program 

management responsibility; the Army and, to a lesser extent the Navy, 

insisted on having a free hand in space flight areas each claimed on the 

basis of special prerogative; CIA was somewhat suspicious of Charyk's 

intentions from the onset; and State urged a policy f1 "responsible 

openness" for-SAMOS operations -- coupling the 'doctrine to a proposal 

for assigning program management authority to a civilian body exempt 

from the control of either Defense or the CIA. The aroup within State 

that originated such views contended that national secrecy, as practiced 

by the Soviets, was a wastinl asset. Given the potential 01 reconnaiasance satellites, they argued, secrecy would also become a wasting 

asset for the United States. Apart from the obvious effort to cODCoct a 

policy that would sbow United States lntentiona in their beat possible 

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light. State's desire apparently was to devise an approach that would .. ···1 

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encourage "acquiescence in observation satellites as consistent with: ' 

the peaceful uses of outer space." The objection was. of course. that. 

observation satellite activity once disclosedwoul~ be moat difficult 

to 'reconceal. And it was an interesting commentary on the doctrinal 

indecision that marked the period between cessation of the U-2 overflights into Soviet territory and the beginning of consistent returns 

from CORONA. Finally. State's position oflate 1960 took no notice of . 

two important incidents of the abortive summit conference in Paris the 

previous spring. President Eisenhower had explained the American 

need for overflight information'to his French and British counterparts 

in terms they found acceptable. and in the course of an angry exchanp 

between the President and Premier Khrushchev. the Premier had proclaimed that he was concerned only with airplanes: "any nation in the 

world who wanted to photograph the Soviet areas by satellites was 

6 completely free to do so." In these terms~ obtaining understandm, 

from the free world or toleration by the Russians required no such 

extreme concessions as those State favored • 

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Bibliography 

Chapter I 

1. Memo, A. A.- Johnson, Dep Under Secy State to P. H. Nitze, Aast 

SecDef inti Security, 5 Jun 62, n/s, w/Encl: Summary of Foreign 

Policy Aspects of U. S. quter . Space Program, 5 Jun 62. 

2. A History of Satellite Reconnaissance, Ch II; MFR, Col F. C. E~ 

Oder, Dir/WS-U7L Prog, 31 Jan 58, Subj: Establishment of the 

THOR-Boosted Phase of WS-U7L. 

. 3. The meeting with President Eisenhower is not mentioned in surviving documents from the spring of 1958, but is ~ited in correspondence between Bissell. Brig Qen O. J. Ritland (Schriever'. 

deputy) and Col W. A. Sheppard (who replaced Col Oder as . 

Schriever's project officer for this covert activity), on 20 Oct 58 

(Msgs 2956 and 2979). No single document sums up the rather 

casual organizational arrangements initially established; the 

various sources are set down in Fn 38 to Ch D, A History of· 

Satellite Reconnaissance. Memo, Jolulson to Nltze, 5 Jon 12, 

discusses the British-French-A"merican Proposal, submitted to 

the Soviet Government on 28 May 58. 

4. A History of Satellite Reconnaissance, Ch D. 

5. Details of these arrangements are included in A History of Satellite 

Reconnaissance, Vol I, Ch IV. . 

6. D. D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Waging Peace, 1956-

1961. Doubleday, 1965, in excerpt publishe y as on Post, 

5 Oct 65, p. A 19; the State Dept position is sumlDarized :In a aft, 

"Development of a Political Approach to the SAMOS Problem, " 

dated (in iOk) Sep 60, but probably written in July or·e~rly:· Alii 60, 

both reproduced in SAFSS documents, "Policy, PolitiCal and ·lDternational Aspects of Satellite Recoanaissance, Sep 60 - Feb 12. tt 

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II 

A NATIONAL CONCEPT 

With Dr. Charyk's conception of making Air Force CORONA 

management responsive to General Greer there was planted the seed 

of a basic policy disagreement. It is reasonably clear that from the 

beginning of bis interest in SAMOS reorganization, Charyk's goal was 

a centraliz.ed, consolidated satellite reconnaissance program. 

The ideal may have originated in Kistiakowsky. In any case be 

urged it on. The principal objections came not from the CIA but from· 

the Air Staff and command establishment. Neither SAC nor ARDC was 

";' 

willing to give up its anticipated role in SAMOS development and opera~ 

tion; coercion was necessary. Fending off ARDC attempts to interVene 

·in program affairs or to obtain control of critical resourc~s occupied 

an astonishing amount of General Greer's time during the last quarter 

of 1960. SAC was nearly as troublesome in other •• ys. Neither Greer 

nor Charyk seems to have given much credence to the possibility that 

, CORONA or some descendant might become a fixture of satellite reconnaissance. so neither made any special effort, immediately, to couoliHan.:. " ~ia 

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date his grasp on CORONA management. Newer programs seemed 

obviously more critical to the objective of centralized management. 

Nor do CORONA project people seem to have thought of the program 

as being particula!"ly destined for long life. 

-,' The program taken over by Charyk in September 1960~ though 

faulty in some of its technology, nonetheless encompassed a span of 

satellite reconnaissance vehicles (E-I, E-2, E-5 and E-6) theoretically 

capable of satisfying every general requirement yet stated, from broad 

search through relatively high resolution surveillance. With the quiet 

reinstatement of the E-4 mapping satellite, refinement of the E-6, and 

clandestine approval of the GAMBrr program, the spectrum was extended to include every technically feasible photographic device which 

could be employed usefully from orbit. The total program included two 

different recovery techniques and one readout method, a set of options 

which appeared to cover all foreseeable contingencies. 

Many later difficulties in ~e management of what subsequently 

was called the National Reconnaissance Program stemmed from nothing 

more sinister than basic misinformation about the origins and early 

events of the CORONA program. Few people had first hand Imowledp , 

of what actually had occurred and they tended to be more concerned 

with current crises than those immediately past. In the absence of 

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reliable fact, there grew up an aura of myth about C~RONA, as in 

so many strikingly successful programs that lacked precedent. . And 

with time the myth and the paucity of fact fed the native chauvinism 

01 some program participants to produce wildly erroneous accounts, 

unfounded beJiefs, and mistaken conviction~, none having much basis 

in past reality. 

One of the most notorious statements of misinformation, ~d one 

representative of the breed, was registered by John McCone, successor 

to Allen Dulles as Director of Central Intelligence, in February 1964 --

only six years after CORONA's start and while many 01 the original 

participants still were active in some aspect of satellite reconnaissance. 

McCone saw 1964 problems of NRO authority and prerogatives as the 

outgrowths of a situation in which tI ••• the Air Force had refused to 

develop the CORONA but had insisted on developing the more sophist!-

cated SAMOS and hence CIA undertook the job and this got them into the 

. 7 business of buying cameras, re-entry vehicles, etc." 

Quite apart from the fact of U-2 program precedents, the issue 01 

1958 had not been whether to develop what became CORO~A father than 

what became SAMOS, but whether to develop a Thor-bOosted interim 

reconnaissance satellite under ordinary security rules or in comp18te 

secrecy, as a covert program. Precisely ~ same devices -"-.~.ters, 

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upper stages, and camera systems -- were considered in the two ap- , 

proaches, and essentially the same people would have done the work 

regardless of the program decision. Original Air Force interest in 

CIA sponsorship o( (or participation ill) a sate1lite program was' motivated by apprehension that the administration would adopt a national 

policy on space activities that would force cancellation of theWS-ll'1L 

program. A clandestine program might survive. A secondary excuse 

from the Air Force side -- at least in 195'1 -- was the probability that 

CIA participation would insure the availability of adequ~te funds, although the projected CIA contribution was relatively sma1l. It was 

also true, however, that SAC" most of the Air Staff, and much of ARDC 

favored readout, an expensive and elaborate data handling system, and 

a management approach of no great promise. 

As for CIA's buying "cameras, re-entry vehicles, etc.," the 

pattern of CORONA management was neither greater nor smaller than 

that of the U-2. Brigadier General O. J. Rltland, Schriever's Deputy 

Commander and the senior Air Force officer intimately involved in the 

early CORONA arrangements, was fresh from an assi~ent as'Bissell'. 

Air Force deputy in the U-2 development. rutland and Bissell took the 

easy and obvious cour8e of recreating in CORONA the arrangements 

which had worked 80 well for the U-2. The rationale for CORONA's 

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management structure was nothing more elaborate than a reasonable . desire to reproduce an effective working relationship which had 

existed ear1ie~. That the Air Force had ignored the potential of the 

U-2 was irrelevant. Moreover, questions ot how CORONA Mould be 

operated, managed, and controlled could not become issues until 

something more substantial than a program with a record of ten consecutive flight failures was at stake. Finally, even the eventual success of CORONA would have meant little had not improved versions 

been introduced -- first the C' (C-prime), then C'" (C-triple-prime), 

and then MURAL (a stereo version of crr,). A contributing factor, of 

course, was the continuing ineffectiveness and eventual cancellation 

of all of the SAMOS-E series projects -- with the result that from 

1960 to 1963, CORONA was the only provider of photographic information on the Soviet heartland. It achieved most eminence because, in 

the words of Brockway McMillan, "The Air Force SAMOS prOiram 

was ill considered, undisciplined, and poorly managed. It would have, 

. 8 

at best, floundered into success at a much later date. " 

The post-1960 arrangement of CORONA/SAMOS affairs was eflective for almost precisely the . reasons the earlier independent 

CORONA program had been: the people involved were h1ibly rational 

pragmatists. On the West Coast, the princlpals were Colonel Paul B. 

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Worthman and General Greer, alike in being highly skilled program 

managers, in their preferences for direct and dispassionate handling 

of issues, and in their tendencies to rely on careful analysis.' In ,. 

Washington were ~issell and Charyk, each possessed of a rare ability 

to respect another's integrity, each more interested in end results, . 

than in transient differences, and each having a high regard for the 

other's abUity. The only change in pre-August arrangements was to 

have Charyk's staff (under Brigadier General R. D. Curtin) become the 

focal point for CORONA and ARGON matters of concern to the Air Force, 

and to ha~ Greer serve as a West Coast locus for such matters. 9 

One significant move toward the better utilization of overfliaht 

photographs was the creation on 18 January 1961 of the National 

Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC), a centralized handling, 

evaluation, and intelligence dissemination establishment headed by a 

Director who was selected by the Director of Central Intelligence with 

the advice and consent of the United States Intelligence. Board and the 

10 Secretary of Defense. A second was the cessation of public disc~-

sion of satellite reconnaissance, a deliberate, gradual process ",hieh 

had the effect of further consolidating knowledge about the recomUlissance programs and hence of inhibiting efforts by non-participants 

to influence events. Stricter security was the mechanism of reform. 

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One goal of the more stringent security regime was to create the im- . pression that the acknowledged satellite reconnaissance activity was 

no more than a continuing research and development effort -- although 

the real ,oal was to become operational as . soon as possible. This 

pattern was strengthened in February 1961 by the establishment of 

special clearance procedures as a prerequisite for access to SAMOS 

information. (CORONA, of course, had long enjoyed such a special 

status.) Use of the word SAMOS (even ~ clas,ified papers) was discouraged and no public statements on satellite reconnaissance were 

permitted without the approval of Charyk's office. 

A much more elaborate plan for controlling the flow of information on satellite reconnaissance appeared late in January 1961, partly 

in consequence of, Charyk's earlier discussions with Greer in the ma~r 

of a cover for the GAMBIT program. The.purpose was to obscure aU 

reconnaissance activity by making it indistinguishable from nonreconnaissance-oriented space shots -- or at least those managed by .. ,:. 

the military services. Implicit in the evolution of the policy was the 

assumption that total control of the military space program would be 

vested in a single agency. * Charyk's early notion was to create 

* The security plan was originally known by the codeword CENTURY, 

for which first RAINCOAT and later UMBRELLA were substituted. It 

was formally approved and put into effect nearly a year later as DOD. 

Directive 8-5200.13. 

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directly under the Secretary of the Air Force an Office of Space Projects which would be headed by a Director and Vice Director " who would 

also serve as Commander and Vice Commander of the Space Systems 

Division. * The id!!a was subsequently dropped, partly because it 

would have involved people like Greer, the C)bvious candidate for the 

director-commander slot, in the tense absorbing details of too many 

. 11 

petty proJects. 

By mid-1961 it was becoming apparent that the surroundings and 

conditions of the original SAMOS program arrangement had changed 

sufficiently to warrant both' a reappraisal and a firmer definition of 

authority and responsibility. Apart from a particularly treacherous 

security problem, there was the matter of dealing with an entirely 

new set of Secretariat officials (except for Charyk himself), at the 

Defense and Air Force Department levels. And although the Air 

Research and Development Command (now the Air Force Systems Command) had been generally discouraged in its attempts to acquire or 

regain elements of authority for reconnaissance systems, both the, 

Army and the Navy were reactivating their ~nterest in obtaining direct 

control of individual programs. In the case of the Navy, the problem 

was relatively minor; small electronic intelligence payloads were the 

*In Los Angeles, at the site of the Air Force Ballistic Missile Dinsion. 

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stake and there was abundant evidence that the Navy would settle for 

a role in the development process without haggling over broader 

authority. 

The Army position was significantly harder than had been the case 

in August 1960. ARGON, the Army-sponsored mapping satellite program, relied on the same launching and orbital vehicles as CORONA, 

although the programs were managed independently. Inter-relationships 

were increasingly complex, particularly in the matter of scheduUn, 

payloads for the stUllimited supply of launching vehicles. Then there 

was the interest of the Army mapping people in exploiting the products 

of SAMOS and CORONA flights. Unrealistic though it seemed to man; 

of the CORONA people, the Army wanted to use CORONA-derived photographs as the basis for large scale charts. Finally, the artificial uparation of mapping and charting responsibilities from the remainder of 

the satellite camera program was causing increased friction between 

the Army and the Air Force. The mounting coordinati~n difficulties 

promised to become more pronounced still as the Army moved t~rd 

acceptance of a new mapping camera system (TOMAS/VAULT) tentatively scheduled for Army management. T~ A~y proposed to control 

the program through its own establishment, tasldnc the Air Force in 

such items as boosters, orbital vehicles, and launcbing services. 'The 

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prospect of having to support a semi -autonomous program through 

participation in a tri-service coordinating group had few attractions 

in its own right; its appeal was further limited by the near certainty 

that such a tactic "ould expose quantities of reconnaissance program 

information to large numbers of people who could not and should not : 

dabble in the management of reconnaissance programs but who would • 

be tempted to do so once they became peripherally involved. 

In the spring of 1961, Dr. Charyk became sufficiently concerned, 

about the uncertain nature of his authority and the possibility of its 

being diluted to take up the matter with the new Secretary of Defense, 

Robert S. McNamara. * McNamara suggested that Charyk commit his 

problem and a proposed solution to paper and then take it to Cyrus 

Vance, Secretary of the Army, for discussion. Vance, generally 

agreeable to a consolidation of DOD satellite authority under Charyk, 

urged a still more compre~ensive program amalgamation, one that 

would envelop all overflight vehicles and would provide a central font 

for management of the entire reconnaissance effort. 

* Major General J. L. Martin has suggested that Dr. Charyk received 

general instructions to "do something" about consolidating satellite re-

, connaissance under a single executive and that such instructions orillnated with McNamara shortly alter his installation as Secret&rJ of 

Defense. Charyk left no record of such contacts, but it Is a ver1 

plausible explanation for the events that followed. 

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Notably, at that point the motivation was entirely intra-DOD in . origin. The problems were in security and cover, control o~ mappiDl 

satellites, and to a lesser degree SIGINT payloads. Bissell and Chal7k 

were working in complete harmony, maintainiDI their respect tor one 

another in the process. At the operating level, on the West Coast. an 

equally effective if somewhat more formal relationship prevaUed. 

Yet there were problems in the offing. It was increaaingly clear 

that the CORONA program would be more tenacious of life than earlier 

had been anticipated. In July 1960, about a month betore the first' 

CORONA film was recovered, Itek and Lockheed had first begun considering a stereo version of the "Improved" CORONA -- that employing 

the "C-triple-prime" camera system. Although many of the details 

were vague (there was some talk, apparently quite serioua, of a need 

for fUm reading devices capable of working at a resolution level of 200 

lines per millimeter I), by early 1961 the proposal was far enough alol1l 

to suggest the need for a code name and clearance system 'separate from 

CORONA. The project was called MURAL. An investment 

was thought sufficient to pay for development~ teat, and eight flyable 

camera system..:,. 

In March 1961, the proposal came to Dr. Charyk'a immediate attention. He generally endorsed the idea of MURAL and recommended 

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that development be entrusted to "the existing mana~ment structure 

and control, i. e., Air Force and CIA." To the Under Secretary. the 

project did not appear to represent a particularly difficult problem in 

research and development. 

If the project were carried forward, the satellite would fly contemporaneously with such stereo systems as E-5, E-6 and GAMBIT. 

With a possible ground resolution of six feet, it was clearly cQmpetitive 

with both the E systems although there seems to have been a gener&1 

understanding that six feet was not a particularly realistic objec.tive~ 

In any case, the prospect of an extended CIA role in satellite program 

activity in the stead of the limited part that in earlier and more casual 

days had been assumed for the Agency prompted thought for the long 

term conduct of the total reconnaissance effort. Charyk discussed his 

original ideas with McNamara, Vance, Dr. J. R. Killian (the President's 

Science Advisor), and General Maxwell Taylor (recalled from an unwanted 

retirement to advise the President on military affairs). He also talked 

with Bissell, whose task it was to keep the ARGON program covert and 

who ,!,ould presumably be called on to do as much for VAliLT at some 

later date. The original Charyk proposal contemplate a a general CIA-DOD 

agreement on the conduct of satellite reconnaissance; his object, plain17. 

was unquestioned authority over all Department of Defense satellites. 

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There was, at that point, no suggestion of a single executive for tlie 

entire overflight program; he assumed that DOD and CIA would· control their own programs through their own channels, coordinattnl by 

an interaction of tpe senior program managers (Char1k and Bissell). 

One would become the director and the other tbe deput1 director of 

what Char1k dubbed the National Satellite Reconnaissance Olfice. * 

(The term "Satellite'.' dropped out with the inclusion of aircraft and 

drone vehicles in an early revision.) Each would have a small staff, 

the entire operation being covert. As Dr. Charyk'put it, "The office 

would not direct an,.thing as an office; the actions taken would be 

through the authority which the· Director and Deputy hold over their 

respective agencies ••• " 

At Secretary Vance's suggestion, and without discussing it ~l .. -

where, Charyk put together an alternative proposal that would ,center 

the el}tire responsibility for the National Reconnaissance Program iii 

the Department of Defense. He reasoned: 

*In one part of the draft plan, Bissell is clearl1 identified as the proposed Director, National Satellite Reconnaissance Olfice; in another 

section. there is the statement that " •.. the Under Secretary of the Ai~ 

• Force would hold one of these positions, and the Deput1 Director, Plans, 

of CIA wo_:d hold the other." (Bissell wali "Deputy Director, P1aDs,". 

of CIA.) 

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The only way that a single person could be given complete 

program responsibility would be to designate a CIA official 

having line responsibility and authority in that Agency to 

simultaneously be an official in DOD also exerciSing line 

res'ponsibility and authority in the name of the Secretary of 

Defense, and charged with responsibility for the complete 

program. 1'his official would be Director of the NSRO and 

would direct CIA activities through his line responsibility 

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and authority in that Agency and direct DOD activities through 

his responsibility and authority in DOD. The Under Secretary of the Air Force would be Deputy Director of the NSRO, 

and actions to Air Force units would be through him. 

In a definition of assorted responsibilities, Char)"k suggested' 

that CIA should be "primarily responsible for program security including communicatioris, t.rget programming of each vehicle and 

covert contract administration" while the DOD was charged with 

"technical program management, scheduling, vehicle operations, 

financial management and covert contract administration ... 12 

Obviously, Charyk's original intention was to clarify his own 

authority as the agent of the Secretary of Defense for satellite projects 

in the keeping of the three services. The inclusion of provisions for a 

centralized National Reconnaissance Office was in part a reaction to the 

conviction, shared by many members of th~ newly installed Kennedy 

administration, that CIA ineptness had brought on the embarrassinl 

fiasco at the Bay of Pigs. Following so closely on the U-2 episode, 

the Bay of Pigs aftair could not but heighten Presidential distrust of· 

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CIA management. A further indicator of declining C~ influenc~ was 

the January 1961 creation of a special committee (the 5413 Group),to 

advise the President on such matters as the wisdom of undertakillJ or 

continuing reconnaissance satellite overflights. President Eisenhower 

had been quite responsive to advice from Allen Dulles, for whom he 

had a very high regard, and from Richard Bissell, generally ac~owledpd 

to be the most capable of CIA's policy makers. Bissell, more than Dulles, 

was blamed for the outcome at the Bay of Pigs; mistrust thus gene'rated 

tended to decrease his influence at the White House in other ma"ers with 

which he was concerned -- and satellite reconnaissance was prom~nt 

among these. Hence the suggestion that DOD assume general responsibility for the entire reconnaissance effort. * 

Perhaps so sweeping a change could not have been carried through 

without a crisis of some sort to precipitate action. In this instance 

there was none. Nevertheless, Secretary McNamara resolved the ·isBue 

*It seems probable, on the evidence, that Dr ~ Charyk was rather less 

cavalier in his alternative proposal than he could have been. Later 

events seem to indicate that his solution, which would have made 

Bissell the chief of the National Reconnaissance Progra~, was a 

greater concession to CIA than McNamara and Vance had in mind. 

There is no better confirmation of the excellence of personal.and working relationships between Charyk and Bissell than the proposal Charyk 

prepared at Vance's suggestion -- and under obvious instructions to 

withhold it from the CIA. Nor is there a better indicator of the character of the two principals. 

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that had originally prompted Charyk to act by giving him " ••• complete 

authority to speak for the DOD and to determine the payloads of the 

particular satellites involved (i. e., reconnaissance and geodesy payloads' 

during the next few months." Complaints, McNamara added, shouldbe 

passed to him. 13 

On the day following that delegation of authority. Secretary McNamara 

instructed Charyk to. continue his discussions with Killian, Land, Taylor, 

Vance. and Bissell with the object of entirely resolving any organizational 

difficulties that promised to hamper the operations of the satellite reconnaissance effort. On 7 August. Charyk submitted for McNamara's signature a memorandum of understanding that. assuming the agreement of, .. 

the CIA, would have brought into being the sort of structure suggested 

by Secretary Vance some days earlier. The paper explicitly designat~d 

Bissell (by his position title) as Direcyor of the National Reconnaissance 

Office and Charyk (by title' as Deputy Director. It included a clear 

statement of function: "This office will have direct control over all 

elements of the total program." The program was to include "all . 

satellite and OVE: ;--flight reconnaissance projects whether overt or covert" 

-- a definition that included "all photographic projects for intelligence, 

geodesy and mapping purposes, and electronic signal collection projects 

for electronic signal intelligence and communications intelligence." 

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Although 'management control of the field operations of various ele- . ments of he program ••• " was to be exercised by Bissell for CIA 

activities and by Charyk for DOD projects, the central aspects of program management were clearly intended to be NRO funct~ons. 

Secretary McNamara si~ed the memorandum as written, but 

Mr. Dulles "felt that certain changes were desirable" and also favored 

specifying the arrangements in a letter rather than a formal interagency agreement. It appears that McNamara may then have had a 

change of heart about the advisability of entrusting the entire DOD reconnaissance program to an executive from the CIA, and there were some 

indications that the CIA was less than enthusiastic about letting Charyk 

control the CIA satellite program. In any event, when the re-drawn 

agreement was sent forward on 5 September it specified that Charyk 

and Bissell would be jointly responsible for the program .. 14 . There 

were no other substantive changes. Although the arrangement was 

administratively awkward, it was probably workable 80 long as the 

original assignees to the joint directorship remained in office. 

On 6 September 1961, McNamara announced to a select ,rOup that 

Dr. Charyk had been named his Assistant for Reconnaissance with full 

authority to act for Defense in matters of reconnaissance pro,ram 

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firmed; the Under Secretary was charged with responsibility for all, . ' 

DOD photographic reconnaissance, mapping, geodesy, ELINT ~d, ' 

SIGINT programs. A new public information policy designed to reduce the vulnerability of satellite launches to international protests 

was also promised. All this was a part of the formal agreement 

between McNamara and Dulles that officially created a National Reconnaissance Program and defined the arrangements for its mannilig 

and operation. 

The only significant ditference between the arrangement Charyk 

had proposed on 7 August and that actually approved on 8 ,September 

1981 was the substitution of a joint executive for the director-plus 

deputy structure Charyk had urged. This, obviously, was a compromise of viewpoints. Charyk had no objections to Bissell' a being named 

" 

director but either McNamara or some membera of the White House 

advisory staff did. Dulles (and CIA CORONA people) were not particularly enthusiastic about having Charyk exercise general control of 

the total effort, but Bissell had no objections. Dulles au,pate dthe 

joint-executive solution. McNamara left the matter of its acceptability 

to Charyk's det('"~mination, and Charyk approved. So, apparently, did , 

Bissell. Both, however, had earlier expressed the belief that a single 

authority, preferably a CIA official reaponsible directlJ to the Secretary 

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·······1·· 

of Defense, would be the most appropriate solution. That they did not 

• 

insist on such an arrangement was almost entirely the consequence of .. ·· 

their mutual respect and a Joint conviction that they could work effectiveq 

under almost any administrative shelter. 15 

By means of separate directives, Deputy Secretary of Defense 

Roswell Gilpatric and Air Force Secretary Eugene Zuckert conf~rmed 

Charyk's ultimate authority and responsibility for all DOD recolUiaissance programs and his right to allocate resources to those programs. 

But in the larger matter ofa CIA-DOD relationship, the 5412 Group . 

proved unwilling to ratify the agreement, contending that the national 

reconnaissance effort was too important to entrust to divided man"'-

mente The 5412 Group held out for straightforward assignment of 

..... 

authority to one person -- the poSition that Charyk had essentially 

predicted several weeks earlier and which he had urged on McNamara~ 

Ho,:,ever. Charyk's solution to the impasse -- naming Bissen to the 

Director's post -- was not acceptable to either the 5412 Group or to· 

Defense. The alternative, naming Charyk, was equally unacceptable 

to CIA middle management, 

Relatively little progress was made toward a solution durinc the . 

winter of 1961-1962 because first Dulles and then Bissell left theClA. 

John A. McCone became the Director and Herbert Scoville inherited 

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much of Bissell's responsibility for the overflight program, although 

Scoville was nominally called Deputy Director for Research. * But ' 

until Bissell actually departed in March 1962, . the working relationship with Charyk :temaioed smooth. 16 

*Scoville never had Bissell's authority; the post, as Bissell had 

• occupied it, was essentially abolished and its functions parcelled 

out. The decision to reorganize CIA's executive in this fashion 

served as a signal to Bissell that departure would not be unwelcome. 

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Bibliography 

Chapter II 

7. Memo, J. A. McCone, Dir/Central Intel, to B. McMillan, Dir/NRO, 

12 Feb 64, nls, with Attach, MFR, McCone, 11 Feb 64, Subj: Meeting with Dr. McMillan on 11 Dec 64, in NRC Staff files; CIM Met, 

Doc. 31. 

6. Memo, B. McMillan, D/NRO, to R. S. McNamara, SecDef, 12 Dec 

63, Subj: Possible NROICIA :Jssues, in NRC Staff file, CIM Mgt, 

Doc. 12. 

9. MFR, Col P. E. Worthman, 26 Oct 60, Subj: CORONA-ARGON 

Focal Point, in CORONA Correspondence, 58-60. 

10. NSC Intel Dir. No.8, "Photographic Interpretation, " eff 18 Jan 61. 

11. The long and involved security improvement measures are treated 

in a great many papers, among which the following are both representative and important. TWX SAFMS-DIR-2, SAFMS to SAFSP, 

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10 Oct 60; TWX SAFSP-24-10-14, Brig Qen R. E. Greer to Brig OeD 

R. D. Curtin, SAFMS, 24 Oct 60; TWX SAFOI-3C 71267, SAF Ofc of 

Info to AFBMD, 21 Dec 60; notebook kept by Brig Qen Greer, entry 

for 27 Dec 60; TWX SAFMS-DEP-61-02, SAFMS to SAFSP, 8 Jan 81; 

MFR, Maj D. D. Bradburn, SAPSP, 27 Jan 61, SubJ: Briefing for 

Inspector General, USAF; TWX AFCCS 67628, Qen T. D. White, 

cis USAF, to Lt Gen B. A. Schrieve~, Cmdr ARDC, et. al., 8 Feb 

81; TWX SAFMS-M-W4, Col J. L. Martin to Bri, Qen Oreer, 13 Jan 

81, ''How to Get There from Bere" (paper), 10 Feb 61, and "Ground 

Rules, "(paper), 13 Mar 61. A draft of the interim plan titled 

"Satellite Reconnaissance Plan, " dated 3 Apr 81, is in the Charyk 

papers kept in the NRO Staff fUes. The remaining documents cited 

in this note are on file in their respective office. olorilin44 

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12. Memo, J. V. Charyk, SAFUS, to SecDef, 24 JuI' 81, Subj:. Management of National Reconnaissance Program, NRO Staff files, 

FUNCTIONS: NRO 1961-1963, and incls (a package that includes 

11 separate papers and 41 pages of typescript); MFR, Col J. L. 

Martin, Dir/NRO Staff, 12 Mar 83, no subject. wlth Summary for 

Record dated 35 Feb 83, a memoir prepared by Dr. J. V. Charyk. 

SAFUS, at the time of his departure from Government service. in 

NRO Staff files. The 24 Ju1 paper, though only a proposal; apPears 

to be the central item in the later controversy over functions; the 

Charyk memoir is a vital document, essential to an appreciation of 

events between mid-1961 and early 1983. .. 

13. Memo, R. S. McNamara. SecDef, to SAFUS, 27 Jul 61, no subject, 

in NRO Staff files. 

14. Memo, J. V. Charyk, SAFUS, to D/SOD, 7 Aug 61, subj: Manage-. 

ment'of the National Reconnaissance Program. with draft agreement, siR. S. McNamara, same date; Memo, Charyk to olson. 

5 Sep 61. no subject, with cy orig memo of understanding and 

undated letter, McNamara to Dulles, all in NRO Staff files. 

15. Memo, R. S. McNamara, SecDef, to SecArmy, Navy, AF, ,DORY. 

Chmn JCS, General Counsel, 8 Sep 81. Subj: Assistant for Reconnaissance, in McMillan files, NRO Agmts; Ltr. R. L. GUpatric, 

Dep SecDef, to A. W. Dulles. Dir/CIA, 8 Sep 61, 'Subject: Manapment of the National Reconnaissance Program. with concurrence by 

General C.P. Cabell. Acting Dir/CIA. same fUe; Memo, J. V. 

Charyk to Dep SecDef. 5 Sep 81. no subject. in no Stalf fUes; 

Ltr to Dulles. 6 Sep 61. .! 

16. Charyk ~moir, 25 Feb 63; Memo E. M. Zuckert. Sec/AF.·to 

cIs USAF. 7 Feb 61, Subj: Establishment of National Reconnaissance Office, in NRO Staff files; Memo. II. L. GUpatric, Dep Sec 

Def to Service Secretaries. DDRU, Chmn .lCS. Dir/NSA, 20· Oct 

61, Subj: Space Vehicle Electronic Intelligence ProFam, in !fRO 

Staff files. 

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In 

THE CHARYK ERA 

During the winter preceding Richard Bissell's March 1982 return 

to private life there were several indications of Dr. Charyk's intent:to 

consolidate authority over DOD satellite reconnaissance projects. A, 

draft statement of "NRO Functions and Re~ponsibi1ities" prepared by' 

Charyk's staff in November 1961 suggested the outright transfer of 

ARGON, MURAL and Navy-sponsored ELINT programs to the Air " 

Force. In the opinion of the Air Force project people, there was 110 

need for concern about the future of CORONA (by which was meant the, 

original one-camera CORONA payload), because by then only two 

scheduled shots and one unassigned payload remained of the program • 

. There was also some sentiment -- which never became enthusiasm --

for transferring ARGON exploitation equipment and the mission respon~ 

sibility to the Army Mapping Service, with the Defense Intelligence 

Agency exercising operational control. 17 Desultory discussions of the 

basic proposal followed, involving Gilpatric and McCone, but for un- ' 

certain reasons they trailed away in December. 18 

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Both the Special (5412) Group and the President's Foreign Intelli- . gence Advisory Board continued to express interest in the topic ~rough 

the early winter, but again, whatever objections were advanced to an 

early resolution of the issue were deemed sufficient and no action was 

taken. Charyk had by this time begun to favor consolidating all program 

management functions within the National Reconnaissance Office "without regard for previous arrangements." He was also convinced that 

funding and contracting authority had to be concentrated there and that 

he would be well advised to avoid giving the CIA responsibility for either 

the research and development aspect or the technical management of the 

diverse projects clumped together as a National Reconnaissance Program. 

He looked to the end of the original CORONA program as the beginning of 

19 

a new era. 

By mid-January 1962, the revised concept of a National Reconnaissance Program had been reduced to working papers and bad become the 

topiC of renewed discussions between Gilp~tric and McCone. The proposal. as drawn by Defense (actually Charyk's staff). conte~plated a 

one-program management approach, an office headed by an &esistant 

for reconnaissance who reported directly to the Secretary of Deleilee. 

a technique of providing joint CIA -DOD program guidance to the office 

chief. and a clear deleption of authority from. ~ orgaDi •• tioDa •. The 

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reconnaissance function would thus be concentrated in the person Of the 

Secretary of Defense, who would act as Executive Agent tor both DOD 

and CIA. He, ~n turn, would delegate it to his "Assistant for Reconnaissance." The proposed assignment included all National Reconnaissance Program projects. covert and overt. with authority over fiscal 

as well as technical and operational matters. A Pentagon control center 

for operations was part of the plan, as was a mission operations group 

composed of representatives from all partiCipating agencies. 20 

Submitted to CIA on 17 January, the proposed charter was returned --

heavily modified -- in March. The CIA version provided for a National 

Reconnaissance Office which planned, developed, and monitored pro-. 

grams, but in which responsibility and authority for program management was exercised by either CIA or DOD as required by progr~. proprietorship. The CIA objective clearly was an office which w~ld insure 

some general coordination of independently conducted programs. 21 ~is, 

of course, was akin to the arrangement Charyk had originally suggested, 

but its effectiveness depended largely on the sort of smooth working 're- J 

]ationship that had existed while Bissell was the principal CIA participant. 

On 11 April, another version· of the proposed agreement appeared; 

this representing the Air Force revision ot the CIA submission. . It restated the basic rule of NRO responsibility for managing and conductina 

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the entire reconnaissance program, but provided for a delegation to .. 

CIA ot responsibility for administrative procurement and contracting 

for covert programs assigned to that agenc:y. Whereas the CIA draf~ 

had insisted that t\le Agency must concur in decisions on scheduling •. 

the Air Force version provided that the NRO Director would assign 

operation responsibility to the OOD or the CIA in accordance with :. 

guidance obtained from the Defense Secretary and the Director of Central 

Intelligence. Non-controversial statements on joint staffing and minOr 

22 functions were unchanged. 

The inevitable proposal for changes arrived'on 19 AprU. CIA 

accepted a premise of theoretical authority. embodied in the NRO Director. 

but with the provisos that covert programs then in CIA hands and others 

assigned by the Defense Secretary and the Director of Central Intellipnce 

would be totally the responsibility of the Agency, that CIA would fund 

"its own covert projects, " would be executive agent for those projects, " 

would establish NRO security policy, and would have to concur in schedules 

for its own projects. Operational control would be assigned to eitherOOD 

or CIA as appropriate. Moreover, CIA insisted on having a veto over advance planning for all post-1962 programs assigned to NRO. Finally, the. 

Deputy Director. Research, CIA (Scoville), was to be responsible for 

·':····:1 

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seeing that the CIA assignments and related agreements were carried out. 23 

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The exchange of drafts, modified drafts, re-drafts, corrected 

drafts, and substitute drafts probably could have continued f~r months 

without exhausting the ingenuity of either side. As much could not be 

said for patience •. The mailing intervals were growing shorter, but 

there was no evidence that either party was willing to accept the basic 

viewpoint of the other. On the evening of 19 April -- after receiving 

the most recent CIA revision of the proposed agreement -- Charyk met 

with Scoville. Although they found some common ground, it was clear 

that they still were in disagreement on principles. The proposal to have 

Scoville become Deputy Director of the NRO, for example, led him to 

argue for a status as a CIA representative, rather than as a deputy to 

the director. CIA still insisted on having a veto in planning. At the 

time, and in a subsequent note to Scoville, Charyk rejected both of these 

points. There was some additional wrangling over details, but on 2 May 

1962, agreement compromising the main points in dispute was signed by 

24 Gilpatric for the DOD and McCone for the CIA. 

In essence, the 2 May agreement conceded to the CIA the main . 

points at issue, making that organization the executive agent for programs "already under its management" and for those later assigned by 

the Secretary of Defense and the Director of Central Intelltcence -- to 

whom the Director of the NRO was made responsible. CIA was t9 lund 

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the programs it then managed and all covert contracts required in 

support of overt programs. CIA also had the· security policy assignmente In the matter of scheduling, the key phrase was "coordination 

with" rather than ~'concurrence, " as CIA had earlier urged, but operational control was to be assigned as the Intelligence Director and Defense 

Secretary decided, on a project-by-project basis. The phrase "coordinated 

with" appeared again in the definition of advanced planning functions. 25 

The product of nine months of wrangling was a document which compromised virtually all of the principles set down in the ,September 1961 

Agreement <an agreement which the 5412 Group had rejected -- chief!)' 

at the urging of General Taylor -- on the grounds of its proViding an 

ineffective executive). The original agreement had· been bullt in days 

when CIA was represented by Richard Bissell, with whom Charyk aDd 

his staff got on splendidly. Since that time the climate had changed: 

tempers were set by the January-March 1962 negotiations, and in sOme. 

cases they were never quieted. Charyk secured a relatively strong 

policy: statement on NRO purposes, but in other respects the CIA viewpoint prevailed .. The principle of unified reconnaissance program m&nal8-

ment that Charyk had .set out to establish was but vaguely ac~ow1e.ed 

in the May 1962 document, although on some points there remained 

enough of a foundation to support hope for successful proll"am s;n ..... -

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mente The agreement provided for CIA coordination rather than con- . . 

currence, and for guidance from the two agency heads rather than 

direction from them, as CIA had wanted, but it remained to be seen 

whether a virile National Reconnaissance Program could survive the 

accommodation. 

In a provoCative footnote to the episode, McCone volunteered his 

appraisal of Charyk as "uniquely qualified" to become Director, 

National Reconnaissance Office. 26 

FromCharyk's viewpoint, the chief shortcoming of the May 1982 

Agreement was that it provided no single, central scheme for manalina 

both those programs responsive to the desires for the Director, NRO, 

and those charged to the Deputy Director. who might or might not have' 

the same viewpoint as the Director and who was only figuratively subordinate to him. A program planning activity, a central operating faCility, 

and a permanent home for the NRO Staff were obvious requirements 

which had either been overlooked or diplomatically ignored when the 

NRO charter was stuck together. 

Such matters were gently taken up at the first fu11 dress meetiDi Of 

principal NRO assignees on 22 May. * On some questions there was 

*Attendees included Charyk, Greer, Curtin, Col Jolm Martin, ScovU1e, 

Col Stanley Beerli, Eugene Kiefer and Col Leo Geary, with ScovU1e~ .. ~ 

Beerli, . and Kiefer representing the CIA. 

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quick agreement -- as in the matter of denying the National Security. , 

Agency the authority to develop SIGINT payloads: NRO's prior rights 

were quickly acknowledged. A premature. assignment 01 processing.· 

responsibility to the Army wa.s similarly handled. But when Dr. 

Scoville described his concept of the NRO as an organization which 

should monitor management and review changes in program scope. but 

should not be involved in details, it immediately became clear that 

major differences of viewpoint had survived the signing of the 2 Ma,· 

agreement. CIA proposed 'assuming to itself full responsibility for all·· 

contracting, contract monitoring, technical aspects, and development 

of operational plans for the conduct of missions. The interim decision: 

of the meeting was that such matters should be handled "in the same 

basic way as the satellite programs" to which they were related. 

Charyk emphasized that the interagenc1 agreement made him responsible for approving all contracts, covert and overt, although the covert 

contracts would be let by the CIA. Scoville agreed to assign Agency 

procurement people to Greer's staff. Charyk made it plain that he 

intended to be the sole NRO point of contact with the 5412 Group, the 

National Photographic Interpretation Center, the Mapping Agencies, 

and the National Security Agency. He added that he proposed aleo to 

monitor the engineering anal,ses carried out b1 the various program 

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ments of responsibility in each project. The new Director (though 

not yet officially named to the post) also emphasized that in t,Us absence necessary decisions would be taken by the head of the NRO 

.. 

Staff and the head .of the program concerned, that his authority would 

not be automatically delegated to a deputy in toto. 

Although such divergencies in viewpoint gave an impression of 

discord, in the main the 22 May meeting (known later as the Greenbrier 

Conference) was harmonious. Several of the participants much later 

concluded that Greenbrier marked the high point of DOD-CIA concord 

in overflight matters. * Charyk had outlined his intentions and his 

philosophy, and tor the most part CIA had accepted them without much 

protest. He had ~lso acknowledged, without agreeing to the CIA position. 

that DOD had no inherent right ~ to p'articipate in the management of 

Agency-sponsored programs. 

Yet the central cau se of past differences and the certain source of 

problems to come were not taken up, much less resolved.· Charyk's 

conception ot an authoritative director controlling the entire national 

reconnaissance activity contrasted sharply with the Scoville image of 

a cognizant director monitoring coordinated but separately managed 

programs. These were in no wise reconcilable viewpoints.. at least 

. 27 

in the frame of reference initially established. . 

*Which says a great deal about the nature ofrelationHipe later on. 

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The fact that such sharp differences existed, that the National 

Reconnaissance Office was in fact far less of an autonomous and 

authoritative agency than was widely assumed within DOD was not 

reflected in the di!"ectives which offic~ally created the organization 

and named Dr. Charyk its chief. Ol course, 1I1ese were DOD directifts 

and of necessity they generally avoided any hint of CIA involvement in 

the reconnaissance program •• But to the untutored reader they said 

that a truly national program had been created, that authority had been 

effectively centralized, and that within the structure all essenttals of 

an effective program had been depoSited. 28 That was an unfo~a~ 

mixture of myth, misunderstanding, and self delusion. 

Dr. Charyk, stubbornly holding to the concept of a monOlithic program. began moving immediately toward elimination of what he took to 

be the shortcomings and redundant dualities in the existing procedures. 

In mid-June he advised Gilpatric that the need for separat, SAMOS .and . 

CORONA contingency plans had long since vanished. Should' a sateWte 

complete with either camera or film fall into unfriendly hands it would 

matter little whether the lens had been purchased by the DOD or'by the 

CIA. Elimination of ~e public differentiation between' DISCOVERER 

and SAMOS had been implied by the 23 March 1982 publication 01. DOD 

*There was one exception. 

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Directive S-5200.13, the end product of the earlier CENTURY, 

RAINCOAT and UMBRELLA studies. The United States had never 

denied its intention ot doing satellite reconnaissance and had never 

acknowledged that such activity could be construed as other. than both 

legitimate and peaceful. The objection, of course,. was that even an 

indirect disclosure of CIA participation in satellite reconnaissance 

would underscore the deception practiced in the name of the DISCOVERER 

project, and the "national image" would suffer thereby. 

or course, it was most unlikely that the Soviet was ignorant of 

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DISCOVERER's real function; unless one proceeded from an assumption: 

of Soviet stupidity -- which was scarcely the course of wisdom -- it was 

difficult to avoid the evidence. First and foremost, of course, was 

the stack of public statements dating from the early 1950's and particularly blatant in the period between November 1959 and December 1960. 

In September 1961, the Honolulu Advertiser had casually published a 

t detaUed description of the CORONA capsule (although not so identified 

of course), complete with weights and dimenSions, and had speculated 

on its reconnaissance application. Pravda Ukrainy, in March 1962, . 

devoted considerable space to the SAMOS project, summarizing most 

. . 

of the publicly released information and drawing appropriate conclusiona. 

The London Daily Mirror of5 March 1962, had announced the recoverj 

"yesterday" of reconnaissance photography via a DISCOVERER capeuie --

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incorrectly, as it happened, because that particular shot had ended w~th . . parachute ejection failure -- and had added that "America has ~~n flying spy satellites over Russia since a U-2 spy plane ••• came d,?WD over 

Soviet territory in 1960." There were many other examples, and w~~ 

the average American who did not set out to collect indicators ~ overnight activity might not be aware of their frequency, no more than a' 

moderately capable clipping service was needed to provide overwhelinUaI 

evidence of both intent and event. 29 

Charyk assumedl very' reasonably,' that no prospective foe of 'the 

U. S. was likely to go on believing that satellites carrying CORONA r 

equipment were actually performing scientific research.. He was con: 

vinced that the United States should not in any way compromise its 

freedom to use observation satellites at times and in ways of its own 

choosing -- a pOSition somewhat at odds with that maintained by the 

State Department. In the .early months of 1962, State had campaigned 

urgently for Presidential endorsement of a comprehensive orbital- .-\ 

object registry system, one that acknowledged the purpose of each 

vehicle upon launch. Individuals within State, apparently with the sup-

.Nor was there a serious effort to convince anybody that recovered 

DISCOVERER capsules actually returned valuable scientific data. 

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port of senior officials there, had argued for a policy of disclosure-- .' . open acknowledgement of SAMOS being one element. In February 196~ 

an alarme~ Charyk had the Air Staff prepare a position paper that em- . 

phasized the peac~ful natu~e of space surveillance and opted for a continuation of the "no comment" doctrine. State hoped to "legitimatize" 

reconnaissance satellites, to obtain international endorsement of their 

use. The best response was provided by Brigadier General R. D. 

Curtin, Charyk's chief of staff, who in April 1962 wrote:30 

... it is certainly not obvious that moving toward "openness" 

in rec~nnaissance will "letigimatize" this activity at all; in 

fact, it may have the very opposite effect through provoking 

other nations. There is no technical or scientific reason to 

take reconnaissance or mapping photographs of the earth 

from satellites except as an inferior substitute lor aircraft 

in those areas where aircraft overflight is denied. The more 

this is discussed, the more this fact wlIl become apparent. 

f 

Curtin's remarks. accompanied by the position paper Charyk 

had ordered, went to State, CIA. and the JCS in April and was 

. favorably considered by the Special. (5412) Group immediate!,. there- ! 

after. Late in Ma7 the Nat~ Securit:y Couocil produced an ~ .\ 

memorandum that led indirectl,. to the creation of a new high lenl .~ 

"Ad Hoc Interagency Committee" to consider the entire question of 1 

• national policy in the matter of reconnaissance from space. On . 

t .. :.. 

10 July 1962, the Ad Hoc Committee (which never officially acquired 

another name) submitted to the National Security Council a .. t 01 

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eighteen recommendations, adopted with but one minor modification. 

These, inevitably referred to thereafter as "The Eighteen Points, " . 

firmly committed the administration to a policy of continuing the 

existent tactics for managing satellite reconnaissance matters •. 

Although on the face this seemed a negative reaction, in actuality it' 

represented the first positive NSC action since August 1960 to reconfirm the object of and approach to satellite reconnaissance. 31 

Concealment of much was unlikely, denial was pointless, even 

for CORONA. As much had been conceded when the program began 

returning photographs in 1960. There was even less likelihQod of 

hiding many of the programs that stemmed from the original SAMOS 

effort, unless GAMBIT might be successfully camouflaged. (U~ortunately. GAMBIT's only real cover was the cultured impression that it 

involved some sort of bombs-In-orbit work. an inappropriate entry in 

the international satellite list. In any case, GAMBIT was a highly 

classified rathe .. than a covert program.) In arguing lor the consolidation of contingency plans, then. Dr. Charyk was but trying another 

approach to his unchanging goal -- a totally centralized reconnaissance 

effort. So the proposal was interpreted, in any case. 

Consolidation of contingency plans was but one route to the construction of a centrally controlled national reconnaissance proaram. 

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Operating procedures were another. As early as June 1962, 

Dr. Charyk began urging the centralized handling of mission 

planning, on-orbit target programming, and approval of mission 

. targeting options. (Be had earlier discussed the matter with 

Bissell, but to no effect.) Be considered such functions to be 

natural responsibilities of the NRO Staff. Dr. Scoville's views 

were on record; they differed sharply from Charyk's. By late 

June, the basic question had reached the President's Foreign 

Intelligen~e Advisory Board (FlAB). It was there considered in 

the context of the May agreement, with consequences that promised 

an improvement in the existing situation. FIAB advised the President that 

•.. the actual struc ture of the documents [of agreement 

Qetween DOD and CIA] is inadequate to support an efficient organization when the present experienced and 

distinguished group moves on to other tasles. We therefore recommend a continuing study of a more satisfactory 

permanent documentary basiB for the NRO with particular 

references to existing NBC directives with which the 

present NRO plan may be in conflict. 

President Kennedy endorsed the recommendation without com'-

,ment. McGeorge Bundy. his Special Assistant in these affairs, 

advised McNamara and McCone in early July that a report of projr ••• 

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in carrying out the recommendation was wanted by 18 September •. 32 

McCone and GUpatric sat down together on 10 July to discuss thet 

matter in detail. Gilpatrlc took the poSition that the only way to 

satisfy FIAB and Dr. Killian (who. with General TlI1'lor_ was 

generally credited with having fostered the resolution) was .to incorporate in a new agreement the basic prOVision of the January 1962 

draft _lch made the Secretary of Defense executive agent for both ".-' 

ooD and CIA in all aspects of the National Reconnaissance Program. . 

He suggested that the general counsels of CIA and DOD collaborate 

on an appropriate supplement to the existing charter. 33 

There survived in NRO fUes no indication of McCone's reaction 

either to the Bundy memorandum or the meeting with GUpatric. But 

in late August and early September. Scoville proposed (or announced, 

the difference being entirely academic) three de facto alteratioasof \.:._-

the arrangements earlier made. First he told Charyk that CIA would 

continue to go directly to the 5412 Group on matters concerning 

ongoing projects -- which was further interpreted to mean that neither 

new subsystems nor "unusual risks" were involved. Thf8. of course,· 

ate at the heart of the stand Charyk had taken durinl the· 22 Mq meetm, 

and in a subsequent memorandum to Scoville. 34 

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Interestingly enough, there was on record one item of correspondence in which Scoville almost totally endorsed the concept of NRO 

functions sponsored by Charyk. Writing to the Bureau of the Budget 

in late June 1962, Dr. Scoville observed that: 

One of the main responsibilities of the recently activated 

National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is to determine 

the U, S. program for various platform and sensor combinations to satisfy overhead reconnaissance intelligence 

requirements as formulated by usm. The DNRO will 

assign to either CIA or DOD the development and op!ration of the desired systems. * 

Second, only weeks after having endorsed the concept 01 a dominant 

NRO, ScoVille substantially and significantly, altered his viewpoint. He 

suggested that his status be changed from Deputy Director, NRO, to 

Senior CIA Representative reporting to the Director, NRO, with responsibility extending over the entire spectrum of the reconnaissance 

program. A separate director 01 "Program B" (the Agency-managed 

program) should, he suggested, be named -- preferably the Assistant 

Director of Special Activities for CIA. This, of course, ran directly 

* Italics added. This set of remarks apparently was not seen by 

Charyk at the time. It is interesting because it indicates that at 

one point Scoville and the CIA fully accepted the notion at a monolithic NRO - - but a commitment to a given position tended to be 

impermanent so it probably has less lasting significance than one 

would ordinarily attribute to it. 

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counter to Charyk's idea of an NRO with "operational, responsibility 

for the entire effort. " 

Third. Dr. Scoville also urged a changed budget procedure. He and 

Charyk. he said.· ,.hould review the individual programs together and 

recommend that executive management of additional programs be transferred to the Agency. The CIA would then defend its own part of the 

budget. which would thereafter be controlled by Scoville "in accordance 

with approved programs." He also went on record as opposing Charyk's 

decision to have the CIA let covert contracts for programs not under its 

exclusive control. Widespread use of CIA techniques by the Air Force, 

he argued, would bring the entire procedure under the scrutiny of the 

Bureau of the Budget and Congress. 

When Dr. Charyk showed no special enthusiasm for this line 

of argument, Scoville reopened the question on slightly different 

grounds. Maintaining that CIA's special obligational authority 

should be used only "as necessary in order to carry out CIA's responsibilities. " he contended that it was inherently undesirable for 

the Agency to "assume the responsibility for covert procurement for 

projects GAMBIT , But in a meeting with Charyk on 

1 October, within a month of Scoville's second rebuff of the consoli_ted 

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procurement idea, McCone agreed to CIA assumption of all covert 

procurement responsibility. Charyk, of course, was delighted. 35 

The procurement policy matter was not at all an academic issue. 

In July 1962, shor.tly after the Agency had indicated that it would station 

a CIA procurement expert in General Greer's office, ~he West Coast 

group had worked out a clever cover arrangement and had otherwi~e 

provided for the assignee all that he needed to assume the spec~ied 

duties. All, that is, except means for obligating the money need,d to 

support Eastman Kodak and General Electric in their covert contracts 

under GAMBIT. Theoretically. 1 July of each year was the date for 

funding action, although in practice it was not uncommon to have all 

of July and part of August pass before details were worked out. In 

any case, General Greer's organization withheld the local funda 

authorization in the expectation of having the money transferred to 

the CIA for commitment. On 8 August, after four weeks of waiting 

for word, Colonel J. H. Ruebel (of General Greer's ataft) wired 

Colonel Martin a request for information on the progress of the funding negotiations with CIA. Martin replied that Charyk had certified 

to the CIA that the expenditures were approved and authorized, as 

provided in the May charter. Nothing more happened. ByU SepteD)ber 

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th~ funds earlier made available to EK and GE had been exhausted 

and one vital comract stood unsigned. General Greer urgently 

requested that either funds be released to his CIA procurement 

Officer or that his own organization be provided the necessary money. 

Again nothing happened -- except that Dr. ScovWe objected to 

the premise of having CIA handle covert procurement for GAMBIT 

Not until his October meeting with the CIA's director 

was Dr. Charyk able to ob~in a commitment to honor the terms of 

the 2 May· Agreement. 36·. 

The process of setting up an operational control facility in 

Washington in close proximity to the NRO Staff, which had also been 

specifically proposed in June, depended in large part on having . . 

CORONA-experienced people assigned. (This implied transfers from 

the Langley (CIA) station, then used.) The CIA in August relistered 

agreement with the concept that the facUity should be located in the 

Pentagon but begged the main issue by suggesting an enlargement of 

the CIA's covert control station at Palo Alto and by urging that 

General Greer's office contribute a substantial share of the manpower 

(and Dr. Scoville seized the opportunity to emphasize that the operation 

of "other than satellite programs" would ~t be affected by the new 

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facUity). Dr. Charyk accepted these reservations philosophically, 

asking only that an individual be designated immediately to serve as 

deputy to Colonel T. J. Herron and to have complete responsibility 

for fUnctioning of ,he facility. 37 

As had been the case with the procurement policy issue, the 

matter was ultimately settled in a meeting between Charyk and 

McCone during which McCone swung arounc;l to acceptance of Charyk's 

arguments. Although the outcome was of considerable immediate 

benefit to the objective of a' consolidated national reconnaissance 

program, it caused a worsening of relations between Charyk and 

Scoville. Scoville was convinced that Charyk would not negotiate in 

good faith, while Charyk concluded that he had a better chance for 

concessions when dealing with McCone rather than with SC9ville. 

Perhaps more important to the course of future negotiations, the 

episodes demonstrated that McCone's behavior was not entirely predictable. In the control center case McCone had specifically and 

emphatically taken the initial position that a central control point in 

the Pentagon was not desirable. Almost immediately thereafter, he 

formally acceeded to Charyk's position, which ran directly countt;'r 

to Scoville's. He had Similarly agreed with Scoville in the matter 

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of a procurement policy before acceeding to Charyk's quite different . . suggestions. In neither case did Scoville take a stand in negotiating 

with Charyk withou~ first assuring himself that he had McCone's 

support. But he had learned not to be too confident. 

In the summer and fall of 1962, Charyk and Scoville reached 

agreement on several issues, mostly minor, only to have their 

agreements negated by McCone's refusal to accept Scoville's judgmente In each instance, Scoville was obliged to contact Charyk 

and advise the NRO Director of his withdrawal from the agreement. 

To Charyk, who apparently was not aware of McCone's contribution, 

these episodes represented evidence of Scoville's flightiness. Thus 

Charyk came to believe Scoville insincere and Scoville thought Cbaryk 

a hypocrite. The tone of their exchanges sharpened. The immediate 

~se of the differences, though not of the basic difficulty, was 

McCone -- or McCone's vagrant notions on the manaaement of the 

reconnaissance effort. 

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ing agreement that made the NRC an operating organization, it was 

quite clear to all concerned that the arrangement was not effective 

-- or that it was not being honored in its essentials, which came to 

much the same thing. Dr. Charyk, with the apparent support ot the 

5412 Group and FlAB, had struck out for an authoritative, autonomous 

agency with effective one -person executive authority over all satellite 

reconnaissance programs. That objective had been severely haqI:I~d 

in working out the 2 May 1962 agreement. Nevertheless, with ,the 

appearanoe of the May 1962 directive it appeared that Charyk had 

, obtained a modest part of what he had sought - - at least an entre 

to wider vistas. He considered the NRO to be an operating agency 

with relatively broad prerogatives, chiefly qualified by a limited 

authority over covert programs in the keeping of the CIA. A key 

element was the responsibility for National Reconnaissance Progriun 

funding, charged to the NRO Director. Another was responsibility. , 

Similarly charged, for dealing with other organizationa, particularly • 

the United States Intelligence Board. (Charyk had early attempted 

to Bet down the principle that the advance approval of the NRO Director 

would be obtained before any matter bearlD, on NRO activities was 

processed to higher authority.) Althoup USIB had pointedly urpd a 

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further strengthening of NRO authorities as early as .July 1882, the 

succeeding three months saw an intensification of CIA's resistance 

to the far less comprehensive powers then assigned to the NRO • 

. Nevertheless, Charyk had determinedly pushed to make the or.ani-· 

zation functional. Although he had not succeeded in inducing CIA· 

to accept either the principle or the practice, he had successfully 

averted a surrender of any meaningful responsibUity and he had . 

won on some key issues. 

On .the moming of 5 October 1882, CIA Director McCone left 

with Secretary McNamara a proposal for revision of the 2 May 

agreement. A key element involved the creation of a National 

Reconnaissance Planning Group - - consisting of McNamara and 

. McCone-- which would make final decisions in those matters Qf 

procurement policy, program guidance, and managerial direction 

of the National Reconnaissance Program which did not require 

Presidential approval. In the matter of financial management, 

McCone urged that the NRO Director have no more than review 

and approval authority for the total reconnaissance proaram budget 

and de jure authority to approve the transfer of DOD funda to CIA as 

decided by the planning group. 38 

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After carefully examining the proposali Charyk advised 

Gilpatric that be was flatly opposed to the substitute state'ment on 

financial management' and that be felt other "minor" changes were . 

more significant than tbey seemed. In the matter of the National 

Reconnaissance Planning Group, be offered no objections. But . , 

be pointed out tbe vital importance of baving management directiQn 

go to tbe NRO Director ratber tban to the Planning Group. 

The key cbanges to which Dr. Charyk obje.cted would have 

certified CIA independence of NRO authority and would also have 

diluted that authority substantially by altering the funding provisions; . 

Charyk insisted that the NRO had to have the authority to budiet for 

and administer funds of the entire reconnaissance program. using 

CIA as its executive agent in specified projects. He was equally insistent that funds should be made available to CIA from an Air Forcefunded allocation on a project basis. rather than an Agency basis. 

He objected also to cbanges which would have reduced the authority 

of the NRO in matters involving engineering analysis. 39 

Apparently concluding that there was no immediate hope of 

securing Charyk's agreement to a major revision of the NRO charter 

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.TOP SE(IItand no way of inducing DOD to accept it without Chm-yk's approval. 

the CIA took another tack. In mid-November McCone submitted 

for McNamara's signature a letter to the Director of the Budget' 

recommending the direct release to CIA of all funds required for 

the conduct of covert satellite projects. Stung anew. Dr. Charyk. 

impatiently told Gilpatric that "if the NRO is to function it must be 

responsible for continuous monitoring of financial and technical 

program status. must con~ol the release of tunds to programs ~d 

must be able to reallocate between NRP programs." (Charyk alao 

concluded that Scoville had originated the proposal; in actuality. 

it was composed and submitted without Scoville's knowledge.) 

At that point, the NRO Comptroller had advised CIA that funda 

were available on a project basis although CIA had not 'requested 

their transfer - - insisting on having 'the total allocation without any 

restriction on its application. Charyk was ready to release lunda 

"as requested and justified" and believed the Bureau of the Budget . " 

to be sympathetic to his position. Rather than accept the principle . 

. of NRO control, CIA was using funds from uncontrolled sources to 

support its NRO-assigned programs -- a practice which Charyk 

believect to be in direct violation of law and which certainly tporecl 

40 agreed procedures •. 

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On its face, McCone's November prQposition appeared to be 

somewhat more considerate of the NRO than earlier CIA recommendations. But in making the NRO'a coordinating agency without a 

- significant voice in budgeting for any program of which CIA was the 

executive. the proposal would have neutered the NRO. CIA would 

be authorized to "explain and justify" "its portion" or the total NRO 

budget and would have had an excluded-from-review custQciy of "ita 

own reconnaissance appropriation." As for the program review 

process w.hich Charyk deemed a sine qua non, the McCone proposal 

would have prohibited any use elsewhere ~ funda appropriated for 

CIA projects. 41 

In the period when these proposals were being forwarded and 

contested, the United States went through the Cuban missile crisis. 

Along the way, and over the violent opposition of the CIA. the bulk 

of the U -2 force was withdrawn from CIA control and traasferred to 

the Strategic Air Command. ' The move was urged on McNamara by 

the Air Staff. supported by the Joint Chiefs and the 5412 Grf)Up. and 

42 approved by President Kennedy., Tbat issue. the emotions it 

• t\ roused, and the mounting intensity of the controversy over NBC 

prerogatives brou~t to the surface the W-concealed and rapidly 

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accumulating personal hostility of Scoville and Cbaryk. Although 

Scoville had been designated Deputy Director of the NRO in June. he 

had never taken up quarters -- Part time or otherwise -- in the 

. Pentagon. By late October 1962. he and Charyk were no longer 

willing to talk directly to one another; written correspondence from 

one to the other. even of the most formal kind. stopped shortly 

thereafter. Their differences were fundamental, arising in the 

deep personal commitment of each to an organization and of each 

organizat.ion to a concept. Scoville was the embodiment of CIA 

esprit de corps in an organization which -- with considerable 

justification -- considered itself uniquely more efficient and effective than any othe r element of the. government. Even though relatively 

few of those CIA pe9ple responsible lor supporting the original . 

CORONA effort were still involved in that program by 1962, the COllception of CORONA as a singularly successful CIA undertaking that 

produced intelligence data of incalculable value to the nation had 

persisted. 

Again. there was considerable truth behind the legend. though 

it had been sadly distorted by hindsight and Wishful interprf'tatton. 

In October 1962. CORONA (or MURAL) stm was the only recoDDaiuance - . 

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satellite program to have returned any intelligence information of 

value to the nation. The E-l and E-2 had long since been recognized 

as the barren offspring of a faulty concept and had been cancelled. 

'The E -4 consisted of five payloads stored in a bonded warehouse. 

E -5 had been abandoned after a successi~11 of failures (althoup the 

payload had survived, somewhat modified. in LANYARD). And E-8 

was nearing cancellation after a somewhat briefer but equally discouraging set of recovery failures. GAMBIT's first night was 

several months away and at the moment the program was being 

validly criticized for excessive costs and iDsufficient progress. 

LANYARD. the only other photographic reconnaissance satellite 

system then actually being built for operation, was partly CIA 

sponsored. Scoville consequently looked on the NRC as an iDatrument in an Air Force effort to pirate a hiply successful program 

after that same Air Force had miserably failed in four successive 

attempts to create its own reconnaissance satellites. Not unnaturally. 

CIA equated NRO with the Air Force. and if the Agency felt that the 

Air Force as embodied in NRO was an unreliable tool for pe rlorming 

vital functions of satellite reconnaissance. there certainly were v:a1id 

43 

grounds for arriving at that cODclus ion. 

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Charyk and the NRC Staff had a completely different outlook. 

They saw the NRO as the embodiment of a new spirit in the national 

defense establishment. Charyk certainly looked on the NRC as an 

instrument of the central government that only incidentally made use 

of Air Force resources. His conception of a national reconnaissauce 

program was much more comprehensive in scope than the narrowly 

focused approach urged by CIA. As for results, the overhauled 

SAMOS-GAMBIT program had been in existence only a bit more than 

two yearl:!; it had yet to try its legs. E-8 was cancelled after five 

JaUures; CORONA had expex,-ienced ten over nearly three years before 

the first success. In their own way, Charyk and the Air. Force 

project directors were as fiercely confident of success as had been 

. their CORONA predecessors. They acknowledged -- indeed,. emphasized - - a point that CIA iJllored: that the actual development of 

the "CIA satellites" had been largely managed and manued by Air 

Force officers. Charyk certainly came to resent, bitterly and 

personally, the constant angry resistance to procedures he saw as 

sensible and necessary. He particularly resented the repeated 

attempts to bypass him in matters concerning the NRP and to carry 

distorted versions of hie actions to his DOD superiors. 

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And Scoville simultaneously experienced preciaely the same 

reactions in viewing the main issues from his CIA post. 

The CIA had originated, largely in tile U -2 program, a uniqUely 

efficient technique of contract negotiation, contractor selection, and 

program management. Whether the technique was applicable to 

large programs did not matter; none of the CIA programs was·"l~." 

in the perspective of counterpart Air Force programs. Cert~ o! . 

these techniques had been ,adopted -- enthU8iastic~ -- by the NROowned sector of the Air Force. There waa little question that the 

Air Force variants on such practices were less extreme and hence 

inherently less risky than the originals; they were also somewhat 

more formal and cumbersome. From the viewpoint of the NRC, the 

best of what had been learned in CORONA an~ the· U-3 had been bunt 

into NRO procedures; much of the management had been entrusted 

to Air Force people from the beginning. The CIA had developed, 

with time, a feeling of historical proprietorShip in CORONA 'and its 

descendants; the NRO saw the same programs as obvious and _tura! 

parts of a larger national activity populated mostly by memb8rs Of 

the national military establishment. 

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There lay the basic dUficulty. It was exacerbated by personality 

conflicts, particularly pronounced in (or perhaps represented by)·the 

Charyk -Scoville case. That nothing of the sort had oo.curred while 

. Bissell was the chief CIA spokesman perhaps had les8 significance 

than seemed obvious; until after BisseU's departure, there was . 

relatively little to contest -- no NRO charter was in existence, so 

there could be no controversies concerning its clauses. 

In no respect was the charter more than a s~bol of a basic 

incompati~ility between NRC's raison d'etre and interest in satellite 

reconnaissance. The problem had its origins in the Agency's 

sponsorship of the original U-2 program, a circumstance itself 

ariSing in Air Force reluctance to develop an aircraft so unorthodox . . 

that it stood apart fr9m others of its desip. generation. 'I1l~re had 

been no equivalent Air Force reluctance in the cue of CORONA, 'but 

. so little of the truth of CORONA origins was kno", fa and by so f~w •. 

that legend ov:erbore fact. 

Charyk, who was by late 1962 carrying the weight of the struggle 

for an effective NRC, appreciated the realities of the situation better 

. than most. By all indications, he was making progress toward his 

goal. of a Single national authority to comrol both the development ~ 

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the operation of satellite reconnaissance vehicles. But in early 

December, he was offered a high execu~ive post in the Communica-

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tions Satellite Corporation, the pseudo-private company chartered, 

by Congress to e'Q)loit the commercial potential of satellite-relayed 

communications. * In what remained of his tour as ,Under Secretary, 

he made extreme ef~orts to resolve the principal issues still at stake. 

Thus, the control center in the Pentagon was equipped and staffed 

(but not immediately activated), responsibility for processing and 

printing recovered negatives was consolidated (it had previously' 

been distributed among several participants and funded under a 

variety of ill-coordinated contracts), essential arrangements for 

continuing liaison with State and its associated agencies were completed, a unified security system (aYEMAN) was installed (or a 

start made, which' served the immediate need), and the functioning 

of the Air Force project organization was regularized. Probably. 

more important, Charyk again increased the pressure for a substantive 

revision of the May 1962 interagency agreement. 

*Rumors of Dr. Charyk's plans to leave began to' circulate in the 

reconnaissance commu~ity in December but were not coDfirmed until 

late J~uary 1963. . " 

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A subordinate issue that had served as a constant source of 

irritation since its introduction in March 1982 was a CIA-sponsored 

proposal to develop a re -engineered and enlarged version of the 

MURAL system. . The ~cheme called for use of a 40-inch F:3. 5 lens 

(scaled up from that used in CU,) in a setting that would permit one 

tube of optics to serve two separate platens, producing a panoconvergent stereo effect. The cost of design and prototype manufacture promised to be moderate; CIA and Itelt argued that successful development would provide a system with the bDplied capability 

of returning search-category photographs having a resolution on the 

order of four to five feet. 

The proposal, called M-2, was formally presented to the NRO 

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during a program review of 24-25 July 1982. If adopted, it would crea,te 

a CORONA successor which, by all indications, CIA intended to manage 

almost precisely as CORO~A was managed.' Evaluation of M-2 tended 

to be influenced, in some degree, by that probability. Moreover, in 

some respects a successful M-2 development might weaken the rationale 

for a continuation of GAMBrr. The seeds of an exacerbative addition 

to the continuing dispute between Charyk and. Scoville were thus 

planted. 

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In the opinion of at least one CIA evaluator -- Eugene Kiefer -~ 

the M -2 proposal had no more than marginial worth. Kiefer and .. 

Lt Colonel H. C. Howard analyzed the results of recent CORONA 

missions and concluded that improving the general quality of the 

photography would return higher profits than investing in a new or 

radically modified system. Improvements in CORONA, they calculated, could result in an average resolution of 10 feet from a U5-mile 

orbit (average resolution at the time was about 17 feet). The best 

that could be expected of M-2, allowing the unlikely assumption that 

no particularly difficult engineering problems would result from the 

required scale -up, would be on the order of 8 -foot resolution. 

Howard felt that no decision on M-2 should be taken without a very 

careful preliminary evaluation. Kiefer was stillles8 enthusiastic, 

noting that changes in the mechanics of camera operation and fUm 

transport were so extensive that going from CORONA-MURAL to M-2 

would certainly invoke a substantial development risL He observed 

that the current resolution capability of CORONA was on the order of 

four seconds of arc; if M -2 ~id nO better, retaining the same level 

of resolution on a slightly larger photographic scale, the net effect 

would be no improvement. In order to obtain the four to flve foot 

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resolution promised for M-2, Kiefer added, the system would have . to resolve one second of arc -- and there was no evidence that any 

system based on CORONA mechanics, electronics, and optics could 

better three secol)ds of arc for any substantive period of operating 

44 time. 

Dr. Charyk, who recognized at once the striking implications 

of improving CORONA so as to get an average resolution comparable 

to that normally obtained for only the best five percent of the film, 

asked Itek to explore the fe'asibility of such an approach. Itek in 

January 1963, replied optimistically. Charyk promptly advised 

Scoville, who responded, more than a month later, * that such a 

redesign of the CORONA system did not seem warranted in light of 

recent improvements in fUms, position sensors, and automatic exposure control. He also saw the bearing of the M-2 question' on .the 

future of GAMBrr and other NRO systems. 45 

Although the matters in dispute might be such items of detail . 

as precisely what second-generation reconnaissance systems to 

*Scoville and Charyk resumed their earlier correspondence at .' 

about the time Charyk's impending departure became generally 

• known, but it was at best a chilly exchange. 

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develop or such broad questions as who should prepare and delend . 

NRO budget estimates, the central uncertainty remained the future . \ 

of the NRO itself. That the or,anization .hCNld be disbanded seemed 

. unthinkable, yet efforts to make it truly effective had been less than . 

successful. 

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Bibliography 

Chapter m 

17. Memo, B/G6n R. D. Curtin. D/NRO Staff to M/Gen R. E. Greer, 

Dir I SP. 28 Nov 61, no subject, Incl Draft, ''NRC Functions and 

Responsibilities. " dated 22 Nov 61; MFR. Maj John Pietz, SAFSP, 

1 Dec 61. Subj: National Reconnaissance Office. 

18. Memo. R. L. Gilpatric, Dep Sec Del to John McCone. 12 Dec 61, 

Subj: National Reconnaissance Office," NRO Staff files. 

19. Memo. J. R. Killian. Chmn President's Special Group, to Sec Del 

et al. 23 Oct 61, Subj: The National Reconnaissance Office; Notes 

on Special Group Mtg 9 Dec 61; Notea, "Discussion of National 

Reconnaissance Office Basic Policy, " dated January 1962. all in 

NRO Staff files. 

20. Memo, R. L. GUpatric to John McCone, 17 Jun 62, Subj: Natioaal 

Reconnaissance Program, in NRO Staff files. 

21. Memo. J. V. Charyk to General Counsel, 000 et aI, 30 Mar 62, 

no subject with Attach: Agreement, Management of the National 

Reconnaissance Progra~, undated. in NRC Staff fUe. 

22. Memo, R. L. GUpatric to John McCone, 11 Apr 62, Subj: SecDef 

DCI Agreement on NRC. in NOO Staff fUes. . 

23. Draft Agreement between Secretary of Defense and the Director 

of Central Intelligence on Responsibilities of the National Reconnaissance Office, 19 Apr 62, in NRO Staff files. 

24. Memo, H. Scoville, Dep Dir/Research, CIA to J. V. Charyk, 

SAFUS. 20 Apr 62, Subj: Sec Del CIA . Agreement on NRC, and 

Charyk to Scoville, 25 Apr 62, Subj: SecDef DCI All"eeDient.on 

NRO (note the interesting semantic cUfferences in subjects r), 

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25. Agreement between SecDef and Director ~ CIA 'on ResponsibUities of the National Reconnaissance Office, sgel by R. H. GUpatric, 

Dep SecDef and J. A. McCone, Dir/CIA. Copy in NRO Staff fUes. 

28. Memo. J. A. McCone. DirlCIA to R. H. GUpatric, Dep SecDef, 

3 May 62, no subject, forwardin,2 May Acreement. in MRO Staff 

fUe. (Gilpatric sent the memo to Charyk on 7 May) 

27. Draft MFR (Col J. L. Martin?), 24 May 62, SUbject: 23-24 May 

Conference on NOO, in NOO Staff fUes. 

28. DOD Directive TS-5105.23, 14 Jun 62, "National ReconnaiSsance 

Office." sgd Roswell Gilpatric, Act, SecDef; Memo Roswell, 

GUpatric, Dep SecDef to Secy/ Army, Navy, AF, et al,'14 'J~ 62, 

Subj: National Reconnaissance Office; Memo GUpatric to Secy/Army, 

Navy, AF, et al, 14 JUn 62, Subj: DOD-CIA Agreement. Allin 

NBO, Staff files. 

29. Memo. J. V. Charyk, SAFUS, to R. GUpatric, Dep SecDef, 15 Jun 62, 

Subj: Satellite Reconnaissance ConUnaency Plan, in NOO Staff fhes, 

Basic PoliCy: Honolulu Advertiser. 17 Sep 61; London DaUy News, 

5 May 62; V. VasU'yev, "Spies in Space, " in Pravda Ukrainy, 

16 Mar 62; Study, .8 Jun 62, "Review of Official Information in'the 

Public Domain Concernin, the U. S. Satellite Reconnaiasance Pro-

,rams (SAMOS)," prepared by NROst~f, in NRC staff FUes. 

30. Ltr. B/Gen R. D. Curtin, Dir/NRO Staff, to M/Gen G. Lansdale, 

Special Asst to D/SOD, 5 Apr 62, in !fRO staff fUes: Policy, Pol 

and Info Aspects; representative statements of State and DOD 

poSitions are contained in the same fUe. 

31. The events leading to issuance of "The Eighteen Points" are . 

summarized in NRO Staff Chronology, "Policy: Political and.Informational Aspects of Satellite Reece;" NSAM 156. 28 May 62, Nsc 

Action 2425 and Attachment, "Recommended Policy," are'in :Rpt, 

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"!SA Project No.2." 17 Nov 84, in NRO Stafr fUes. . 

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32. Memo, McGeorge Bundy, President's Spec Asst to SecDef, 

Dir/CIA, 6 Ju1 62, Subj: NRO (President's Foreign Jntelligenc~ 

Advisory Board Recommendation No. 23), copy in NRC Staff 

fUes; Memo, J. V. Cbaryk, SAFUS, ·to Dep Dir/Research, CIA, 

15 Jun 62, Subj: NRC Satellite Operations Office, in SAFSP-3 

files. 

33. Memo, R. H. Gilpatric to J. A. McCone, 19 Ju1 62, sUbj: National 

Reconnaissance Office, in NRO Staff files. 

34. Memo, J.V. Charyk, Dir/NRO, to H. Scoville, Dep Dir/Research, 

CIA, 19 Ju1 62, SUbj: Procedure for Initiation of Overflight Reece: 

and Memo, Scoville to Charyk, 21 Aug 62, same subject; oboth 

in Charyk files. See also draft MFR (Martin), 24 May 62, cited 

previously. The Scoville comment is ih Me'mo, Scoville to°The 

Comptroller .(CIA), 27 Jun 62, Subj: Comments for the Bureau of 

the ~dget on Certain Agency Budgeting Practices in NRC Staff 

files. 

35. Memo, H. Scoville to Dir ·NRO, 21 Aug 62, Subj: Procedure for 

Initiation of Overflight Reece, in NRO Staff files; Memo, Scoville 

to Dir NRO, 29 Aug 62, Subj: Comments on Organization and 

Functions of NRO, in NRO Staff files; Memo, Scoville to Dir N;RO 

_ 62 Subj: CIA Procurement for Projects GAMBIT and ..... 

in NRO Staff fUes, GAMBIT; Memo, J. V. Charyk, Dir 

N , to Dep Dir /Research, CIA, 19 Jul 62, Subj: Procedure for 

Initiation of Overnight Reece, in NRO Staff files. 

36. Msg 2837, Col R. A. Berg, DeM' SP, to Col J. L. Martin, 

Dir NRO Staff, 11 Sep 62,. Ms 2387, SAFSP to SAFSS, 

12 Sep 62; TWX SAFSP-F-8-3 , 0 • Reubel, SAFSP to Col 

..aL.IM.Martin, SAFSS, 8 Aug 62, all in SAFSP-3 files; Funding 

_Memo, Charyk to Scoville, 20 Oct 62. 

37. Memo, J. V. Charyk, SAFUS to Dep Dir/Research, CIA, 15.J"un 62, 

Subj: NRO Satellite Operations Office; Memo H. Scoville to Cbaryk, 

9 Aug 62, same subject; Memo, Charyk to Dep Dir/Research. CIA. 

10 Sep 82, same subject, all in NRC Staff files, Basic POlicy. 

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38. Memo, R. A. Gilpatric, Dep SecDef to J. V. Charyk, Dir NRO, 

5 Oct 62, Subj: NRO, in NRO Staff files. See Also, for Charyk's 

views on the authority given him under the 2 May 62 agreement; 

Memo, Charyk to NRO Program Directors, NR> Staff, 23 Jul 62, 

Subject: Organization and Functions ot the NRO, also in NRO Staff 

files. 

39. Memo, J. V. Charyk to Dep SecDef, 17 Oct 62, Subj: Proposed 

Revisions to NRO Agreement, in NRO' Staff files. 

40. Memo, J. V. Charyk, Dir NRO, to Dep SecDef, 23 Nov 62,no 

subject, in NRO Staff files. 

41. Draft ltr to Dir of Budget, sgd J. A. McCone, D/CIA for countersignature of R. S. McNamara, SecDe!. undated, copy in NRO Staff 

files. . 

42. Memo, McGeorge Bundy, Spec Asst to Pres for National Security. 

Affairs, to Dir/CIA, 12 . Oct 62, Subj: Recce Overflights of CUb';.: 

Memo, Lt Gen M. S. Carter (USA), Actg Dir/CIA to Bundy, 13 Oct 

62, Subj: Command &. Control Responsibility for Cuban U -2 Recce; 

Memo Bundy to Actg Dir/CIA, DSOD, 13 Oct 62. no subject, all.in 

NRO Staff files. 

43 •. Such a viewpoint overlooked the fact that roughly 80 percent of the 

personnel and other resources supporting CORONA were provided 

by the Air For<:e, that Air Force officers had largely managed . 

both R&D and operational aspects 01 that program, and that Air 

Force competence had been vastly improved by the establishment 

of General Greer's organization. 

44. (CIA), 19 Mar 62, Subj: ITEK Coat Proposal 

,;,.uI.KM::. Stereo 40" Panoramic S,stem; MFR Lt Col 

H. C. Howard. 6 Aug 62, Subj: CORONA (M-2); MFR. E. P. Kiefer. 

Technical Analysis and Evaluation Staff. CIA, 7 Aug 62. Subj: 

Analysis of CORONA PhotographiC Qlallty, all in NRO Staff files, . 

CORONA, General. 

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45. Memo, J. V. Charyk; Dir NRO, to Dep Dir/Research, CIA, 

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7 Jan 63, Subj: Improvement of CORONA-Mi Memo, H. ScovWe, 

Dep Dir/Research, CIA, to Dir NRO, 11 Feb 63, same subject,. 

both in NRO Staff files, CORONA, Geaeral. . . 

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IV 

. THE NRO COMES OF AGE 

The NRO was, by January 1963, a fixture of a relatively young 

reconnaissance community that included -- in addition to such old 

settlers as CIA, the National Security Asency (NSA), and t.he U. S. 

Intelligence Board -- the National Photographic Interpretation Center 

(NPIC), usm's Committee on Overhead Reconnaissance (COMOR), 

and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Although NRO had an 

official existence dating only to September 1981, it had in effect come 

into being with the August 1960 NSC deciSion on SAMOS and its antecedents certainly extended to the February 1958 CORONA decision. In 

the same month the first recovery of CORONA fUms had caused the 

. creation of COMOR. NPIC, charged with the exploitation of reco~lssance products as a national resource, w~s a post-mortem creation of the 

Eisenhower Administration, dating trom the month in which the.-Bay of 

Pigs crisis had begun: January 1981. DIA, a consolidation ~f the. intelligence gathering services of the Army, Navy and.Air Force, stemmed 

trom the Bay of Pigs crisiS of February 1981 and its consequences but 

had not actually come into being until the followina August. 

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DIA was manned entirely by people from the inCiividual services 

and from DOD itself. NPIC drew its contingent from the Army, Navy, 

Air Force, CIA and DIAi COMOR representation included these plus 

NPIC itself and also the State Department. (COMOR was concerne~ 

with evaluating and selecting targets and,setting priorities for both 

targets and processing.) NRO included representatives from ~ of 

the other agencies except State. 

Each of these new agencies had acquired pr~vileges and responsibUities earlier J"eserved either to the individual services or to the CIA, 

and each had been attacked ("often very severely" in the words of o~ 

ranking NRO official) by·the several establishments losing functions, 

people. and money to the new organizations. Although the creation of 

the NRO had antagonized various subage~cie~ of the individual services 

(notably the several mapping and cartographic divisions and the Air 

Force's Air Research and Development Command), effective and laating resistance to the operation of the NRO had come only from CIA. 

It was based, almost entirely. on that Agency's maternalistic, pro~ 

prietary feelings for satellite reconnaissance -- personified in' CORONA . . 

- - and seemed to be concentrated mostly in what was called "middle 

management. " 

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The October 1982 decision to put SAC pilots in the CIA's U-2s . over Cuba convinced many in the Agency that "the Air Force has ' 

usurped the CIA functions by seizing CIA airplanes to fly CIA missions~" 

The fact that SAC ,pilots would have their own SR-?1 version of the A-Ii 

OXCART aircraft, thus replicating the earlier arrangements for U-2 

assignment, little eased apprehension. Flight scheduling and operation 

of satellites on orbit had been an acrimonious issue since NRO's' entry 

into that field; the CIA had consistently refused to share any ~ the 

authority for operation of "its own" CORONA vehicles. Finally, there 

remained unresolved the question of covert procurement: notw~th8tanding detailed agreements that made covert contracting operations 'the 

province of CIA, the Agency evinced a consistent and angry reluctance 

to assume that responsibility for the whole of the burgeoning NRC 

program. The Agency desperately wanted to get back to "the old 

'arrangement, " particularly resenting any implication that it might 

become "a service organization." The CIA was reluctant in practice 

to concede the existence of a national reconnaissance program, a compact management entity; the NRO, as Charyk conceived of it, could be 

no less and had to be universally acknowledged as such if it was to 

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At the ~ime of his withdrawal from government service, Dr. 

Charyk remarked that the main problem facing the NRO had become 

acute "only recently, with the impasse reached in late December 

1982 and early January 1988. u

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more by charity than candor, the NRO Director was subject to no 

illusions about the identity of the problem. It involved, he said, "the 

desired nature of the NRO and the responsibility and authority of the 

Director of the NRO, It as well as "the internal organizational discipline essential to the repair of the present difficulties. " 

Replacement of the inadequate charter was, in Dr. Charyk's 

view, an essential first step toward stability. Clarity should take 

precedence over diplomacy. The agreement should state plainly 

that the NRO was an operating agency and that its director had actual. 

management responsibility for all its projects. This meant, Charyk 

contended, that the NRO Director should have authority over recon-· 

naissance-concerned elements of b~th the CIA and the DOD. He shou1~ 

also have complete authority in funding matters. And, harking back 

t,:-. the oays when he and Bissell had worked together so harmoniou81" 

Charyk observed that appointments must be made so as to insure that 

the responsible people "will function a8 an eltective worki. team 

rather than a8 representatives of the DOD and the CIA. It 

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Although phrased in objective abstractions, Charyk's e~it recommendations were almost entirely aimed at the CIA. He protested, 

albeit circuitously. that the CIA's Director tended to deal with NRO 

through his subor~iinates rather than directly. He protested the Agency's 

habit of treating "CIA projects" as distinct from ''DOD projects." (He 

might have added that the CIA still considered the distinction betwe~n 

''DoD project, " "Air Force project, " and "NRO project" to be a 

semantic matter of no special consequence.) Finally, he protested 

the CIA's reluctance to accept responsibility for covert procurement 

in support of GAMBIT Charyk argued, quite accurately, 

that since the introduction of a 'policy of withholding all military ~atellite payload details there had been no "covert" programs, merely 

tightly classified programs. He did not add, as he could have done, 

that a covert satellite reconnaissance program was a fable, a preteDse, 

extinct in the mid-1960s because the United States had iong since 

acknowledged both intent and capability. Nor did he comment O!, the 

only obvious alternative to tight security as a cloak for progra~ 

accomplishment: the use of NASA vehicles to carry clandestine reconnaissance payloads. 48 

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In the period when the scheduled departure of Charyk was known 

but while there remained considerable uncertainty concerning the 

post-Charyk prospects of the NRO, the U~er Secretary continued to· 

work toward revision of the May 1962 Agreement. During his last 

week in office, he completed revision of a CIA draft (apparently prepared by McCone's immediate staff, rather than by Scoville or his 

immediate associates). Dr. Charyk personally took the revision to 

o ~. 

Roswell Gilpatric, Deputy Secretary of Defense. Gilpatric, tor DOD. ' 

signed a slightly modified version on 13 March. It was sent to CIA 

that day and immediate ly was approved by McCone. 49 

In the interim between dispatch of the draft revised by Charyk 

and signature of the final agreement, Brockway McMillan, Charyk's 

successor as Under Secretary, was named the new Director of the 

National Reconnaissance Office. 50 This action, coming as it did.in 

the trail of widespread conjecture that Charyk's departure meant 

dismemberment of the NRO and reversion to the informalities of 1981. 

was in itself a significant indicator of the stature the NRO had ac~ired 

in its year-and-a-bit of existence. It markedly cheered members of 

the NRO organization, both in Washington and Los Angeles, who had 

seriously doubted whether the NRO would be continued without Char7k. 

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so closely had the Under Secretary been identified with the three-year . effort to compose a coherent national program. 

More important, at least .at the time, was the character of the ' 

new agreement. If it did not by any means include all of the points 

Charyk had earlier identified as essential and did not eschew diplo';' 

matic phraseology in favor of blunt language, nevertheless, the new 

charter "appeared to be a considerable" improvement on the old. The 

1962 document had given the Director, NRO (DNRO) "technical management responsibility for all the NRP (National Reconnaissance Program)"; 

the 1963 document made the NRO "a separate operating agency· of the 

Department of Defense" under the direction of the Secretary of Defense, 

who was to be the executive agent for the NRP. Requirements f~r 

coordinating mission schedules with CIA were absent from the 1~8~. 

agreement, but so was the clause governing the as~ignment of operational control for individual projects. The 1962 clause giving the CIA 

supervisory authority in engineering analysiS of projects for which it 

was executive agent had been eliminated; in the 1983 compact the DNRO 

was charged with engineering analysis responsibilities for "aU coll8ction 

systems." DJ.'iRO prepared and supported budget requests tor aU' NRO '. . 

programs under the new arrangement, but CIA budgeted for and 8upported 

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"those NRP tasks which are assigned to the CIA and which are to be 

funded from NRO resources." In the earlier agreement, CIA had been 

entirely responsible for funding and supporting projects for which it 

had executive ma~lement authority (t. e., the previously a •• ipd 

covert programs and any later additions). The formal assignment of 

contracting authorities remained much as before, CIA retaining 

responsibility for all covert contracts. 

Charyk's contributions to the March 1983 compact were to insure,' 

that the Deputy Director, NRO was put in the direct NRO chain of 

command, that he was -not made the administrator of 

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all covert projects <as CIA had urged in February 1963), that guidance to DNRO 

came directly from the Secretary of Defense, and that the charter in. 

cluded a clause referring to "a single NRP" for which the DNRO was 

responsible. But Charyk's proposed state~ent of DNRO responsibiliV 

had included "development and operation of" a sinlle program; the 

limal version signed by McCone deleted the "operation" terminology • 

Charyk also insured that the approved charter provided against the .. 

uninvited participation of DOD and CIA staff. in project matters. 

Finally, and perhaps most Significant, he composed and insisted on 

the inclusion of a broad statement giVing the DNRO the authority to 

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"assign all project tasks such as technical management, ,contracting .. 

etc., to appropriate elements of the DOD and CIA, changing such 

assignments, and taking any such steps he, may determine necessary. 

to the efficient ma.nagement of the NRP. It Taken at its face value, 

and employed by a forceful executive, that authorization might well 

permit the NRO to break through the obstacles of inertia and pro- '. 

i h ' 51 pr etors lp. 

Some, but not all, of the most troublesome areas of controversy" 

were eliminated in the March 1963 version of the NRO charter. A 

Close reading of the approved document brought to light some potentially 

important vagaries. Perhaps more significant, the 1963 charter did not set 

forth the privileges and responsibilities of the NRO in the clear, unambiguous fashion that Charyk had earlier recommended; Funding authority 

remained divided, responsibility for operational control was not preciseI.)" 

assigned, and the success of the relationship between the DOD and CIA' '. 

elements of the NRO could be dependent on the attitude of the individuals 

in the principal posts. * 

*The Dratt Agreement that the CIA prepared was altered by Charyk 

himself and then taken directl)' to GUpatric. In the main, Charyk's 

. additions, deletions, and modifications, were allowed to remain in 

the document sent to and signed by McCone on 13 March. The 

crucial clause covering DNRO responsibilities for operations was 

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Some weeks earlier, in the midst of the furor,that attended 

attempts to activate the operational control center in the 'Pentagon 

basement. one of the involved Air Force officers had observed that 

by virtue of the 1962 Agreement. "DOD ••• ended up splitting with 

CIA the proverbial horse -and-rabbit stew while agreeing to furnish 

the horse. ,,52 The 1963 Agreement gave DOD somewhat more of 

the st-ew, 

Under the terms of the new agre~ment. Dr. Scoville W88 

formailly named Deputy Director of the NRO and Dr. E. G. Fubini, . . 

Deputy Director of Defense Research and Engineering, was chosen 

to serve as DOD monitor of NRO activities. (Scoville served as 

the CIA monitor.) McMWan. fully aware of the personal antagonisms that had grown up but.determined to establish a workable 

relationship with his own counterparts in CIA, immediately broached 

altered after Charyk last saw the document -- presumably at the 

insistence of CIA, Although the sequence of events is uncertain. 

it appears that Gilpatric must have sent Charyk's draft to McCone. 

for comments about I Marchi in the fact that McCone signed the 

final agreement immediately on receiving it· arises the supposition 

that the post-Charyk changes insisted on by ·CIA were incorporated 

at some time between 1 and 13 March. Charyk. it must be recalled, 

was not physically on duty after the morning of 28 February (a 

Thursday). He did not see the final agreement before ita aipature. 

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to Scoville the specific matters that had been left han4in, since the 

Charyk-Scoville differences had become so pronounced late in the . 

previous year. The interchange was made somewhat awkward, however, by the fact that Scoville still indicated no intention of takirig up 

offices in the NRO sector of the Pentagon, .displayed no sign of having 

been reconciled to NRO's continuation, and continued to use his CIA 

stalf for immediate support. Charyk was gone, but the institlUional 

animosities lingered. 

The underlying causes of friction were not much eased either by 

Charyk's departure or by the approval of a new formal agreement. 

The proposal to develop the M..;2 high-resolution search system was 

rapidly becoming a test of the DNRO's authority to decide what new 

programs should be adopted. Institutional chauvinism intensified. 

General Greer's ellorts to carry out DNRO instructions to exercise 

operational control of "CIA satellites" met steady resistance; more 

or less politely, but with devast(ng consistency, the Program B (CIA) 

people merely ignored any instructions from· McMillan which would 

have altered their organizational habits. The only imme4iate improvement was in the matter of activating the control center in the ·Pentagon 

. basement. McMillan obtained Scoville's agreement to a 1 April trims-

.fer of operational control to the complex -- which had been e~d 

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d 'ti' I J 53 an wal mg smce ear y anuary. 

A most instructive indication of the. state of affairs immediately 

after the transfer of authority from Charyk to McMillan was a message 

that went from Colonel J. C. Ledford, CIA'. Program B manapr. to 

Colonel J. L. Martin, McMillan's chief of statt. T.wo weeks atter·the 

circulation of copies of the new agreement, and following the rec~dpt 

of a clear order from Dr. McMillan that General Greer was to exercise authority in various matters of CORONA and LANYARD operation, 

Ledford advised Martin that until "definitive instructions" reached him 

covering the area of functions and responsibilities, "it is my contention this organization has the responsibility for the development 

of plans and methods of operation as well as overall security." In 

effect, Ledford was saying with no particular subtlety, he responded 

to orders from his CIA superiors -- Scoville and staff -- rather than 

54 from McMillan. This was clearly the sort of organizational indi8-

cipline that Charyk had complained of and which he had attempted to 

correct by putting the Deputy Director, NRO, in the line of command. 

Another sidelight on the continuing difficulties began with a 

teletype message in which Colonel Ledford chided Itek and Lockheed 

about shifting effort from CORONA problems to various new proposalB, 

an unwise diversion " .•• in the light of the recent hi8tory of failure, 

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increased costs and overruns on the CORONA contracts." McMillan. 

who received a copy of the Ledford message. was at a loss to under·' 

stand the statements concerning overruns and costs. The financial 

statements sent hi.m had shown no change over the preyious five 

55 months. He asked for fuller details. Anexplanati<!n, if forthcoming. must have been personal. for the files contain no further 

references to the matter. 

The M-2 affair dragged on, concern for a sudden onslaught of 

CORONA problems notwithstanding . Detailed p~esentations to a 

study' group on the West Coast did little to resolve the uncertainty 

about what to develop, but the NRO Staff had concluded by early May 

that Itek's design involved considerably more than a "simple extenSion" 

of CORONA-MURAL technology, as the contractor contended. For the 

most part, the NRO Staff agreed that the system was technically feasible 

and that in many respects it would be a desirable outlet for the development talents of Itek. "the most successful satellite reconnaissance, team 

in the U. S. , " now that CORONA was approaching the limits of its technical evolution. But there was no consensus .in the more pressing issue 

of what sort of system should be developed a,ainst the existing requirements. which satisfied almost no one. 58 

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In the discussions accompanying the creation of a budget for 

fiscal 1964, the CIA had urged the Vfisdom of developing a reconnaissance satellite that could be operated covertly (a round-the-barn con-, 

cession of Dr. Chilryk's earlier contention that no covert programs 

then eXisted). During the spring of 1963, McCone advised Scoville 

, 

that DOD had decided to put money in the CIA budget to cover preliminary studies of the covert satellite proposal. In a later conversation with Dr. Fubini, Scoville indicated his belief that CIA had been 

assigned responsibility for 'the development and that a covert satellite 

program had been implicitly authorized. Roswell GUpatric,who 

learned of the conversation from Fubini, promptly and bluntly told 

Scoville it had not been his intention to confirm CIA in responsibility 

for any sort of covert satellite program. Scoville, obliged to delend 

his motives while disclaiming intent to harm, incautiously cited his 

chief, John McCone, as the authority for an admitted commitment of 

resources to a covert satellite development program. But Scoville ' 

simultaneously denied the prinCipal charge that he ·had claimed .CIA 

authority over the development and ended with a plea for a meeting 

to resolve the question of organizational Qlstody. The Scoville reply . 

was dated 14 June 1963; on the following day he resigned. 5'1 Whether 

the events were directly related was conjectural. However,. Sco~ 

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had more than once complained that he could not depend on assurances . . of McCone's support and in his reply to Gilpatric, he said plainly~ even 

undiplomatically, that he had acted on the strength of advice from 

McCone. The implications were unavoidable. 

A belief that Scoville's departure would significantly ease the· task 

of operating the National Reconnaissance Program seemed warrantable •. 

Although assumptions about Scoville's role in a long series of clashes 

dating from the time o.f Bissell's departure were almost certa.iDly overdrawn, there was no escaping the fact of ScoVille's' hostility to the' 

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basic concept ot the NRO. During the ten weeks ot his tenurea~' Deputy 

Director, Dr. Scoville had maintained a thorough. physical and a psychic 

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segregation from McMillan and the NRO Staff. For inlormation on NRO '1 

matters he had relied on daily briefings delivered at CIA headquarters 

by one of the senior officers who served McMillan in the Pentagon --

generally Lt Colonel Howard or Colonel Worthman. Although his dealings with Dr. McMillan were not marred by the undisguised hostility 

that had characterized the last months of Charyk's tenure, there had 

been no real improvement in the interagency relationships. Charyk's 

legacy had been a reasonably useful charter for the NRO; thus tar, 

'McMillan had been able to exploit it to his advantage in some situatiOll8 

in which Charyk would have been obliged to rely on personal diplomacy. 

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But it was also clear that Charyk's personal influence with McNamara 

would not be transferred and that the charter alone was an inadequate 

mac~ine for some of the actions McMillan deemed essential. 

Dr. Albert D. Wheelon was named Deputy Director, CIA, for 

Science and Technology, replacing Scoville in that post. He did not, 

however, succeed Scoville as Deputy Director of the NRO, or as CIA 

monitor of the program. The former position was filled by Eugene P. 

Kiefer, one of Bissell's staff in earlier days. Kiefer, who had been 

associated with the overflight reconnaissance program from its inception with the U,.2, was intimately familiar with the personnel and.the 

problems of the program. (He' had also served as a member of the 

Purcell Board.) Unlike Scoville, Kiefer immediately moved into an ' 

office in the NRO complex on the fourth floor of the Pentagon. PartlJ 

at Kiefer's urging, McCone named Lieutenant General M. S. Carter. 

(his deputy) to be CIA's monitor of NRO matters. * 

Wheelon's attitude could not be safely predicted, but siilce Kiefer, 

was the NRO replacement for Scoville, there was an expectation of. 

*The decision not to make Wheelon a successor to Scoville· in NRO 

matters was far from casual. McMillan and McCone discussed the 

. arrangement at some length following earlier 'advice from Mellillan 

that Wheelon would not be a good choice for the assignment. 

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brighter days. In theory. Wheelon had no program authority; in fact, 

. . 

Colonel Ledford. Director of Program B.reported to him within the 

CIA and unless established habits of Agency procedure were abandoned~ 

would respond fir.st to his direction. Although it was not widely known, 

Wheelon had been one of Scoville's few intimates in the CIA and, through 

that channel. was moderately familiar with the background of the con·" 

troversy over NRO functions. 

In aily case. one development of late spring 1963 seemed to indicate 

that many of the past troubles of the NRO would vanish. The President's 

Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (FlAB) had finally validated the 

March 13th agreement. characterizing it as well conceived and soundly 

detailed. FlAB's suggestions for changes were all in the direction of 

strengthening the prerogatives of the NRO, . improving the continuity of, 

its management. and clarifying the relationship between the NRO and 

policy-making agents of th~ national executive. 58 The implication of the 

FlAB report, which had received President Kennedy's approVal, was 

that reconnaissance should become more thoroughly a DOD-managed 

function. To that aspect of the paper McCone took vigorous exception, 

pointing out that the March 1963 charter provided for joint management 

of the NRO (not precisely true, but not a timely subject for argument 

either) and that neither DOD nor CIA could take full responaibility for 

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the effort. Giving the assignment to CIA, McCone said, would mean 

transferring "vast resources" from DOD, while making DOD the exclusive agent would mean "a loss of responsibility and imaginativeness 

which exists in CJ!t. and which has made many valuable contributions in 

the field of overhead reconnaissance. ,,59 

Stin a third development was an apparent decline of interest in the 

covert sate llite proposal which had brought on Gilpatric' s rebuke of 

Scoville and Scoville's" .•• I have been misquoted" exit memo. Dr. 

Fubini, who had looked into the matter for Gilpatric, recommended' 

that it be forgotten, at least for the moment. 60 

Fubini's report to Gilpatric had in large part been prompted by 

a minor miSinterpretation of the conclusions of the Purcell Panel, a 

special reconnaissance board, sponsored by Mr. McCone, which had 

met early in June. * The board had considered what system requirements should be posed for the near future. Disr,egarding the stated 

*Properly the "Panel for Future Satellite . Reconnaissance Operations, " 

made up of E.M. Purcell, A.F. Donovan, E.9. Fubini". R. L.~arw.in. 

E. H. Land, D. P. Ling. A. C. Lundahl, with J. G. Baker and H. C. Yutzy 

as consultants. From a variety of agencies. organizations, and. c9rporations, the panel members were without exception "old hands" at the 

satellite reconnaissance business. Purcell, Gar~in~ Land, and Baker 

had previously headed special panels or boards instrumental in' the 

formation or conduct of the National Reconnais~ance Program. 

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preferences of the CIA's system analysts, the Purcell.Panel con:" 

cluded that "the natural incompatibility of wide coverage and high 

resolution within a given payload, is becoming more acute .•• as the 

art advances." Qeciding that the coverage provided by the existent 

CORONA -MURAL systems adequately satisfied previously stated 

search-mode requirements, the panel suggested that an attempt to 

combine high resolution with broad search functions "would not be . 

a wise investment of resources." In the board's judgement, first 

priority should go to improving the average quality of returns from 

CORONA rather than to developing a new, higher resolutlon search 

system. (Implications for the ·still pregnant M-2 proPosal were 

obvious.) The panel made a number of rather specific recommend&.-

tions for research, expressing particular interest in techniques 'f~r 

improving resolution and generally supported the- position of NRO 

technical people on future system requirements. 61 

Largely on the strength of the Purcell Panel report, Dr. McMUlan 

early in July issued instructions to Itek to discontinue work on M-2 and 

other high-resolution variants of CORONA. In the stead of such activity, 

the Director NRO wanted Itek to concentrate on improving the capability 

of the existent systems -- roughly the approach urged by Howard and 

Kiefer the previous summer and directed (without much effect) by 

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Charyk in January 1963. Scoville had also promised something ot . . 

the sort in February, though there was little evidence ot much progress in the interim. . General Greer, who presumably would have 

some re8ponsibili~y tor the technical improvement of the CORONA. 

system, promptly suggested that the earlier investment in M-2 

. 62 

development be rechanneled into CORONA improvement efforts. 

Having resolved one of the residual issues of the Charyk-Scoville 

era (whether witting of its existence or not), the Purcell Panel had 

taken on another by registering confidence in the current structure 

. . 

and organization of the national program. In discussing this outcome·. 

with McCone in mid-July, Kiefer and McMillan received assurances 

that the CIA director was quite satisfied with the establishment "as 

it is now constituted. ,,63 Almost concurrently, General Greer's 

organization completed work on a plan for a follow-on ARGON development that provided for a management structure conforming to the.precepts of the new charter -- that is, with the CIA handling covert contracting and security while the project office in Los Angeles directed 

the technical program. Such an approach was in many respects a 

departure from the ARGON program arraDiement that had been established in the very early days of satellite reconnaissance. It 

resembled, in general, the sort of structure earlier proposed by 

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Charyk for all post-CORONA programs. 84 

Taken at their face value and evaluated in the light of the pel,"-, 

sonnel changes of the preceding weeks, the support accorded ~e 

redrawn charter, .and the apparent efforts by all concerned to make 

the NRO both effective and harmonious in its activities, such events' 

seemed to signal a new era in CIA-NRO rtUationships. Admitte~ly,' 

contention had been diminished through suppression of the CIA view'; 

point: activation of the satellite operations facility, elimination of " 

the M -2 proposal, concentration on improVing the average quality' of 

CORONA returns, and reaffirmation of the authority, of the DNRO (in, 

part by Scoville's dismissal, in part through the Purcell Panel report). 

had done considerable violence to the feelings of the satellite reconnaissance group in the CIA. But there were no indications during the 

summer of 1963 that McCone had objections to, or for that matter 

any firm personal convictions about, the mode of NRO operation. It 

appeared that Scoville's departure had removed the prime source of 

behind-the-scenes pressure for which McCone had acted as spokesman. 

Certainly the summertime disappearance of agitation resembliDl that 

of the October-January period seemed to lend credence to such a 

hypothesis. 

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A meeting between Lieutenant General M. S. Carter (McCone's . deputy) and Dr. McMillan in late July provided further evidence of 

the trend. Though taking mild exception to McMillan's plans to expand NRO's authority in the aircraft overflight and contracting areas. 

General Carter seemed mostly interested in insuring a broader CIA 

participation in the internal conduct of NRO programs. He urged the 

DNRO to put additional CIA people on the NRQ Staff. AlthoughGeneral 

Carter made a few unkind remarks about the inappropriate preoccupa-. 

tion of General Greer's project managers with launching schedules 

. . rather than the collection of intelligence. the tone of the ~eeting was 

strikingly placid. 65 

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Bibliography 

Chapter IV 

46. Quotations and resume alike are taken from: Report. "'I1le NRO. 

A Status Report. " prepared by NRO Staff, 10 Jan 63, in NRO Staft 

files. 

47. MFR, Col J. L. Martin, Dir/NROStaff. 12 Mar 63. no subject, , 

covering "Summary Review of the National Reconnaissance Office, If 

dtd 25 Feb 63, prepared by Dr. J. V. Charyk. hereafter cited as 

"Charyk Memoir. ' Feb 63." . 

48. Charyk Memoir, Feb 1963 

49. Agreement between the Secy of Def and the Dir/CIA on Management 

of the National Reconnaissance Program, 13 Mar 63, ,and draft. 

revised by J. V. Charyk, SAFUS, dtd 26 Feb 63, both in NRO Staff 

files. 

50. Memo, R. Gilpatric, Dep SecDef to Dir/CIA. Secys Mil Departments, DDR&E, Chmn JCS, et all 1 Mar 63, Subject: NRO,,'.in 

NRO files. 

51. Agreement .•. on Management of the NRP, 13 Mar 63, and Draft, 

26 Mar 63. 

52. Memo, Maj Gen R. A. Breitweiser, Asst CoS/Intel, USAF, to 

53. 

E. M. Zuckert (SAF), and Gen C. E. LeMay (CoS USAF), 24 ~an 63. 

Subject: National Reconnaissance Office, in NRO Staff files • 

• 

gS~273' Dir/Prgr'm B to Dirl 

0332. DNRO to Dir I Progrm B. 15 

ockheed to Maj Gen R.E •• Mar Greer 

to Dir Prgrm B, 13 Mar 63 0344, 21 Mar 63, 

in NRO Staff CORONA files an P Leach tiles. The Fubini 

appointment appears in memo, R. Gilpatric, Dep SecDef to Fubini. 

DDR&E, 26 Mar 63, Subject: Management of the National Reconna18-

s&nce Program,in NRO Staff files. 

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54. TWX msg.5272, Dirfpgm B to DirfNRO staff, 3 Apr '63, in 

SAFSP Leach files. 

55. TWX 08, Dirfpgm B to ITEK, Lockheed, et al, 

13 May 6 . from B. McMillan, DNRO to Dirf pgm B, 15 May 

64. no subject, both in NRC Staff CORONA tiles. 

56. TWX ms 2843. SAFSP to Lockheed and ITEK. 25 Mar 63; 

Ltr F. A. ay. ITEKto B. McMillan, SAFUS. 2 May. 63, .no 

subject; Memo Lt Col H. C. Howard. NRO to Col J. L. Martin, 

D/NRO Staff. 10 May 63; Lindsay letter to Dr McMillan in'NOO 

Staff Files. 

57. Memo, R. Gilpatric. Dep SecDef to H. S. Scoville, Dep Dir/NRo, 

11 Jun 63. no subject;. Memo. Scoville to Dep SecDef. 14 Jun 63, 

no subject. both in NRC Staff fUes. 

58. Memo. McGeorge Bundy to Secy of Def. 7 Jun 63. Subj: Natio~ 

Reconnaissance Program. in NRO Staff files. 

59. See note above; DCI comments are attached; 

60. Memo. E. Fubini to R. Gilpatric, Dep. SecDer, 18 Jun 63, no.subJect, 

in NRO Staff files. 

61. Memo. E. M. Purcell. Chmn Recon Panel, to DCI (meetings of" and 

5 Jun 63). Subject: Panel for Future Satellite Reconnaissance 

Operations. in NRO Staff files. 

62. TWX msgs 

SAFSP. and 

all in SAFSP Leach files. 

Jul and 16 Ju1, DNRO to 

3180 SAFSP to CIA. 12 Jul 63, 

63. MFR. E. P. Kiefer. Dep Dir/NRO. 16 Ju1 63. Subject: Meeting with. 

McC,me. in NRO Staff files. 

64. TWX ms 

CIA. 29 

34, Maj Gen Greer, Dir I SAFSP to DNRC;> and 

SAFSP Leach fUes. 

65. MFR. Lt Gen M. S. Carter. Dep Dir/CIA, 23 Jul 63, Subject:: Meeting 

with Dr. B. McMillan, . in NOO Staff tUes. 

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v 

YEARS OF ACRIMONY (1983-1965) 

Although the externalities of NRO-CIA friction were less evident 

by mid-1963 than earlier, the apparent detente was fugitive.' CIA .. 

disinterest in a strong NRO was as pronounced as ever, though perhaps displayed less prominently. Those within the Agency who had 

consistently urged a bifurcated National Reconnaissance Program in 

which the CIA was at least a co-manager with an absolute veto had not 

changed their views. Opposition to the concept of an NRO seemed to 

be concentrated mostly in the first two or three ech~!lons below the . 

Director and Deputy Director level of the CIA, le~ser manage meat 

being largely indifferent to organizational abstractions. Apparently, 

.. however, a great many Agency people did resent the NRO's doing work 

that tradition or legend suggested was an Agency prerogative. 

CIA opposition to a strong National Reconnaissance Office appeared 

to stem from three basic sources. First, the Agency held that covert 

reconnaissance programs were essential to the national interest and 

that only the CIA could effectively operate such programs. Second, 

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a substantial faction in the Agency mistrusted the ability of the Air 

Force to develop and deploy major systems rapidly and at a reasonable cost, and also held that the Air Force could not efficiently conduct 

any satellite recol}Daissance operation. Both the management and the 

technology of the CORONA program had been well handled; the belief . 

that the CIA had been wholly (or almost wholly) responsible was at the 

heart of arguments for continuing, unchanged, so successful an arrang~­

ment of functions and responsibilities. Third, and particularlyimpo'$nt 

in the 1963-1965 period, siinple institutional chauvinism was a constant 

factor in ~iisagreements about responsibilities and prerogatives. One 

faction within the CII\ wanted to create a strong satellite development 

capability there. Such people looked on the NRO as a thinly disguised 

extension of the Air Force, more ambitious than capable. * In fact, 

of course, the NRO included many people who favored building a broadly 

based capability for satellite reconnaissance operations, but they felt --

*And much of the Air Staff looked on the NRO group as a not-quiterespectable collection of dissenters under the thumb of the CIA. Air 

Force officers who were wholly loyal to their NRO responsibilities 

sometimes felt that the "regular" Air Force had cast them out. At 

least one CIA staffer seconded to the NRO found himself effectively ,(' 

frozen out of his parent organization because of his stubborn adherence 

. to the spirit as well as the letter of the charter. Some Air Force officers 

may have felt the same way when the time came for them to move from 

an NRO assignment to another in the regular service. To be assigned to 

the NRO in any capacity, particularly in the troubled days between 1983 

and 1966, was not uniformly looked on as a wholly happy circumstance. 

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with considerable justice .... that the need for such a capability had 

been certified by the National Security Council. That the capability 

had not been created, many NRO people believed, was largely a consequence of irrational CIA obstructionism,particularly in working 

level arrangements. The NRO was also infested with institutional 

chauvinism; it included people who made much of the fact that Air 

Force people had done about 90 percent of the work in the CORONA 

project, and it took in the viewpoint that the CIA had done nothing particularly spectacular since CORONA. The basic conviction that satellite reconnaissance should be a national undertaking under the DOD and 

not the province of one intelligence evaluating agency, threaded through 

most of the NRO attitude toward the CIA. 

In such circumstances, even without the personality differences that 

w~ 

appeared from time to time, conflict.wr inevitable. It could be kept from 

damaging the total national reconnaissance effort only if the senior 

managers in CIA and NRO were equally dedicated to limiting the causes 

and consequences of disagreement. But they were not, in 1963. 

Yet some factors tended to alleviate th~ more extreme ill effects 

of disagreement between agencies. By 1963 the CORONA program was 

conSistently returning good intelligence, and atter July of that year there. 

was reasonable assurance of a similarly excellent return from GAMBrr. 

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Those systems provided perfectly adequate information and they continued to do so during the period of , management controversy that 

followed. Indeed, rather ordinary technical improvements of the bas,ic 

CORONA and GA~BlT systems caused both the quality and quantity of 

the product to improve. There was no denying the validity, ot the need 

for still better systems, but the fact that executives could disagree. 

violently without substantially degrading the information intake from 

satellite reconnaissance certainly did nothing to, discourage disagreement. 

One other circumstance requires notice. From 1980 to late 

1963 the NRO sought to enlarge its authority by absorbing functions and 

responsibilities. though not resources, heid by the CIA. Th~ . CIA could 

keep its privileges by simply refusing to let go. But in the end that sort . 

of opposition was sure to be futile because time was on the side of the 

NRO. To continue to be a major influence in satellite reconnaissance in 

any post-CORONA period, the CIA would have to establish replacement 

programs. It was on the creation and validation of such programs'that 

the CIA focused its considerable effort in the years 1983-1985 •. Here 

also the NRO had a tactical advantage, because merely to prevent. the 

creation of new CIA-assigned satellite reconnaissance programs was 'in 

some respects advantageous to the NRO. IInpedence.of progress tends, 

always to be easier than making progress. A prime cause of the friction 

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of the post-1963 years was the CIA's effort to expand its authority by . drawing from NRO stocks. 

Whether the NRO staff fully appreciated the implications of the 

power struggle cannot be established. But in fact the CIA could 

afford to lose quite a lot of its satellite reconnaissance responsibility 

without losing much that was important to the hard core of the Agency. 

On the other hand, should the NRO lose much of the authority invested 

by the charter Charyk had left, there would be no NRO, mere.ly an 

Air Force-operated satellite program. In retrospect, the stakes seem 

obvious enough; whether the participants all understood them c~ot be 

certain. 

A foretaste of new contentions came in mid-August 1963, scarcely 

two months after Scoville had left. On instructions from McMillan, 

General Greer and Colonel Ledford met to discuss plans for developing an ultra-high-resolution reconnaissance system recommended by 

the Purcell Panel. Their talk was quite amicable. and as General 

Greer subsequently reported the results to Under Secretary McMillan, 

they reached agreement on the performance specifications, the content 

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of the. work statement and request for proposal. the t&chnique of 

source evaluation. and a plan for managing development of the' 

resultant system. 66 Eight days after General Greer entered his 

recollection of the meeting in a record memorandum. Colonel Ledfont 

privately advised Brigadier General J. L. Martin. newly promoted 

chief of the NRO Staff. that because of pressures from within CIA he 

was obliged to deny the substance of the agreement with Greer. Be .. 

then formally told, Under Secretary McMillan that he and Greer were 

not in agr~ement on the management structure for a new system. He' ". 

apologized for not having made himself "entirely clear on this point":. 

but added. in forbiddingly formal terms: "The various approaches to 

questions of over-all management. contracting and security were discussed infor.mally. but no conclusions were reached. * * * The ~ntire ~ . . 

problem of assignment of functions and responsibilities within the 

. NRP is at present a subject being debated at higher levels and any 

agreement on program management must necessarily await a major 

policy decision.,1l7 

Here was a breath of ice to come. If at the time of the Greer-

• Ledford meeting "the problem of assignment of functions" was being 

debated somewhere. noise.of the debate had not reached either Greer 

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or McMillan. (It is not unfair to suggest that Ledford was also 

innocent of such advice, else he would not have been so rece~tive 

to Greer's ideas.) McCone, merely days earlier, had expressed 

himself as entirely satisfied with the functional arrangements specitied in the March agreement, and these clearly authorized DNRO to 

assign and reassign programs as he thought best. The "higher levels" 

then debating functions must therefore have been in CIA itself. 

General Greer had not equivocated in his resume of the meeting. 

He had said, with ·an assurance that would have been most uncharac'-

teristic if he had been at all doubtful as to the absolute accuracy of 

his statements, that he and Ledford had agreed on the details of a 

management arrangement -- and he spelled out the essentials of that 

agreement: program direction to b(! provided by Greer's office, 

security and contracting to be CIA's concern, Aerospace Corporation. 

to do systems engineering and provide technical direction. So little 

was Greer awake to the possibility of dissension that he noted almost 

casually his intention of naming Colonel Paul Heran chairman of the. 

evaluation team and subsequently program manager. * 

. *With aU 'respect for Colonel Ledford's position at the time, and 

with due regard for the fact that Dr •. Scoville had on several 

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On the day preceding dispatch of Ledford's message, Fubini and 

Gilpatric had lunched with McCone,. Carter, a~d Wheelan. In the 

course of the meeting, Mr. McCone discussed the NRO in terms 

widely at odds with those he had employed three weeks earlier. As 

though innocent of knowledge of the March agreement, he said he had 

not expected the NRO to function as a line organization but as a coordinator of existing activities. He argued. in rather extreme terms, that 

the NRO was not taking advantage of CIA's ability to do "quick and 

dirty" management jobs. He suggested that there was too much R&D 

. . 88 

emphasis in the NRO and not enough awareness of intelligence needs. 

occasions been obliged to withdraw from agreements he had made 

with Charyk. it seems impossible to evade the conclusion that Colonel 

Ledford had essentially agreed with General Greer in all matt~rs 

Greer specified. The peculiar wording of Colonel Ledford's message 

tends to' confirm that finding. (He did not contradict General Greer's 

statements about Col Heran, for example,· but said "I propose Col 

Murphy •.. II not III proposed •.• II) General Greer was under no 

pressure to describe an agreement that had not been made, and·it is' 

. obvious both in the testimony of General Martin and in the context of 

the Ledford message that the Colonel was being pressed. Finally." 

there is evidence of Greer's habits; the general possessed an ex- ' 

ceptional memory; he would be most unlikely to confuse such straightforward details as these in a matter of hours. To suggest that he 

deliberately mis-stated the content of the meeting is unthinkable; . 

were it otherwise, Colonel Ledford certainly would have sugpsted as 

much. That no such tactic was attempted is perhaps the moat con-

. vincing evidence. 

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The reference to an R&D orientation was undoubtedly baaed on 

General Greer's stubborn insistence that a sequential proof test' be. 

conducted before GAMBIT was committed to routine collection tasks. 

It was also quite true, however, that the NRO people generally 

lacked CIA's concern for processed intelligence as an end product. 

The viewpoint of Greer's people, in particular, was that fUm properly' 

exposed and promptly recovered was their "product." The 'photo- . 

graphic content of the fUm was a secondary matter and one in which 

few had other than a secondary interest. In that characteristic lay 

the core of much of CIA's professional antagonism to~ard General 

Greer. 

The argument that GAMBIT, which had first flown the previoUs 

month, should be given full bore mission assignments at once delnonstrated that McCone had been both misinformed and inadequately 

briefed on the GAMBIT program, its technical complexity, and the' 

sad history of its immediate predecessors. The ~harge that NRO was 

not taking full advantage of CIA resources was a stronger restatement 

of General Carter's earlier protest to McMillan and perhaps had s.OIll8 . 

validity; CIA's role in R&D had been declining gradually for montha, 

though as much was not true for other functions. The main problem 

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was that few CIA professionals were entirely suited for positions on 

McMillan's NRO Staff and fewer could contribute significantly to 

Greer's operation. The allegations about the NRO's improper operation ae a line or,a!lization and an accompanyin, hint that CIA would 

prefer to withdraw from the arrangement were incomprehensible in 

view of the agreement McCone had approved and so recently reendorsed. The NRO's functions were plainly stated there and CIA's 

proposed alterations of the agreement terms at the time of their 

approval demonstrated the Agency's complete appreciation of their 

intent and implications. But in the final analysis it was not so m,:,ch 

CIA's equivocal attitude that upset the NRO Director and Staff as it 

was CIA's refusal to accept "final verdicts" as truly final. 

On 4 Septemberl Gilpatric met with McCone in the presence of 

Defense Secretary McNamara. In the inte~im Fubini had read for th~ 

:, 

first time the memoir t~at Charyk had left behindl had briefed Gilpatric 

on the March 1963 agreementl and had passed along General Martin's. : 

suggestion that if the agreement were to be redrawn. it should be along 

the. lines of "greater clarity and less diplomacy" recommended by 

Charyk. Primed by this information, Gilpatric obtained from McCone 

a concession that the NRO was operating strictly in accordance with 

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the terms of the existing compact. McCone also with~rew his suggestion that the charter should be altered, merely expressing 0llc,e . 

more his concern that CIA resources were not being fully utiliz~d. 

Gilpatric, relieved at the apparent passing of what had momentarily 

promised to be a serious clash between the CIA and the NRO, personally advised McMillan and Fubini of his·talk with McCone and its 

69 

promising outcome. 

Taken together. the Ledford incident and the aggressive McCone 

assault on NRO prerogatives signaled a complete volte face in the ". 

CIA attitude that had been evinced before 15 August. On the strength" 

of evidence that he did not reco"rd, Dr. McMillan concluded that 

Wheelon had deliberately brought on the confrontation and was responsible for Ledford's denunciation of the agreement with Greer. That 

Wheelon had also primed McCone to attack the March 1963 agreement 

seemed equally evident. McMillan, who had distrusted Wheelon 

when their forced association began. * was convinced that Wheelon had 

*Some years earlier, McMillan had challenged the findings of a 

paper Wheelon presented to one of the majo~ ,professional societies 

and a typically heated exchange had followed.· McMillan emerged 

from the incident with the conviction that Wheelon had been intellectually dishonest. General Carter, aware of the fact that the two 

officials did not get along well, had urged McCone 

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deliberately stirred up the fuss. He advised McCone-through an intermediary that he \\Quid no longer deal with Wheelon in matters atfectini 

the NRO. He was being no more than correct. if unfriendly. in that 

statement. becauSe Kiefer' was officially the CIA spokesman in NRO: 

Wheelon had at that time no official role whatever. 

Roswell Gilpatric. essaying the role of peacemaker. brought about 

a meeting between McMillan and McCone on 11 September. During the 

.conversation McCone again emphasized his determination to insure that 

all of the tesources of both the CIA and the military services were 

''brought effectively to bear on matters of importance to the NRC. " 

Explaining his earlier remarks about the scope of NRO's functions, 

McCone said he had not then been aware of the way in which NRO was 

opera tionally structured and had also been ignorant about the "special 

organizational arrangement under which General Greer operates." 

(These were McMillan's words in recording the conversation.) Again 

, " displaying an astonishing naivete about the arrangements specified in 

the CIA-DOD agreement, McCone remarked that he was uncertain who 

not to make Whee10n responsible for Program B, as had been suggested 

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early in the fall of 1963. That Wheelon was aware of the incident, and /' 

was also aware of McMillan's low regard for him, aeems certain •. 

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within CIA the DNRO should work with -- Colonel Ledford or "an 

individual further up in the organization, or perhaps witil t~o individuals ... " 

Accepting Mr, McCone's explanation of events and his apparent 

desire to see that affairs went more smoothly, McMillan withdrew 'his 

"statement of reluctance to deal with Dr. Wheelon ••. ,,70 But the. 

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Under Secretary was uneasily aware that one day earlier the CIA 

Director had told McGeorge Bundy that it still w~s too early to decide 

whether revision of the March agreement was necessary. Some areas 

obviously ;equired "clarification, " McCone had written. 71 

McCone had inexplicable but frequent, vagaries of heart, mind, 

and memory. He was, moreover, notoriOUSly but unpr'edictabll susceptible to the influence of his staff. To this susceptibility was. .' 

ascribed an incident of mid-September, when, act~ng as Chairman of 

the USIB, he told that body he was considering having Dr. McMillan 

attend those parts of usm meetings during which matters of interest. 

to the NRO were considered. Previously, McCone had advised both 

Gilpatric and McMillan that he was very interested in having McMUlan 

72 made a regular member of USIB. In th~ s~me context, McCone 

endorsed the notion of having a senior member of the NRO Staff 

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assigned permanently to the COMOR; nothing at all oame of that discussion, although from time to time various members of the NRO 

group were invited to appear before COMOR to report on current items. 

. . 

Perhaps because of his continuing mistrust of WIle ~lon or. his 

experience in the Ledford affair, perhaps because of the implications 

of the 22 August discussion, perhaps in consequence of his converaation with McCone on 11 September, Dr. McMillan on the ,latter date 

began making ~nd keeping copies of memoranda for record in which' 

he set dow.n, immediately after the event, an account of all Significant 

contacts and discussions with McCone, Wheelon, and other key mem73 bers of the reconnaissance community. The relationship between 

McMillan and Wheelon had been gravely affected by the events of August 

and September. McMillan was convinced that Wheelon would seek his 

own ends by whatever means, and Wheelon obviously had no high reprd 

. for McMillan. Nevertheless, at the insistence of Gilpatric and Fubini, 

they studiously observed the amenities' in later contacts. 

The events of late August and early September 1983 probably 

were even more significant for the future than they seemed at t:he time. 

Hindsight made it clear that they were not so much isolated in<:idents 

as the opening measures in an artfully designed effort to transform the. 

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NRO into a coordinating Agency without broad operating functions. 

That the campaign was both deliberate and carefully planned was not 

immediately apparent, but as time passed and evidence accumulated 

that conclusion became more and more inescapable. * 

In many respects, a CIA assault on the NRO seemed foolhardy. 

Apart from the widely known and indorsed intent of the charter itself. 

the stur.diness of the NRO structure seemed to have been adequately 

reinforced by the approval of the Purcell Board (a circumstance that 

McMillan .casually called to McCone's attention in a note of 11 September, 

74 . the day of their conversation about NRO functions) and by the fact 

that both GAMBIT and LA NY ARD were working out well in early flights. 

Until the summer of 1963, any case arguing the capability of the Air . 

Force-managed projects was justifiably suspect. The several predecessoTs of GAMBIT had development and operational histories tlliLt 

. did little to inspire cont'idence in their sponsors. 'But GAMBIT was 

..... 

another matter; the first GAMBIT returns represented as great an 

advance in overhead reconnaissance as had the first CORONA returns 

three years earlier. Finally, on 13 September, aUpatric optimistically 

* Though a dedicated opponent of the "conspiracy theory of history. It 

I must acknowledge that in this instance an exception is full)' jusU-' 

fied. (8. L. P. ) . 

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reported to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board that 

notwithstanding some minor differences of viewpoint, "the overall 

operation of the NRO is satisfactory; that the NRO programs are producing, and will continue in the future to produce important intelligence 

information; and that a smooth, steady state, and highly effective 

operation of the NRO is beginning to be apparent." Communications 

within the reconnaissance community were good; continuity ot management was assured; guidance to the NRO was consistent with national 

objective~; relations;between the NRO, DIA, and NSA were clear and 

workable; and the Secretary of Defense was making every effort to 

insure that CIA and OOD resources were fully utilized. 75 

Confidence that the air would clear was totally unwarranted. Late 

in October, there was another incident along the lines of the 'Ledford 

affair of August, minor in its own right, but oddly portending the future. 

On 21 October, a member of the NPIC staff visited 

the Los Angeles offices of the NRO to argue for the retention of horizon 

cameras in the CORONA system. (The cameras had been causing some 

operational difficulty and through an occasional failure had been endangering the primary film exposure. NPIC felt that the horIZon c~ras 

were essential; members of General Greer's staff were of two minds 

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on the que stion. ) somewhat distressed at what he took 

to be General Greer's casual view of the problem. On his return to 

Washington, ved an invitation from Wheelon. to report 

on the results of hjs visit. Not noted for his tact or diplomacy, the 

NPIC ofticial apparently phrased his report in terms intriguing to 

his audience. Wheelon rti"'+D"~A "some of his remarks" to 

a CIA secretary and asked him to approve the draft copy of the tranacript. Subsequently, Wheelon had the draft typed as a formal memorandum and sent six copies' to addressees in NPIC and one copy to . 

Kiefer, the Deputy Director, NRO (but also a CIA official). The paper 

carried no holograph signature; merely the entry "seen in draft" 

typed name. 

Early in November, Kiefer passed a copy of the memo to General 

Martin. Noting that Lt Colonel Howard was Usted as one of the attendees 

at meeting, Martin immediately asked that officer's 

advice. Howard. horrified by the tbne and content of the paper. said 

it was "an extremely distorted and inaccurate representation of the 

21 October meeting .•• [whichJquotes Major General Greer in a manner 

substantially out of context with the discussion at the meeting." (Among 

other badly composed sentences 

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Greer with having disparaged both the requirement for precise information and the President's need for such data. It probably was 

this section. confirming Wheelon in his suspicion that lithe Air Force~' 

was not sufficiently conscious of intelligence needs, that brought on 

the incident. ) 

Martin called Arthur Luridahl, Director of NPIC, who contacted 

who denied any intention of offense and insisted that preparing 

and circulating the paper had all been Wheelon's idea. Martin 

immediately passed the information to McMillan. who happened at" that 

. . moment to be meeting with General Carter and Wheelon. Whee lon, 

thus confronted. agreed to withdraw the memorandum. 76 

In the meantime, however, Wheelon had acted on a conversation 

between McCone and Gilpatric, late in October, and established a 

special research group lito explore the whole range of engineering and 

physical limitations on satellite photography ... " The undertaldDg. ' 

which became the Drell-Chapman Committee, stemmed fro~ a CIA' 

analysis of the variability of CORONA photograph)C that showed~, wheelon 

remarked. a quality spread "broader than anyone had expected." (The 

remark suggested a distressing lack of knowledge about some rather, 

substantial work earlier devoted to the same topic; notably, the Purcell 

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Board, Charyk,. Greer, Howard, and Kiefer had all conducted an81yses 

that showed CORONA products to have a most variable quality; ~Ue 

ITEK. had for some more than 10 months been devotin,· particular effort 

to correction of the defect.) At some length, Dr. Wheelon explained 

his intentions of baving the new working group devise both improvements 

to the CORONA system and standards for new systems. He asked 

McMillan, early in November, if the DNRO could make "one or more 

technical specialists" available to help. He also suggested that NRO 

reimburse CIA for the incurred·expenditures: the 

first three months. 

McMillan's initial reaction was a barbed comment that he would 

appreciate receiving more advance notice of such new enterprises 

when they affected basic NRO responsibilities. He completely disagreed with several of Wheelon's concepts, objected to the scope of. . . ~ 

the group's assignment, had doubts about the propriety of ignoring both 

program offices and affected contractors in such an inquiry, and had· , . 

no intention of providing NRO funds for the enterprise. Most of the.e , 

sentiments were put into an acid letter that, on second thought. was.: 

not dispatched. The Under Secretary eventually settled for a con:~ 

ve.rsational reply, relatively mild in tone • .,., 

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Interestingly enoughl to this point Dr. Wheelon h,ad no official 

role in satellite reconnaissance except that his post in CIA made him 

Ledford's superior. (The NRO charter did not recognize a situation 

of that sort, but tb,e CIA had ignored such implications in the chal:'ter.) 

Largely at the suggestion of Mr. Kieferl General Carter had served 

as CIA monitor in the interval following Scoville's resignation.' 

McMillan had objectedl from the first, to the inclusion of Scoville I 

and McCone had apparently deemed these objections sufficient. All 

concerned appreciated that problems of personal relationships were 

involved. Whether mounting irritation at Wheelon's tinkering caused 

McMillan to raise a point of orderl or whether Wheelon moved independently to acquire an official entr' to the NRO is uncertainl * but 

on 8 November McCone formally designated his Deputy for Science 

and Technology as the CIA monitor tor NRO matters -- a CIA counter -

part of Fubini. SimultaneouslYI McCone urged regular meetings between' 

NRO and CIA officials "to review and discuss policy aspects of all NRO 

78 .. . 

programs •.• " (Carter's appointment seems not to have been officially 

recorded in NRO filesl but it was acknowledged by McCone,McMillan 

and Kiefer. ) 

*The latter is more probable I however. 

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Following up Charyk's efforts to consolidate CORONA management, McMillan had on 28 October sent a detaUed function plan to 

Mr. McCone. Its approval would, of course, resolve one of the issues 

that had kept alive the controversy over NRC functions. Evidently 

uncertain of McCone's reaction, Wheelon on 20 November attempted 

to enroll Colonel C. L. Battle, former chief of the West Coast 

DISCOVERER project office,· in his counter offensive. After discussing "the mess the program is in at Los Angeles," Wheelon made an 

open bid for Battle's support. It was adroitly declined. but the incident 

indicated that little hope should be held for a favorable outcome to 

forthcoming discussions with McCone about the consolidation proposal. 79 . :,. 

As anticipated, McCone proved obdurate; no progress resulted. 

Gilpatric attempted to resolve the mounting dispute over functions 

by proposing the creation of a special NRP review committee composed 

of McMillan, Fubini. and Whe elon, with the DNRO serving ~ chairman. 

McCone immediately rejected the proposal, ~avoring an informal com-

. niittee which would also include General Carter (his deputy) and which 

would alternate chairmen at succeeding seaaions. At roughly the same 

time. McMWan suggested that Wheelon thereafter contact NRO people 

only through the Director and abstain from directly tasking CIA membera 

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of the NRO Staff. Meeting with McMillan a few days later, McCone 

protested that dictum. When McMillan patiently explained the principle 

that NRO personnel worked for him and not for their parent agencies, 

. 80 McCone tartly passed off the matter as of no consequence. 

The main issue was openly joined during a 10 December meeting 

between McCone and McMillan. If he had been inclined earlier to 

consider McMillan's suggestion of consolidating CQRONA affairs under 

Greer. McCone had undergone a Pauline conversion. Even though 

McMillan'~ proposals had been trimmed since October, McCone charged 

McMillan with wanting "~ take the whole project over" and warned .that 

(in McMillan's later words)" .•• he would not stand for· submersion of 

this project into the bureaucracy of the Air .Force and that he would 

liquidate the NRO if necessary to prevent this." The DNRO, taken 

aback at the vigor of the assault, attempted to turn it away by Citing the 

. facts of the situation as he saw them. He was convincing enough to 

cause McCone to agree to consider the matter further, but there see~ed 

little doubt that this was a concession to the proprieties rather than an 

indication of a still open mind. 81 McCone's promised response, pre-

. pared three days later, consisted mostly of an injunction to mainta~ 

the status quo pending his return from a lengthy trip to Viet Nam~ 82 . 

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Several skirmishes marked December 1963. Awakened to the 

fact that the CIA was methodically planning for a still distant future 

while the NRO centered its attention on affairs of the present, McMillan 

. created an advanced planning office within the NRO Staff to. evaluate and 

recommend in matters involving future research and development projects. He thus tried to counterbalance attractive CIA studies which 

might quickly be transformed into programs. Responding to the 

repeated complaints about failure to utilize CIA resources, he formally 

requested the assignment of four highly qualified CIA people to the NRO. 

McCone, in the same letter that enjoined against tampering with the 

status quo of CORONA, cautioned McMill8.n against Air Force interference in "problems which. through the years. have been matters of 

mutual interest •.. " to the CIA and some of. its contractors. 83 McMillan 

responded by rejecting Wheelon's proposal that NRO people routinely 

. brief the science and technology staff in CIA on the status of NRO affairs. 

Such a practice, McMillan observed amiably, was forbidden by "paragraph V. B. of the 13 March DOD/CIA NRO Agreement." He a~ded an 

equally casual request that Wheelon send.a written advisory of lbe .pro-

• posed discussion topics in advance of future meeti~gs of the monitoring 

84 

group. 

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The issue of CORONA management, rapidly bec~ming the heart 

of the increasingly acrimonious dispute over NRO functions, was 

invariably treated, from the CIA promontory, as though it immediately 

involved the entire future of satellite reconnaissance. For reasona 

largely drawn from the defunct SAMOSeffort, Wheelon and his associates had developed a deep mistrust of Greer, his competence and 

his staff. * They proceeded on the premise that assigning additional 

CORONA responsibility to Greer could cause a complete collapse 

*Wheelon, who had come to CIA from the Space Technology Laboratqries 

of Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation, was generally familiar with the un- . 

happy Air Force background in satellite reconnaissance. It is reasonable to suggest that he, like others, held Greer responsible for theun-' 

appetizing record of failure, faint success, and program cancellation 

that had characterized the E-series satellite developments. To one 

not fully conversant with the inner workings of the West Coast group 

after it came under Greer, there was little to make the record attractive. GAMBIT still was an immature system that could not reasonably 

be compared with CORONA and Greer's determination to make GAMBIT 

. fully reliable before committing it wholly to operational missions 

rankled with the Agency. There, the concern for a systematic GAMBIT 

proof test program was interpreted as an indication that the Air Force 

had no appreciation of the pressing requirements for finished intelligence products. That factor, and the previously mentioned tendenc), of 

Air Force people to treat "good film" rather than finished int~lligence 

as the object of NRO effort, seemed to outweigh more recent eVidence 

of accomplishments by the West Coast NRO group.' . 

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of the ongoing intelligence collection effort and the demise of planned 

improvements. They constantly emphasized the historical interest of 

CIA in CORONA. McCone, beginning in November, adopted the position 

that CIA was wholiy responsible for the creation and evol~tion of 'a 

satellite reconnaissance capability in the United States;' NotwtthstaDding -- or perhaps owing to -- his earlier service as Under Secretary 

of the Air Force, he entertained and rarely bothered to disguise. BIt: 

abiding distaste. for "Air Force bureaucracy" and 'could not be convinced that the NRO was in any fashion exempt from the contaminants 

of such an environment. His understanding of the background of the 

satellite reconnaissance effort was at best rather elementary and. 

seemed to have been acquired from sources only casually familiar wi~. 

the subject. 

The NRO viewpoint, as expressed by McMillan, was that the 

. provisions of the March 1963 agreement were meant to be taken quite 

literally and that the interests of the nation could be served best by 

consolidating all aspects of satellite reconnaissance under one executive. 

In this he believed he had the uncompromising support of the ])()D .. 

heirarchy. Yet part of, the heat of the controversy certainly ste~med 

from the fact that the NRO, although then only 20 months old ·(not 

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allowing for a 24-month gestation) had begun.to display some of the 

usual characteristics of an organization with vested interests being 

threatened by an external force. That personality clashes marred the 

. working relationship of NRO with CIA was also important, and was 

rarely acknowledged. Organizational and personal differences were 

glossed over or denied, as was generally the case in Washington~ 

But they could not be forever ignored. 

Logic was on the side of McMillan and the NRO in their fqrmal 

dispute with the Wheelon faction of the CIA. CORONA had clearly 

outgrown its original habitude; efficiency and economy wouldbest be . 

served by restructuring the program to aceommodate reality. Un- . 

fortunately, for logic, the CORONA issue merely screened a larger 

dis pute over the role of the NRO. Apart from the fact that CORONA '.' 

probably was not the best issue on which the NRO should choose to' 

'make a stand, especially in a free-for-all of the sort then developing. 

the CIA had some obvious advantages. Not the least of these was 

Dr. A. B. Whee lon, who, in less than five months of skillful infighting 

had brought an uncommitted McCone around to unquestioning acceptance 

. of a highly parochial viewpoint, had substantially reduced the DNRO's 

maneuver room, and had completely stalled the well supported move 

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of CORONA into regular NRO channels. Moreover. ~y his imaginative' 

use of the loosely defined authorities of the CIA, Wheelon had succeeded 

in securing for his own science and technology subsection a major voice 

in the future of the national satellite reconnaissance program and had 

blocked out a number of promising projects that CIA could "manage" 

with or without help from the main NRO group. 

The position of the two antagonists on CORONA was at once 

obvious and obscure -- obvious because it could be defined as a desire 

for complete management authority, and obscure because the precise 

intentions of the two parties were screened behind general~ties or discussions of fine detail. By December 1963, CIA had moved trom a 

defense of the CORONA status quo to an open claim for a larger voice 

in the technical management of CORONA (participation in the "daily 

health" engineering effort) plus authority to develop a new general 

search system. In Wheelon's words, that solution would create a 

"proper role" tor the CIA. He would not hear of separating operations 

from research and development, arguing that the consolidation of . 

program operations had to be complete. It· was also plain that one 

of the reasons CIA wanted responsibility for the "daily health" of 

CORONA was that it would insure the continuance of a CIA engineering 

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competence adaptable to the development of new systems. Wheelon 

frankly stated that objective in a December meeting with Fubini and . 

McMillan. Finally, it was .Wheelon's declared intention to "get CIA 

into the satellite b.usiness in a contri~utina, not just a bureaucratic 

way." He ascribed this determination to McCone, although on the 

evidence McCone had abjured any such desire six weeks earlier. 85 

McMillan's proposals to transfer the operational and contracting elements of CORONA to Greer's custody were justified by references to greater efficiency and economy in use of reso~rces (a possibUity that the CIA flatly denied in the event). Yet it was clear that 

McMillan realized the vital implications of a CORONA management 

decision for the future of the National Reconnaissance Program: there 

would be no national program if CIA had complete custody of one of the 

major functions, and particularly if CIA had insular control of program 

funds. 

The ultimate issue, generally denied or avoided by both . parties~ 

was again the survival of the NRO. If the question pop~d unexpectedly 

to the surface it was dealt with hurriedly, in generalities built aro~ 

such terms as "national interest, II "appreciation of intelUgen~e needs, " 

"efficient management, " and the like. The fundamental or,aniational 

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instincts of the two parties were seldom, if ever, acknowledged. * 

In mid-January, Dr. Fubini independently suggested to Mr. McCone 

a compromise that might resolve some of. the problems then interfering 

. " 

with the tunctionitl, of the NRO. (He had memioned the ,erm of· the idea 

a month earlier.) His proposition was that the CIA should be assigned 

responsibility for the development and early operation of a new high 

resolution search system with the understanding that once development 

had been completed ("after the first 4 or 5 successful flights") the 

program would be integrated into an Air Force-managed NRO program., 

As a quid pro quo, he suggested that the same rule be applied to 

CORONA -- that is, that its ordinary management be assigned to the 

Air Force • This arrangement, he argued, would exploit the "~que 

capability of CIA which has been demonstrated in the past" in various " 

advanced developments as well as the strength, organization and 

capability of the Air Force which is uniquely equipped to carryon" 

*On one occasion when Wheelon proposed that CIA be assigned total 

custody of a new search system development, Fubini asked: 

"What happens if there is no future development 

for broad coverage? " 

Wheelon quickly changed the subject, and Fubini did not pursue it. 

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operations which have reached a character of routine. '''. He added 

that as part of the general compromise the Air Force would develop 

a follow-on to GAMBIT "with exactly the same procedu~e toward the 

NRO that the CIA has in the broad coverage program. ,,86 

* Dr. Fubini began to playa peculiar role' in the continuing contro- ' 

versy during the early months of 1964. He took his assignment as 

NRO monitor quite seriously, so much so that he began to act as a 

senior program executive rather than, as had been clearly contemplated when the arrangement was devised, an observer whose " 

primary task was to advise the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of 

Defense in matters of broad policy. Several factors influenced' 

that tendency. First, it plainly was in Wheelon's interest to expand the authority of the program monitors. The assignment. afte.r ' 

all, was his only valid justification for dabbling in the conduct of 

the NRP as a whole. Fubini 'was not inclined to dispute or discourage Wheelon's increasing influence because it made his own 

that much more secure. Second, Gilpatric' s time was being taken' 

up with defense of the TFX (F-ill) award and the intricate political 

maneuvering that marked the closing session of the 88th Congress. 

Fubini stepped into the breach in a way that weakened McMillan's 

position; he acted as a buffer between McMillan and Gilpatric. 

stopping McMillan from getting Gilpatric's attention but essentially 

lacking the authority Gilpatric's assignment carried. Third, Fubini ' 

continually assured McMillan that he would look out for NRO's 

interests -- and he did. But it developed that Fubini's and McMillanf~ , 

notions of NRO's interests were not always coincident. To judge by 

his January 1964 correspondence, Gilpatric considered McMillan to 

be senior to both Fubini and Wheelon in program matters; Fubini 

(with Wheelon's certain encouragement) reversed that order. 

Finally, McMillan put a good deal of trust in Fubini. who was both 

more accessible and more sympathetic than GUpatric. These 

developments did not occur all at once, of course, but their substance had become visible by early 1964. 

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Mr. McCone's reaction was neither prompt nor'direct, but in 

early February he essentially confronted McMillan with the Fubini 

proposition, somewhat modified. While hedging on the details of 

CORONA realignment, he made it clear that the Agency VIOuld entertain a proposal to abdicate much of its CORONA authority (tacit, 

though not prescribed in the existing charter) in return for a free hand 

... ~ 

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in development of a new search system. McMillan, sure of his ground, 

told Cyrus Vance, Gilpatriq's replacement as Deputy Secretary of 

Defense, that he was strongly opposed to any "deal", particularly ~ne 

that committed him " ••• a priori, to conducting an unidentified new 

development with an unidentified organization whose potential leadership has no applicable development experience, and had repeatedly 

demonstrated unwillingness to accept direction from NRO." His brief 

was that the CORONA issue should be setUed on its merits "and the 

. other issues on theirs. ,,87 

McMillan seriously considered attempting to get McNamara to 

sign a direchve assigning the DNRO responsibility for clarifying 

CORONA management, but in .so radical a solution he had insufficient 

support from Fubini (still intent on acting as program broker) and 

Vance' (new to his post). He also drew up ~ sweeping directive to 

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General Greer and Colonel Ledford, assigning complete management 

res ponsibility for CORONA to Greer, but in the absence of either 

McNamara's direct endorsement or a prior consent decree from 

88 McCone chose not to attempt its enactment. 

Some weeks later, Dr. Wheelon sponsored a message to 

McMillan from the contracting officer at Lockheed's ''black'' facility 

-- a proposal for reducing General Greer's" inconsiderable authority 

in CORONA management. The theme was that Greer's people had 

limited th~ probability of mission success by diverting Lockheed's 

attention to new systems and 1!y increasing the documentation requirements for the CORONA-J (dual capsule) satellite. Separately, and in" 

advance of any DNRO comment, Lockheed was ordered not to respond 

to directions from Greer (deviously identified as "various agencies of 

89 the government"). 

In a sort of tit -for -tat riposte to McMiUan's letter of 4 December 

past, Wheelon in March protested the Under Secretary's having named 

personnel from the Program B office to serve on two study groups, 

observing that it was "inappropriate for the NRO Staff to be designating 

. individuals in CIA for such purposes." The charter made no such 

distinction, but considering the de facto situation 

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McMillan apparently conceded the point in the interests of harmony. 90 

The effect of this action, committed to a formal letter after having 

been first discussed by telephone, was to increase the separation 

between Program B elements of the NRO and the remainder of the 

organization. In practice, of course, the Program B people had been 

taking their instructions from Dr. Wheelon rather than Dr. McMillan 

for several months. The fiction of a collaborative, coordinated effort 

had generally been maintained, nevertheless. It now disappeared so 

completely.that McMillan was unable to discover what CIA-funded 

studies were being conducted in the satellite reconnaissance field, an 

area theoretically the province of the NRO, and clearances were 

refused those Aerospace Corporation personnel who were under orders 

to do systems engineering work in CORONA. 91 

. Earlier, Wheelon had revived Scoville's dormant claim to a 

'covert satellite program ~nd had been rebuked by McMillan. 92 

McMillan followed up that minor triumph by calling McCone's attention 

to the existence of NRO vacancies for which CIA people should be considered, and again received no reply. He raised the question once 

. more early in March, noting that he had been obliged to fill one of the 

posts, too loni'/acant, and again asking fox: nominations. A week later, 

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93 

Wheelon replied that the original conversation had, as' he recalled, 

envisioned "a much more broadly based joint staffing of the NRO than 

is represented by your specific proposals." In passing. he complained 

about the cool welcome accorded a proposed CIA assignee the previous 

summer and the subsequent appointment of an Air Force officer to one 

of the posts McMillan had earlier listed as vacant. (McMillan had 

filled the position a week earlier and had so advised McCone.) For' an 

epilogue Wheelon added a most interesting paragraph: 

The entire question of the NRO and its functioning is' 

now being looked into by the PFIAB. I propose that 

we postpone incremental solutions to partial staffing' 

problems until broader guidelines are supplied by 

DCI and Secretary of Defense. I am sure that you 

are aware of our intense interest in creating a truly 

joint CIA/Military NRO Staff and our desire to reach 

an early framework within which this action can be 

taken. 

Advice that the FlAB was analyzing the functions and management· 

of the NRO could scarcely have been news to McMillan, but Wheelon's 

unabashed acknowledgment that he expected tlie FlAB to change things 

about by enlarging CIA's role might have been a mUd shocker. McMillan 

had earlier suggested to Secretary McNamara that "th~ final price of 

peace with the CIA. considering the temperament of its leaders, at 

least is to give them carte lllanche for the development of a new,aeneral - , 

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search system." Until that was done'or until the leadership changed, 

McMillan added. "there will be continued obstruction of the NRO and 

contests of its actions on many subsidiary issues. " 94 

Anticipating the eventual emergence of what he recognized to be 

the "main issue. " McMillan had temporiz~d for more than six months, 

skirmishing on minor issues and continuing as best he could to negotiate 

the larger ones. For his pains. he had been subjected to a con~u~ 

harassment. In many respects he had received s~pport from Fubini 

and GUpatric. although Fubini's increasing tendency to essay the role 

of independent arbiter had brought on some troublesome moments. * 

Contacts with Wheelon remained on the "Dear Bud." "Dear Brock" 

basis that had characterized the period since November 1963. although 

the letters so headed frequently were bar~d i~ their content. Personal 

animosity directed at McMillan -- more often expressed by McCone than 

. by Wheelon -- had by this time extended to his two chief subordinates, 

Greer and Kiefer. Greer was a regular object of attack, his competence 

* It is difficult to understand why Wheelon did not take greater· advantage 

of Fubini's attempts to compromise the question·of responsibility for 

a new search system. At all times. Fubini offered more than McMillan 

was willing to concede and apparently could have held the DNRO to any 

bargain. 

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being questioned at the majority of the meetings where McMillan dis.-

cussed CORONA affairs with either McCone or Wheelon. Kiefer, who 

had come to the Deputy DNRO post after a relatively long career in the 

CIA, had attempte.d to operate precisely as the March 1963 agreement 

specified· and had been frozen out of his CIA associations by the spring 

of 1964. He was literally unable to obtain essential appointments with 

McCone, Wheelon. and their CIA associates; was the constant target 

of barbed comments by McCone, particularly when he attended u~m 

meetings (a chore that McMillan had delegated in deference to the possibility that he might be goaded into improper stands or statements·U 

he continued to attend); and, after April 1964, could not in any important way influence the course of events. As was to be expected, the 

several actors tended to personalize their contacts with their opposites, 

none of which helped the situation. 

The examination that FlAB undertook in the spring of 1964 promised 

to bring matters to a head. A special panel of the board examined the. 

organization, management, and operation of the NRP, consulted with 

virtually every key official involved in the activity, visited the various 

installations, and conferred with the principal contractors. Theresults 

were weighed, assessed, analyzed, and studied at lencth. The CIA ~ 

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wanted to be confirmed in possession of both CORONA and a new 

general search system; NRO had argued for a more comprehensive 

compliance with the provisions and intent of the 1963 agreement. NRO 

hoped, with some .reason, that the FlAB would recommend a complete , 

consolidation of all satellite reconnaissance activity under one manager --

DNRO. CIA hoped, with apparently as much reason, that the short-, 

comings of the current program would be so obvious as to cause FlAB 

to break NRO into sections. 

The board concluded, at the end, that: 

... the National Reconnaissance Program, despite its 

achievements, has not yet reached its full potential. 

Basically, the problem is one of inadequacies in the 

present organizational structure and support of the 

national reconnaissance effort. Also, the Program 

is complicated by the absence of a clear, authoritative 

delineation and understanding of pertinent roles and 

missions of the Department of Defense, the CIA, and 

the Director of CIA in his capacity as principal intelligence officer and coordinator of the total U. S. intelligence effort. In our opinion, action must be directed 

from the Presidential level in order to correct these 

difficulties, and to assure that this vital national asset 

,is preserved and strengthened. 

It was, on the whole, a dispassionate resume. 

The board did no~ equivocate i~ its recommendations, again describing the reconnaissance program as a national ettort which should 

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be so defined. The Secretary of Defense should be designated its 

executive, with authority to task the CIA and other agencies as 

essential. The NRO, said the board, should be set up as an operating • 

agency of the DOD· and headed by a director "reaponalble ao1ely to the 

Secretary ... for discharging the Secretary's responsibility .••• " The 

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budget should be consolidated and centrally administered. Full advantage should be taken of the resources and talents of each participating agency. In lieu of the monitoring and' review function provided 

in the 1963 agreement, prOvision should be made for the DNRO to 

report directly to the President's Special Assistant for National 

Security Affairs and to the FlAB itself. The board also recommended 

• continuance of the practice of having the Under Secretary of the Air 

Force serve as DNRO and added that members of the NRO 'Statf should 

"serve solely under the direction and supervision of the Director while 

so assigned." DOD should have "responsibility for the management, 

over-all systems engineering, procurement and operation of all satellite reconnaissance systems." The CORONA interagency Configuration 

Control Board and its requirement for unanimity of decision should be 

eliminated. Finally, the CIA should retain responsibility for the A-12 

95 and related manned aircraft projects. 

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The report was submitted to the White House on 2 May. Three 

weeks later, McGeorge Bundy "at the President's direction" asked tor 

comments and recommendations from both McNamara and McCone. 

Vance replied (for .McNamara) on 2 June* that DOD concurred in the 

FIAB findings and upon issuan~e of the Presidential directive urged by 

the board would set about implementing the individual recommendations. 96 

But there was no Presidential directive, no DOD implementing 

directive. Indeed, the FlAB recommendations had no perceptible impact. 

The only near-term event that might be ascribed to the influence of the 

FlAB recommendations was a 26 June instruction from McMillan to 

Greer and Ledford directing arrangements for Aerospace Corporation 

to replace Lockheed as systems engineering contractor for CORONA. 

The DNRO's action message specified that the decision had been coordinated with the Secretary of Defense and the Director of Central InteUi97 

gence. In a "for the record" memorandum covering the meeting at 

which the Aerospace decision was confirmed, McMillan carefully Doted 

two separate statements by McCone, at different times, agreem, to the 

*There is no indication in the NROfUes of a reply from CIA. In 

light of the earlier stand taken by McCone and Wheelon, however, 

it may be assumed that a reply was sent on and th~t it differed 

from Vance's. 

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propriety and the immediacy of the shift. At one point the CIA chief . had aCidly commented that it had been Charyk's idea to make Lockheed 

systems engineer for CORONA in the first place, and though that was 

not an entirely cor.rect observation its expression served to confirm 

McCone' 8 agreement to a change. 

But the fact that McCone seemed to have given up on one aspect 

of the CORONA management imbroglio did not imply that he had . 

accepted the gospels as interpreted by FlAB. Before leaving 'McCone 

that afternoon, Dr. McMillan was exposed to a new' assault on Greer's 

qualifications, a reminder of CIA's historic role in satellite reconnaissance, a charge that he (McMillan) was actually intent on cutting the 

Agency out of the satellite business (which, by that time, could well have 

been a very modest approximation of McMillan's desires) and a set of 

rather explicit comments on mistakes and errors McMillan had made in 

administering the NRO. The conversation, which included a good deal 

of uninhibited give and take, also touched on the relatio,nship between 

McMillan and Wheelon. McMillan maintained stoutly that if the Agency 

were to keep a satellite role under the NRO the unilateral actions. of'the 

past would have to be halted, that he could not accf,!pt responsibilUy tor 

activities in which he had neither control nor cognizance. McCone, as 

, U McMillan recalled it, 'made a brief acquiescent acknowledgment." 

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At that moment. there were several pressing matters over' Which 

McMillan had neither control nor cognizance. but which he could not 

ignore. Early in June. he and Fubini were an interested audience tor 

a Philco Corporation briefing during which it became apparent that the 

company was doing a substantial amount ot funded work on satellite 

reconnaissance. The CIA was paying the bill. although the Philco people 

would only say that they were "not permitted to reveal the source of funds ••• 

(or) to discuss the results ot these studies." McMillan immediately 

advised Vance of "indications that Dr. Wheelon is contracting for satellite 

system and sub-system studies with probabl~ explicit instructio~s to the 

contractors not to give the DNRO or DDR&E any information regarding 

the source of the request for the study." Separately. he sent to Mr. 

McCone his fifth request for information on CIA studies having to do 

with the National Reconnaissance Program. (CIA had replied to earlier 

queries in effect. that there was no reason for concern. that the' FlAB 

, 99 would sort out responsibilities soon enough. ) 

Although the disclosure of Philco's reconnaissance studies was 

disconcerting enough. it bad much less relevance to the larger issue 

of NRO authority than two other developments: the unearthing of a new 

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search system named FULCRUM and another change of face in 

the matter of CORONA management. On 25 June. McMillan disc':1ssed 

with General Carter his plans to discontinue CORONA systems .engineering contracts with Lockheed and to activate contracts with the Aeros~ac~ 

Corporation. This conversation preceded the directives to Greer and 

Ledford, but had no direct influence on them. Carter replied that 

McCone wanted no changes in contracts or procedure until the FlAB . 

affair had been settled, unless he (McCone) personally approved the .' 

changes. 

. These were' interesting qualifications: from McMillan's viewpoint, 

the FlAB report of 2 May and its subsequent handling had rather nicely 

capped the debate; the CIA obviously felt that a rebuttal of FlAB findings was called for and would influence White House acceptance of 

those findings. Second. McCone had personally assured McMillan 

during the 28 May meeting that he approved of the plan to shift systems 

engineering responsibility for CORONA from Lockheed to Aerospace. 

McMillan had surely weighed these considerations before .sending out 

instructions to Ledford and Greer. But nevertheless he again misjudged the probable response. On the day following dispatch of directive to Greer and Ledford, McCone expressed new reservations in the 

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CORONA matter and suggested that McMillan discuss ·it with Wbeelon 

and Carter. (Their positions were well established; it could not have 

been a welcome invitation.) McCone apparently advised Ledford, 

independently. not"to comply with the McMillan directive of 26 June. 

On 29 June. a Monday, McMillan talked at length with Carter and 

Wheelon. He left the meeting with an undiminished resolution to . carry . 

through the plans he had outlined so often. On Tuesday. 30 June, he 

so advised Carter. At the previous day's meeting. Carter had told 

McMillan ~t he and McCone would discuss the matter on his return 

to Washington the following Sunday or Monday. McMillan. ·concluding 

that he was being stalled once again and convinced that McCone would 

not hedge on his openly stated approval of the change. gave Carter on 

30 June a formal notice of intent to activate the Aerospace contract. 

McMillan's insistence on a written response that same day caused Carter 

·to telephone Vance and subsequently to issue his own statement of intent 

-- an announcement of CIA's determination to continue the Lockheed 

contract "on an indefinite basis ••• pending settlement of the matter.·"lOO 

In pasSing. Carter advised McMillan that his memorandum on the 

. proceedings of the 25 June meeting "does not conform to my understanding 

of our discussion ••• ,,101 He separately informed Vance that subsequent 

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to the last exchange in the involved Carter-McMillan correspondence 

. of 30 June, he had received a telephone call from Mr. McCone announcing the DCI's conclusions, "that the actions proposed by Dr. McMillan 

should not be taken at this time. ,,102 

Which put the cat fairly among the mice I McMillan having personally received assurances of McCone's agreement with both the concept 

and the application, had attempted to carry ~hrough the CORONA management reforms in one broad pass, overriding objections from Carter and 

Whee Ion. Perhaps McMillan knew that as yet McCone had not reversed 

himself. In any case, he certainly assumed that to be the case. 

Wheelon and Carter, then, were stalling. But the Under Secretary had 

not succeeded in his object, obtaining instead a new reminder of the 

distinctions between theoretical authority of the charter unc;ler which he 

was operating and the powers ·he could actually bring to bear on a given 

situation. McMillan had moved into a wlnerable position from which 

no graceful retreat was possible. 

There was new evidence of McMillan's vulnerability in the emergence 

of FULCRUM, a system and a concept that would shortly supplant CORONA 

management as the focus of the ever more acrimonious controversy over 

NRO prerogatives. 

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The origin of FULCRUM remained somewhat obs~ure., It first' 

appeared as an Itek study funded by CIA.in January. 1984, shortly: 

after Fubini had tentatively proposed a new se~rcb.system as a 

reward for CIA abjlndonment of its CORONA adamancy. By May, 

Itek and CIA (Wheelon's group) had constructe~ ,a system concept and 

a development proposal. In its original incarnation, FULC.RUM was to 

be a 5500-pound photographic payload boosted into orbit by a TITAN' U. 

Using a pair of rotating 80-inch (focal length) ?ameras, the system was 

intended to give a nadir ground resolution of two to four feet across a 

ground swath some 360 miles wide. With a capacity for 88,000 feet of 

7 -inch base film, the system would be theoretically capable of, photographing about 11 million square miles of earth on each ,mission. 103 

FULCR OM was unmistakably a new system embodying new techniques for optics, film transport, boost, and re.covery. McMillan and 

Fubini were first exposed to a formal briefing on the proposal late in 

June. * On 25 June, McMillan approved the expenditure of 

*It is possible that McMillan was informed of FULCRUM somewhat 

earlier but that because of CIA security controls was inhibited from 

any references to it in NRO correspondence. The probability that 

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to test an engineering model of the film transport mechanism, one of 

the most critical elements. He insisted, however, that the tests should 

be conducted under an NRO aegis and that the DNRO was to be kept 

fully advised of pr9gress and results. He also specified that the,tests 

were not to be construed as committing either NRO or CIA to a system 

development program. 

In the course of his 25 June meeting with Carter, McMillan had 

learned for the first time that the CIA was sponsoring a committ~e' 

(headed by Dr. Edwin Land) to review the FULCRUM concept. The 

Under Secretary had expressed interest in informing Dr. Land and 

the committee of other system concepts also being studied by NRO. 

Polaroid's chief called later that morning to tell McMillan that the 

committee was about to begin its meeting. Subsequently, General 

Carter advised McMillan that in respect to FULCRUM he had' "made 

no agreement of any kind, nor did I commit the Agency or the Director 

to any course of action." By these separate actions he served clear 

notice on the DNRO that the Agency did not consider FULCRUM to be 

within the purview of the NRO. 104 

Wheelon's plan for proceeding, as generally disclosed to 

McMillan on 26 June and confirmed in detail on 2 July, included full 

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CIA responsibility for both development and operatio~ of the system. 

McCone was then in the process of proposing to Vance that MCltfillan 

be directed to establish FULCRUM as an NRO program and to assign it 

to CIA for complete management. Such, at least, was McMillan's im-; 

pression, and over the previous seven months he had developed a fine 

ear for the nuances of CIA proposals. 

Wheelon initially proposed a six-month design effort, costing 

involving five competing contractors (Itek, GE, . , 

AVCO, Lockheed, and Space Technology Laboratories). At the onset, 

a project office of five to seven people, reporting directly to Dr. Wheelon, 

would be established in CIA with STL serving ,as "integration, assembl-y 

and checkout" contractor, much as had been done in the early ballistic 

missile program. (Wheelon said specifically that STL would not be 

responsible for systems engineering and technical direction, functions the 

CIA project office proposed to keep.) The proposal was precise, carefully detailed, seemingly quite accurate, technologically conservative, 

and -- on the whole -- exceptionally well constructed. 

In McMillan's opinion, by carrying through such actions the CIA 

would have established "an independent capability for full scale development of space systems, " even though the feasibility of the .ystem in 

question had yet to be determined. McMillan contended, on ,ubatantlal 

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grounds, that to establish such a capability the CIA would have to 

recruit the bulk of a technical establishment. The DNRO was wholly 

105 opposed to the scheme. 

In this he had, or believed he had, the support of Dr. Fubini. who 

pointed out that none of the many committees formed over the past two 

years had recommended a new search system although each had been 

exposed to CIA arguments favoring such a development. Fubinihad 

an additional reservation: it seemed to him that the great uncertainty' 

of the CIA proposal was the lack of any assurance that the "very high 

speed film· flow through the proposed FULCRUM system" was attainable. He also pointed out that proceeding toward a new broad-coveraa~ 

system was unwise so long as the reasons for variable performance in 

CORONA remained unknown. (The Purcell committee ·had suggested 

that neither optical nor mechanical features of CORONA could entirely 

explain this variability, and subsequent experience with the system 

. supported the contention that its resolution was, within wide limits, . 

very nearly unpredictable. )106 

McCone did not agree with Fubini. He was convinced of the need 

for a new search system and wanted to proceed immediately to devel~p;-

mente Indeed, at one point during the several meetings of late J~e. he 

obj,ected firmly to the commitment of funds to GAMBIT-CUBED, the 

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very high resolution surveillance system that had ev~lved from GAMBrr, 

urging that a search system had priority. 

McMillan attempted to head off any fait accompli by forcing 

McNamara's attention to the matter. With Fubini's support and Vance's 

approval, he submitted a McNamara-to-McCone memorandum for signa-

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ture, but in the end it was signed out by Vance. Th~ugh the main plfcy 

failed it did tend to put matters into better perspective. Vance temporized, 

suggesting that CIA be authorized to do on~7 those tests needed to establish .. 

FULCRUM feasibility while DNRO concurrently did comparative studies. 

By January 1965, he said, a determination of development desirability 

and a system selection should be possible. He added, "At that time we 

can discuss the assignment of responsibilities for development and 

i07 operational employment. " 

Wheelon either did not await DOD action or, more probably, had 

advance notice of Vance's intentions. On 9 July, before Vance's letter 

could reach McCone, he sent to McMillan an outline of "the various 

tasks for which we require immediate NRO funding." The total was 

of which the Agency planned to provide 

Wheelon's task description took in rather more than feasibility studieS, 

including also spacecraft, booster, and "as8embl)', integration, and 

checkout" contracts. 108 ~ubsequently -- by one day -- a detailed coat 

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sheet on the first year of FULCRUM arrived at the NBO; it included 

a figure in Fiscal ,1965 money additional to 

earlier identified as an immediate requirement. Of this total, only 

to go for camera development; among other lots, 

specified for initial investment in the modification of 

1 h o f °lOt 109 a aunc mg aCl 1 y. 

Several of the issues thus raised were taken up at a meeting of 

Vance, McCone, Fubini, and McMillan on 11 August. McCone was 

brought to accept "in principle" a (WIding level for 

GAMBIT-CUBED, and a set of Vance instructions on FULCRUM, issued 

a week earlier, was expanded to provide for some system design. study 

work, but under an NRO aegis. McCone again objected to consideration 

of the CORONA management switch so'long delayed, but eventually· 

agreed that McMillan would be allowed to' bring the Aerospace Corporation into the contract structure. * Along the way, Mr. McCone disclaimed 

*In mid-July, Col Ledford had urged Dr. Wheelon to appoint immediately 

a successor to the departing contracting officer at Lockheed's Advanced 

Projects CAP) Facility. Ledford's assessment was that it should be done 

at once to prevent Greer's staff from usurping the function. The. action 

was approved and carried through in less than 24 hours and on 5 August 

special enabling instructions were issued to the new incumbent. 

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any intention of creating a new CIA systems engineering competence. 110 . -

McCone's new concession of the need for unified CORONA management, this time before DOD witnesses, seemed to be unqualified and 

unalterable. That the CORONA problem had not been solved was probably appreciated by many of the NRO Staff: Greer, _who had wearied 

himself in the CORONA affair for nearly two years, certainly entertained 

reservations. As for FULCRUM, experience had demonstrated that 

unwritten and unsigned understandings on the scope of any CIA program 

tended to be interpreted variously and sometimes acted on with little 

advance notice. GAMBIT-CUBED was not so plainly a problem; the tact 

of its steady progress toward operational status deadened efforts to make 

it a quid pro quo for FULCRUM. 

As in previous years, most of the still mounting frustration and 

acrimony of NRO operations in the closing months of 1964 was channeled 

into squabbles over details. The details, petty in themselves. were 

pieces of the larger controversy. That McMillan was unable to direct 

high executive attention to the central issue was a consequence -of two 

loosely related circumstances. First, and most important. the suminer 

of 1964 was an election summer and though it was abundantly clear quite 

early in thE: campaign that the President would win a clear electoralvictory, he and the chief members of his cabinet desired a massiVe 

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landslide. McMillan was told on several occasions that once the election 

had been won, his problems would receive immediate attention; in the 

meantime, the campaign had first call. 

Secondly, the. only individual in DOD with the stature necess&:ry 

to face down McCone was Secretary McNamara -- who was invQlVed 

not merely in the election campaign but also in the steadily worsening 

situation in Vietnam. Vance, who carried the weight of DOD's authority 

in matters of concern to the NRO, quite correctly treated the controVersy 

as an issue to be settled objectively. Though generally sympathetic to 

McMillan's viewpoint and usually supporting it, Vance did not uncriticaUy 

accept the NRO position. There were some indications that apparentlY. 

he, and others, were beginning to think McMillan a bit too uncompromising 

in his stand. 

Within the CIA the emergence of FULCRUM as the long-sought 

successor to CORONA, the system that would put CIA squarely back 

in the system development business, deflected Wheelon's attention. 

He devoted much more of his time to forcing that system toward approval 

than to the older and more tired issues ot CORONA management and 

NRO prerogatives. * Ledford and Carter took over the protection at 

*It is interesting, though perhaps of no great Significance, that Wheelon 

continued to function as the "CIA monitor" for the NRO although he simul- . 

taneously acted as the program director for FULCRUM. Half seriously, 

members of the NRO Staff referred to FULCRUM as ''Wheelon's Bird, " 

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CORONA from the NRO. There was no appreciable 19s5 of energy 

with the transition; CIA I S privileges and proprietary rights were gua~d:ed 

as fiercely as before. But the defense was less skillful and less s:ubtle• 

pe~haps because Wheelon was not so interested. 

On the day following McCone's agreement to accept the Aerospace' 

•. 

Corporation as systems engineering contractor for CORONA. McMillan 

notified Greer and Ledford. (It was impossible not to think back to the 

previous occasion of such a message, in J~e. and its consequences.) . 

Five days later the CIA contracting officer at each of the affected plants 

was advised by his headquarters that existing contracts could be modi .. 

fied to permit "appropriate recognition" of Aerospace. 111 

Realistically, the possibility that such a concession would signifi .. 

cantly alter the nature of CORONA management arrangements was 

never large and it vanished entirely in a matter of weeks. The central 

. episode in this phase of the CORONA management controversy was 

perhaps the most preposterous. of all. It found an Air Force lieutenant 

colonel defying the Under Secretary of the Air Force, surely an unequal 

contest even though the colonel invoked the entire strength at the CIA at 

one point. The immediate contestants were Lieutenant Colonel H. V. 

Webb, CIA contracting officer at Lockheed-Sunnyvale, and McMillan; 

implying that he would not be content until he had equalled the achievement 

that ended in ''Bissell's Bird" .. - CORONA. 

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the real antagonists were the CIA and the NRO, and the issue was 

actual as against ephemeral authority in the CORONA program. 

Webb opened the affair early in September with injudiciously 

worded protests against va~ious technical decisions, invoking the 

spirit of the Configuration Control Board (CCB), although by' virtue of 

the August agreement the CCB was no longer a controlling authority 

in CORONA affairs. On the evidence, CIA preferred the CCB system 

to accepting technical direction from Aerospace (or Greer); yet more 

than a year earlier McCone had characterized the CCB as an improper 

body for technical management purposes. Whee lon, briefly turning his 

attention again to CORONA matters, issued a dictate in November that 

effectively restored the earlier chain of command; all concerned were 

advised that Webb would accept instructions only from J. J. Crowley, 

a CIA employee who was the newly appointed deputy for CORONA matters. 

Crowley's precise responsibilities still had not been decided, but that 

was apparently ~onsidered non-germain. 

Webb. convinced that his duty lay in re-establishing CORONA ar:" 

rangements of tne early period, stubbornly resisted changes brought on 

by the August Agreement, By November matters had so completely 

gone awry that Brigadier General J. T. Stewart, successor to Briladier 

General Martin as Director of the NRO Staff, . was led to complain about 

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Webb to Colonel Ledford. Stewart pointed out that W~bb was tampering with technical decisions that were none of his concern and that he 

was extraneously dabbling in contractual matters that were only nominally in his province. Webb. who apparently saw himself as a sort of 

Swiss Guard for CORONA, believed that NRO people were deliberately 

distorting the record of his "mature and conscientious effort" to lurther 

the CORONA program. Reacting to the Stewart protest, Webb observed, 

rather undiplomatic ally • that what was needed was a return to the days 

when "emotionally mature people: discuss the needs of the p~ogram in an 

atmosphere of mutual professional respect. "* 

Such semantic sniping at NRO goals and agents was not unprecedented 

and might have gone unpunished if Webb had not chosen to turn away from . . 

the CORONA facility the first lot of Aerospace Corporation people who 

appeared, credentials properly authenticated and under McMillan'S 

. instructions. to begin monitoring CORONA engineering. The incident, 

detailed in a set of memoranda that read like drafts for a scene from 

H. M. S. Pinafore. brought on a new exchange. so bitter :.that it ended with . 

Ledford's drawmg back. But then General Carter, prompted by Webb, 

*George Armstrong Custer was one of the last previous Ueutenant 

colonels to so challenge a general officer. . . 

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instructed CIA's CORONA people to ignore instructions from McMillan 

on procedural matters. Though the effect was to turn back theorganizational calendar once again, Webb's victory was a classic of Pyrrhicism: 

McMillan revoked his (Webb's) assigJlment to the CIA and had him trans" : 

ferred. * The CIA was infuriated; Carter personally protested to both 

McMillan and Vance. but without effect. Though the dispatch of Webb 

to other quarters was a niggling compensation for McMillan's. failure 

to obtain promised changes in the management procedures at LockheedSunnyvale. it was the only' one obtainable. 

There can be no question that Webb had substantially altered the 

mission control arrangements' that existed under his predeoessor.· The 

reasons for his doing so remain obscure. but it may be conjectured that 

in a situation requiring the exercise of considerable diplomacy in exercising the authority of two, agencies he chose to adopt -- unjudiciously 

and without reservation -- the most extreme viewpoints of one, the CIA. 

He challenged the authority of the UnderSecretary of the Air Force, but so 

clumsily that he lost an excellent chance of winning the main battle. The 

incident was particularly unfortunate in two respects. First, it increased 

the emotional strain between the NRO and CIA at a critical t~me. Second, 

*Webb retired from the Air Force and joined CIA as a civilian employee. 

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it caused Carter on 8 December to seek and obtain Vance's endorsement 

of a revocation of McMillan's 30 November directive. Webb's removal, 

which could scarcely be interpreted as other than a punitive action 

against a loyal member of the CORONA community -- one who was 

described as having the complete trust of his immedia~e superior, 

though there· was evidence that he had not been so highly regarded tlntU 

his embroilment with McMillan -- was mixed into the more impo.rtant 

. matter of McMillan's authority to control the CORONA program in 

accordance with existing understandings. The consequences were dis112 

astrous, all around. 

Although the entire affair had the flavor of an antique comic opera, 

it was indicative of a pattern of behavior that had developed by late 1984. 

Constantly frustrated in efforts to acquire effective management control 

of the CORONA program, harassed by minor quibbles that suddenly 

became matters referred to the attention of Vance and McCone, McMUlan 

and the NRO Staff grew increasingly testy. Their role was a difficult 

one: to progress. CIA had merely to obstruct, to delay, to refuse cooperation. No reliable enforcement mechanism existed, and McMillan's 

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tract amendment signature from the various contractors -- particularly 

Lockheed -- were turned aside by a succession of skillful diversionary 

actions. A security issue briefly became the focus of attention; it was 

artUlelal and ultlJnately obU.ed the Apncy to defend procedure. it had 

earlier (and independently) planned to discard as insufficient. When the 

security matter was more or less settled there appeared in its stead a 

set of objections based on facility custody. This also was artificial 

(McMillan won the legal argument and it availed him nothing in the end), 

but that made it no less effective in delaying compliance with the policy 

to which McCone had agreed in August. 

Bickering over the operational control problem was part of the 

general degeneration of the CIA/NRO interface during the winter of . 

1964-1965. Owing in part to Colonel Webb's combative instincts and 

in part to the ragged ends of the various ~greements and arrangeme~ts 

covering operational control of the CORONA vehicles, it proved impossible for General Greer to carry out McMillan's instructions. He 

recommended on 11 November that McMillan issue a clarifying dkective 

that would put the central responsibility for the "technical health" of 

payloads in his keeping. Greer, the immediate victim of the harrassment, was convinced that nothing less than a consolidation of authority 

would correct current difficulties, some of which had actually endaagered 

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mission success. McMillan on 30 November issued clarifying instructions, to take effect the following day. General Carter. then acting 

director of CIA, promptly objected. Failing any response from NRO. 

and angered by the Webb affair, he went to Vance with the issue. On 

8 December. Vance agreed that the procedures in effect before McMUlan's 

30 November directive should be employed "until such time as the entire 

matter of command, control. jurisdiction of payload and operational aspects of CORONA have been agreed by DCI and Sec Def." (These were 

Carter's words.) Ten days later, on 18 December, Carter persona~y 

issued instructions to his new West Coast representative (Webb having 

been dismissed two weeks earlier) to follow the former rules. 

On 14 December, McMillan made another trial of strength by per-. 

sonally observing operations from the Satellite Test Facility during ttle 

launching of CORONA 1015. Two days before the launching. Colonel 

L~dford authorized transmission of operational control messages to the 

STC. (The facts and issues were debatable, to say the least, but it " 

was generally conceded that the formal procedures ot pre-December 

did not require their being sent to the STC.) Carter subsequently complained that after McMillan's departure the practice was deliberately . 

continued. He protested, in pained phrases, the impropriety of using 

a precedent outside the basic agreement as a reason tor cbanfing control 

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procedures, McMillan's gambit had no lasting effect; like the dispatch 

of Aerospace people to Sunnyvale it could be described as a tactical 

victory if one ignored the strategic havoc it caused. The only lasting 

effect was further to irritate both parties. 

The systems engineering contract with Lockheed had been allowed 

to expire in July 1964, and after that time Lockheed had worked from 

its own funds in the confidence of eventually being reimbursed -- not 

an uncommon situation in dealing with covert programs. General Greer 

had taken all conceivable steps to insure that the appropriate arrangements were made, Efforts to reconfirm the supposed August decision 

had been generally futile. Early in March 1965, McMillan decided on 

another attempt to bring the entire matter of CORONA management to 

a head. He was particularly concerned because of the possibility of 

one of those events against which he had frequently cautioned -- a payload 

malfunction that would require instantaneous availability and integration 

of vehicle condition and payload condition information. But he was also 

convinced that a directive giving General Greer the authority to override 

the CIA manager's authority to decide who.received information on payload condition would "elicit a paranoid reactioni,,114 he had earlier explained to Vance that CIA had flatly refused his instructions to establish 

a route for communicating essential payload condition iDformation to 

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Greer or his representative. He had also attempted to induce Fubini 

to recommend the complete transfer of CORONA management respons,ibility to Greer. Failing that approach, in mid-March he sent General. 

Carter a copy of a proposed directive establishing Greer as the single 

CORONA-responsible officer for operations. It was a third· frontal 

assault on CORONA management arrangements. 

Carter's response took two forms: first, he told McMillan that 

the CIA CORONA manager would decide what information should be 

sent to General Greer during a mission; second, he remarked that 

while a transfer of authority to Greer might be advisable once McCone 

and Vance had agreed to that measure, neither seemed immediately 

115 disposed to take the step. At the end, Carter observed to Dr. 

McMillan, in lugubrious terms reminiscent of the correspondence of 

early 1964, that "incremental approaches to a comprehensive plan ••• 

are a poor substitute for the broader agreement we have been directed 

to establish as rapidly as poatsible:" In view ot the failure of agreement 

("the specific problem of Aerospace has been overrun by the larger . 

question of active CIA participation in the CORONA program"). General 

. Carter advised the DNRO that he had instructed his West Coast contracting 

officer to reinstate the earlier contract. making it retroactive. That 

action represented a total deteat for McMillan. As tor the proble~8 

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arising in CORONA administration, General Carter ~ommented that 

he believed neither McCone nor Vance favored a shift of complete 

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program responsibility to General Greer, so directives changing 

procedures towaJ.-d that goal were inappropriate. Inferrentially, 

Carter was explaining that the most McMillan could hope for was 

agreement on a limited transfer of contract administration responsibility and the eventual inclusion of Aerospace as a systems engineering contractor. 

In McMillanrs estimation -- and he was probably correct -- the 

Carter declamation of 16 March signaled CIArs renewed determi~tion 

to retain complete responsibility for those aspects of CORONA that 

"historically" had been in the AgencY.' s custody. Carterr s remarks 

had the tone of a proclamation that CIA would not recognize DNROrs 

authority to control any important aspect of CORONA. 116 

If in 1964 the Wheelon group in the CIA had intended only to fortify 

custody of CORONA and to create a capacity for developing a new " 

search system, both under the nominal aegis of the NR.O, it was apparent 

by April 1965 that a considerably more ambitious goal had been adopted. 

In a formal proposal that month, the Agency recommended" dissolution 

of the NRO and CIA assumption of total responsibility for "research, 

preliminc\.:"t design, system development, engineering and operational 

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. employment" in all programs assigned it. The NRO Satellite Opera- . tions Center would become a CIA facility; DOD agencies would partie ipate in operations only to the extent of supporting activities such'as 

launching, commanding, tracking, and recovering. In place of the 

DNRO, the Agency proposed the creation of a Director, National 

Reconnaissance, who would be responsible to an executive committee 

composed of the Director Of Central Intelligence and the ,Deputy Secretary of Defense. The "DNR" would have no management authoritjin 

programs assigned to the CIA but could be delegated management 

authority for DOD programs, would be permitted to review but not to 

modify budgets, and would report to the operating head of the CIA in' 

all matters of "policy, coordination or guidance." He would have no 

117 staff. 

Thus were the lines drawn. Mc~llan, as Director of the NRO. 

had initially set out to consolidate· functions and authorities assigned to 

NRO in formal agreements and binding· commitments., By what in retrospect seemed an unhappy choice of tactics he had been pushed into 

defending the continued existence of the organization he head~d.. And 

that in less than two years. Indeed his principal. defeats followed closely 

on one another between August 1964 and April 1965. He had begun by 

attempting maneuvers that would put into effect major and min~ aireeHandle Via 

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ments enlarging NRO's authorit,y ift CORONA affairs. By March 1965 

the CIA had given formal notice of its intention to withdraw from' any 

earlier compromise of its CORONA prerogatives, and in April the 

Agency openly a<wocated abandonment of the entire NRO concept and 

abolishment of the organization. 

The status of CIA-NRO relationships, at one time relatively clear, 

had been further confused during early 1965 by arguments over future 

programs. In July 1964 the USIB had formally called,for the development of both a search system and a surveillance system; FULCRUM 

was the Agency candidate for the former assignment, and it w~s 

generally assumed that GAMBIT-CUBED would fUI the latter. Greer's 

organization, and thus McMillan, favored a search system generally 

known as S-2. In many respects it was more advanced than FULCRUM 

even though somewhat less ambitious in objective. The FULCRUM 

versus S-2 issue was not new in 1965, but a confrontation between the 

two concepts seemed more probable. In February, with dramatic 

suddenness, ltek Corporation announced that it would under no conditions 

accept an extension of the FULCRUM project, preferring to forego 

entirely the prospect of further development work in observation satellite 

camera systems. Because the company had no other substantial source 

of incom~, the decision had a devastating impact. Itek'a reason, baldly 

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stated, was a thoroughgoing distaste for the sort of experience the . corporation had recently gone through with CIA. The announcement, 

" 

intensely embarrassing to Wheelon, who was charged with carrying 

out the FULCRUM program and who had been more intimately involved 

with Itek's conduct of FULCRUM than had any other CIA official, immediately heightened the tension of the CIA-NRO relationship. The 

Itek people had attempted to contact McCone immediately after making 

their decision on the FULCRUM project. but had been unsuccessful (he 

was out of town) and eventually had to settle for a quick exchange at a 

considerably lower level in the organization -- which certainly did 

nothing to improve CIA reception of the news. The NRO Staff received 

the news with undisguised glee. 

, Itek's reasoning was particularly pertinent to the ongoing CIA-NRO 

argument over functions. It appeared, for example, that Wheelon had 

specifically and repeatedly refused Itek requests that McMillan be 

briefed on the status of FULCRUM. McMillan's only written information on Ft;LCRUM at that time consisted Of copies of some charts dating 

from the previous August. (McMillan was particularly angered by the· 

disclosure of Wheelon's attitude, remarking that "the NRO could never 

function eff(;~tively as long as people of the character, and sharblg the 

attitudes, of dome of those who had been promotiDi FULCRUM were. in 

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a position to interfere with the conduct of the National Reconnaissanc~ 

Program. ") In essence, Itek's decision was specifically a result of 

CIA insistence on the use of a rotating opt~cal bar technique that the 

company distrusted. At one technical meeting Itek had questioned th~ 

requirement and had encountered a firm CIA denial that there had bee~: 

any Agency insistence on such an approach~ The denial was show~ to be 

a transparent fraud almost immediately. It appears to have been this· 

incident that triggered off the extreme Itek reaction. 

Itek had concluded that if the company were to undertake FULCRUM 

development it would be held responsible for the outcome; corporate 

officials did not feel they could· accept that .responsibility without having 

greater freedom for technical decisions than they bad been given during 

the study phase. Moreover, company officials resented having been 

asked for what they described as "an oath of loyalty" to the CIA concept -- :: . 

particularly since they inherently mistrusted the technology on wbich the .. 

concept was based. 118 

In many respects the Itek affair was a further misfortune aU around. 

It confirmed McMillan in his conviction that he. was dealing with contrived 

duplicity and it reinforced his already low opinion of Wheelon. It inhibited 

consideration of FULCRUM's real merits by introducing a new element of 

organizational rivalry and by substantially compromiSing CIA r s abllit1 to 

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develop FULCRUM or an equivalent -- but without les,sening the Agency's 

determination to do so. In the long term, ltek's action cast a shadow of 

doubt over CIA's ability to carry through any major new development 

program. 

On the other side, some at least in the CIA were convinced that Itek 

had been given some quid pro quo in recompense for what woUld in most 

circumstances be interpreted as a suicidal corporate action. ~ ltek 

had not been given some sort of NRO guarantee, went the argument~ the 

company would never have dared act so. Wheelon's statf appeared to 

have suspected that one or more members of McMillan's NRO Staff had 

conspiratorially encouraged or· even composed Itek's decision and the 

dramatic announcement of it. Such a scenario, while not entirely implausible given the intensity of personal feeling that existed at the time, 

was very unlikely. The chief argument against a pre-arranged denouncement was that McMillan had earlier told Itek he distrusted its technical 

approach and personally favored giving the search system development 

contract to Eastman Kodak -- a circumstance Itek freely acknowledged 

even while defending the basic validity of a FULCRUM freed from the 

~nrealistic 1200 scan requirement that necessitated reliance on an opt::'l~al 

bar technique. 

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If the NRO Staff found the incident hilariously enjoyable, CIA . reacted with combined anger, indignation, and embarrassment. (There 

is in NRO files no record of a CIA comment on the matter; presumably.' 

however, it was a-topic for discussion between Vance and McCone.) It 

raised false hopes in the NRO of an early solution to the organizational 

squabble then going on, but it appears to have left undiluted CIA's. 

determination to retain complete control over selection of a COaONA 

follow-on system. 

Almost coincident with the !tek affair, preceding it by a matter of 

days, Eugene Kiefer resigned both his CIA post and his appointment as 

Deputy Director of the National Reconnaissance Office. Kiefer's position 

had grown increasingly uncomfortable over the winter. With Wheelon's 

gradual emergence as the chief CIA authority in satellite reconnaissance 

matters, Kiefer discovered he had an increasingly limited access to 

McCone and Carter and influence that steadily declined. Kiefer had 

attempted to function as a senior member of the NRO rather than as a 

CIA delegate to the NRO. Instead of acting as a punitive instrument of 

the Agency in his dealings with McMillan, he persisted in attempting to 

carry out precisely the assignment given him when he became Deputy 

Director. These factors combined to weaken whatever effectiveness. he 

.)riginally ~ad. By late 1984 he was largely isolated. When Wheelon 

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replaced Carter as the official CIA program monitor and as McMillan 

became increasingly rigid in his reactions to events, matters grew 

worse. . As CIA reconnaissance people may have known, Kiefer had 

been influential in-the initial exclusion of Wheelon from any formal 

program appOintment. Because of Kiefer's CIA associations he was 

never fully trusted by the NRO Staff and he certainly was not able in 

fact to exert the influence his post nominally had. His close association with McMillan and his stubborn loyalty to the NRO charter ·cost him 

all influence with the CIA. Still, he had acted as a moderating iDflue~ce, 

and his departure removed one of the inhibitors to the destructive confrontation toward which the Agency and the NRO seemed to be moving. * 

In one instance McMillan's increasingly desperate attempts to 

secure the attention of either Vance or McNamara paid some dividends. 

for CORONA. The CORONA operations problem had grown more c:Hfficult 

by stages in the period between August 1964 and March 1965. PreAugust arrangements for insuring the interchange of payload-vehicle 

status information between Greer's people and the CIA payload operations 

people had been abandoned and no adequate substitute provided. Changt:s 

ci. this nature had begun at Webb's instigati~n and subsequent to Webb's ° 

departure the earlier arrangements had not been restored. Feelings had 

*Kiefer resigned on 18 February 1965; the Itek affair came to a bead on 

'~4 February. 

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run high in the Webb affair, and memories were long • 

. From December 1964 through early March 1965 the CIA represen-. 

tative at the covert CORONA facility near Sunnyvale had explicitly re- ~ 

fused to release to Greer's project people any detailed information on 

the continuing status of CORONA payloads, offering only "a summary 

judgment" on "whether the payload is in good health or not." In McMillan's 

view -- and Greer's -- that denial forced the CORONA project officer 

needed to perform his dutie's adequately. Moreover, because the CIA 

had discontinued use of teletype facilities at the Sunnyvale Satellite Test 

Center and refused to relay payload commands by a "communication of 

record, " McMillan found himself unable to verify the instructions given 

to vehicle controllers. He considered the use of a commercial telephone 

to be a thoroughly unsatisfactory substitute. 

The issue was not quite as straightforward as McMillan saw it, 

nor was his outlook entirely dispassionate. He wanted somewhat more 

than a restoration of the pre-Webb arrangement, hoping to establish an 

effective precedent for the introduction of Aerospace Corporation personnel. 

into the orbital performance evaluation process. On the other. hand, the· 

Agency position was precariously biased because the changes introduced 

by Webb and continued in the atmosphere of° extreme antagonism that 

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followed Webb's dismissal did threaten the general well-being of the 

vehicle-payload combination. That much had been demonstrated during 

a particularly troublesome flight in February. On the whole, McMillan 

had much the better of the case. 

Appreciating his unusual advantage and increasingly disturbed at 

what he took to be unreasonable stubbornness on the part of the CIA, 

McMillan on 5 March personally carried a ~itten statement of the 

situation to Vance. 119 The Deputy Secretary talked the matter over with 

Carter and subsequently with McCone, eventually securing their agreement that arrangements at SUnnyvale would be restored essentially to 

the pre-Webb basis. Vance passed that assurance to McMillan and --

probably because McMillan commented that he had received similar 

assurances in the past without having seen them honored in, practice --

told McMillan to call to his personal attention any substantial departure 

from the arrangement thus worked out. 

Roughly twenty-four hours before the next scheduled launching~ 

McMillan received a copy of the instructions issued to the CIA group at 

Sunnyvale. Although General.Carter had indeed ordered a CIA representative to remain in the Satellite Test Center with Greer's people 

during "all critical phases of the orbital operation of CORONA 1018, " 

he had also ins-~:'ucted the representative to "discuss" details of pa1.1oad 

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health with Greer's people rather than, as McMillan felt essential, to 

make available the principal elements of payload performance data. 

McMillan's indignant protest to Vance cited not only Carter's instructions but also the gist of a conversation between Colonel Paul 

Heran (Greer's CORONA project manager) and the deSignated CIA . 

representative to the STC. The representative had said, in effect, that 

he. interpreted Carter's instructions Q"S confirming earlier arrangements; 

that no change from the previous mission was contemplated. 

As in December, McMillan was on the West Coast for the mission. 

After unsuccessfully attempting to reach General Carter by telephone, 

he lost all patience and directed that the launching be postponed one day. 

No measure so drastic had previously been attempted, but in McMillan's 

view no provocation so extreme had previously been offeredl H~ f~llowed 

up the launching suspension by sending to Vance a ~opy of a directive --

in draft -- that ordered Colonel Ledford to personally attend the launching 

and control operation and to insure that appropriate payload information 

was passed to Heran. McMillan proposed issuing that directive unless 

notified that Ledford had suitably modified instructions given to the . CIA 

people at Sunnyvale. 

At that point Vance again intervened. He contacted General Carter 

and reaffirmed his previous instructions about restoring the pre-August 

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arrangements. Carter demurred, remarking that representatives of 

Aerospace Corporation would have access to the data, which had not 

been the case before August 1964. and Vance conceded the point. 

(McMillan subsequently dropped that part of his instructions which 

called for passing payload data to General Greer or "such representatives as he shall designate. ") But in any event, both the requisite 

communications and an exchange of information were resumed during 

the CORONA 1018 mission. With the proviso that Aerospace people ' 

would not have access to it" the information continued to flow thereaftez:; 

it was, however, less comprehensive than had been th'e case before 

August 1964, and there was no prospect of further improvement • 

. McMillan had won a minor point but he had been forced to surrender 

on another major issue: Aerospace Corporation access to orbital data. 

And in order to bring Carter around he had been obliged to involve Vance 

both directly and repeatedly. The disadvantages may have come home to 

him in retrospect, for in a note to Vance, following the completion of 

arrangements at the STC, he remarked that he would "personally try to 

minimize any further perturbations in NRO activities, pending a successful conclusion to your negotiations on reorganization. ,,120 

McMillan had succeeded in restoring some of the essential communications damaged by the Webb episode of the previous tall, but it had coat 

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him a significant concession on the status of the Aerospace Corporation· . . 

contract and an equally significant concession that little more could be 

done until the NRO had been reorganized. Quite probably McMillan had 

learned that Vance disliked being called on to settle squabbles at·the 

"point of order" level. Finally, the principle McMilla~ prized had not 

been established. The final goal of reinforced NRO authority in CORONA 

affairs seemed no nearer. 

Increasingly irritated by the difficulties he was' encountering:,in his 

effort to manage the NRO, and with fresh memories both of his most 

recent clash and its pseudo-satisfactory outcome, Dr. McMillan chose 

the occasion of a 2 April presentation to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (FlAB) to make a broad statement of the case for 

a strengthened NRO. He led into his subject with a stab at the continued 

absence of a clear decision on a new search system and opened a resume 

of the management status of the NRO with the remark that "de facto, NRO 

does not exist. "* 

McMillan protested that the existence of the Executive Committee --

McMillan, McCone, Vance, and Fubini (Wheelon was not listedl) '-- had 

the effect of elevating almost all NRO matters to the Vance-McCone level 

*This and subsequent quotations are taken from the notes Dr. McMillan 

used in his statement. He may have changed his wording during delivery, 

but the sentiments were not altered; indeed, they reappear in later "essays" 

wcwarded to Deputy Secretary Vance. 

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and that Vance had been dragged into "very minor matters" as a con- . sequence. More important, the principals were busy with other ,matters, 

meetings were infrequent, and dec~sions tended to be delayed •. "Worst 

of all, " McMillan -added, "many of the agreements arrived at in the " 

ExCom have not been implemented. " 

It was clear, McMillan continued, that the CIA found direct management control by an "outsider" -- "in particular by one who in their eyes 

is colored AF blue" -- to be "galling and hard to accept." The CIA 

people he had to work with, the Under Secretary said, "have a history 

of 'obstructing or defying my control." "This," he urged, "lends confirmation to charges of bias on my part." As examples he cited chan~s 

within Program B of which he had never been officially informed and ilistructions to Colonel Ledford not to communicate with the DNRO. 

The core of the problem, McMillan believed, was satellite reconnaissance. He briefly went over the events of the previous week's mission to 

support that contention, observing that although the complement of CIA 

people involved in satellite reconnaissance had increased from about 5 

to about 25 in the past two years, "still there is no one to exercise overall technical responsibility for the CORONA system. "In passing he remarked on the "many active efforts to obstruct the exercise of such 

responsibility. " 

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In words that had an understandable cast of despondency, McMillan 

summed up by commenting on the current re-examination of the NRO. 

He had two particular points:121 

1. I believe in a strong NRO. I do not believe that 

either the CIA or the military are capable of accepting 

effectively an autonomous responsibility. Both need the' . 

discipline of a central problem-oriented management. 

2. If you choose a "coordinator" or "tasking" role 

for the DNRO, don't ask,him to be responsible for the 

budget. Unless the situation that now prevails is changed 

sharply, the DNRO cannot responsibly spend the taxpayers' money without firm management controls over 

the way it is spent. 

At some point early in April. possibly in response to the FlAB 

statement, Mr. McCone proposed that the Satellite Operations Center 

be removed from the custody of the NRO and given to the CIA. He had 

in mind a physical as well as an organizational transfer. That event 

prompted McMillan to a long and rather despairing letter to Vance, 

eliding with: 122 

I am convinced that if the. Op Center is removed from the 

NRO, the NRO will be destroyed and the DOD will experience interminable difficulties in getting its requirements recognized. I am further convinced that this fundamental fact is well understood by others and that final 

irrevocable destruction of the' NRO is the primary int~nt 

behind the proposal to separate the Op Center. 

Yet McMillan seemed to recover quickly from any despondency 

arising fron~ the McCone proposal, perhaps cheered by the news that 

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McCone was leaving the CIA. (Word of the impending shift reached 

the NRO on 12 April; McCone rema~ned. officially. until 28 April. ) 

On 22 April McMillan formally presented and recommended early 

adoption of a propDsed directive composed by Dr. Fubini for the signature of the President. (In all likelihood. the Fubini proposal had 

been stimulated by a memorandum from General Stewart urging that 

Vance be asked to sign a letter directing early resolution of the . 

CORONA question along the lines favored by the NRO Staff.) Fubini's 

directive would have resolVed all outstanding issues by enforcing the 

. lines of agreement urged by FIAB a year earlier (2 May 1964) -- the 

recommendation from which so much had been expected and from. 

which nothing had come. The Fubini proposal would have limited the 

CIA's influence to the maintenance of a research and development group 

responsive to the Director. NRO. It went somewhat beyond the words 

of the FlAB recommendations of May 1964, but, in McMillan's opinion 

(and presumably in Fubini's), did not violate their spirit. 12~ 

The CIA proposal to abolish the NRO was dated four days after the 

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Fubini proposal and two days before the official transfer of CIA authority 

from McCone to Vice Admiral William F. Raborn (Retired), once head of 

the Polaris project. Although the CIA plan may have been hurried to 

completion by the imminence of McCone's departure, there .re some 

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indications that Raborn was aware of it and that McMillan may not . ' 

have wished to acknowledge that circumstance. (General Carter left 

simultaneously, being succeeded by Richard Helms, who had been 

Mr. Bissell's depQty during the Dulles-Bissell era.) The timing prob-

, . 

ably was not critical, however; so much had happened to stir up new 

controversy since the STC confrontation of late March that a direct 

cla~h wa's' almost certainly inescapable. 

Both Raborn and Helms were unknown quantities. McMillan contacted Raborn almost immediately after the Admiral's assumption of 

authority, proposing an early resolution of the disagreement over what 

search system to develop., At about the same time Raborn accepted 

without ,quibble a proposal from Vance that FULCRUM funding be cut 

back from a level month to preparatory 

to "wind [ing] the m~tter up by May 30. ,,124 

Separately, McMillan approached Raborn on a personal basis ,with 

a plea for careful consideration of specific items included in the CIA 

estimate of program needs in fiscal 1966. The '·cMillan budget propo~al provided substantially less than the CIA had asked in several 

areas, notably OXCART, IDEALIST. 

Interestingly, McMillan couched his request to Raborn in terms of a 

. ' ~125 

personal note to be handled as such until they had discussed. its content. 

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Any expectation that a direct approach to Raborn might sidestep 

the problems earlier encountered in dealing with Wheelon and McCone. 

was sadly misplaced. Whether Raborn discussed the budget matter 

with McMillan bef.ore 2 June is uncertain (although the absence of aD)' 

McMillan record of such a discussion would seem good evidence on 

that point); in any event, Raborn contacted Vance and in the course of 

a conversation concerning FULCRUM remarked on his understanding 

that no action on a search system could be taken "until final reorgam.-

zation of the NRO." Raborn had earlier discussed ~he issue with 

Dr. Donald F. Hornig, the President's Science Advisor, who had suggested that the issue be submitted lor resolution to a special reconnaissance panel of the President's Science Advisory Committee. (The panel 

was headed by Dr. Land.) 

A new attempt by McMillan to resolve the long-delayed issue of the 

Aerospace Corporation role in the Lockheed-CORONA contract was 

Similarly unsuccessful. On 14 June, McMillan briefed Raborn on the . 

status of the contracts, identified the objections to their earlier formalization, and commented that such issues had all been resolved to the 

satisfaction of the Agency. Again attempting to force the issue, McMi~ 

observed that he intended to authorize Signature ot a revised Lockheed 

contract in the immediate future. Raborn, after first discussiDa the . 

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matter with Wheelon, telephoned General Stewart and asked that no 

action be taken on the contracts pending further conversations between 

Raborn and Vance. Simultaneously, on 17. June, Wheelon told Lockh.eedSunnyvale that Raborn did not want Lockheed to sign. 126 The episode . 

was In most respects a repetition of events of the previous August. 4.1 

it achieved was to indicate that Wheelon had lost no influence with .McCone's 

departure and to suggest that McMillan lacked the strength to force a . 

favorable outcome on a major policy clash with the CIA. And, of course, 

the Lockheed contract did not change. 

The events of that spring were remarkable in several respects. Most 

obvious in retrospect, though perhaps not ~een so clearly at the time, : 

was a marked shift in 1he tactics Dr. McMillan used in his dealings with 

the CIA. Until late 1964, Dr. McMillan had generally avoided direct 

confrontations on other than extremely crucial policy issues. Starting. 

late in 1964. and typified by the events of that December. he began taking . 

a firmer stance and he began arguing smaller issues more earnestly. ' 

There is no single or simple explanation for a change of tactics that 

was to end, ultimately, in the departure of most of the principals. McCone' 

and Carter went first, but Wheelon stayed on. and in the early summer --

before 10 July -- the NRO Staff learned that Dr. McMillan also was leaving. 

Eugene Kiefer had resigned the preceding February, spending nearly a 

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year with the RAND Corporation before rejoining his former chief, 

Richard Bissell, at United Aircraft. Kiefer had been a moderating 

influence on McMillan, and so had General John Martin, who in 

August 1964 had left the staff chief's post in the NRO to succeed General " 

Greer in the West Coast project office assignment. Brigadier General 

James Stewart, who succeeded Martin in the staff post, was appreciably 

less patient with the evasiveness of Agency policy and encouraged 

Dr, McMillan to fight out the small issues as well as the large, But 

that policy tended to cause relatively minor differences to become 

questions of prestige on which neither the NRO nor the CIA could surrender without losing much more than whatever points were immediately 

at issue. Kiefer, who had by late 1964 effectively lost aU influence with 

his associates in the CIA, felt by early 1965 that he was no longer able 

to exercise a moderating effect on the contacts between the CIA an~ 

Dr. McMillan. His resignation followed, and no successor was appointed. 

With his departure, the confrontations between McMillan and Carter, not 

the principal Agency spokesman in NRO matters, became both more 

frequent and more acrimonious. Neither side was wilUng to temper its 

stand on issues once joined, so more and more frequently they had to 

be resolveci ,,-y appeal to Vance. And Vance, as was particularlJ apparent 

in the aftermath of the April argument about controlling CORONA operationa, 

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did not appreciate being called upon to settle NRO affairs on a day-by-day 

basis. 

The consequences of the several confrontations of the spring of 

1965 were varied,_ but from the NRO yiewpoint they were almost universally unfavorable. First, and perhaps most important, no progress 

at all was made in the effort to resolve the matter of systems engineering 

responsibility for CORONA. The total lack of any progress represented 

a substantial setback for McMillan. Second, the Land Reconnaissance 

Panel (part of the President's Science Advisory Commi~tee) merely reaffirmed the findings of earlier panels respecting a follow-on search 

system: study should continue; but there was no special reason tor 

selecting one among the several system prospects for immediate development. The NRO had hoped for selection of some system other than 

that advocated by Wheelon's group, a development that would tend to 

choke off the CIA's involvement in the creation of new satellite recolmaissance systems. There the evidence of CIA obstructionism seemed most 

evident, and there the chances for a notable success seemed brightest. 

Third, and tremendously important in its own right, was the issuance of 

an "agreement" :or reorganizing the National Reconnaissance Program. 

Except in feeding policy suggestions to Dr. Fubini earlier that spring, 

the NRO Staff had no important role in the generation of what w~.,. for 

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practical purposes, a new NRO charter. 

And fourth was Dr. McMillan's resignation. 

The reorganization agreement was largely written in the period 

between the annouJlcement of Dr. McMillan's resignation (which most 

of the NRO Staff learned about through the Sunday papers) and the time. 

nearly 10 weeks later. of his actual departure. Deputy Secretary of 

Defense Cyrus Vance apparently relied on the advice ot Dr. Eugene 

Fubini in accepting the agreement. Indeed, Fubini may have been' Us 

principal author; it certainly incorporated several of the notions he had 

discussed with various members of the NRO Staft in preceding weeks. 

Final arrangements were worked out by Vance and Raborn, each relying 

on his relatively small personal staff for help in matters of detail. * 

In the aftermath of th.e announcement that he was leaving. but betore 

the report of the Land Panel had been completed, McMillan made one· 

last effort to bring off a tait accompli maneuver against Wheelon. In 

mid-July he sent to Vance and Raborn a summary stat:us report in which 

he asked not for support of his actions but for a deferred review ot 

progress. Surveillance system evaluation was somewhat confu~d in 

". 

*01 the five pre-1966 charters and proposed charters in which NRO 

functions were defined, that of August 1965 is the only one that lett no 

residue of draft, proposal, or comment in NRO tiles. Apart trom some 

contributions to papers Dr. Fubini was working on in April and May. the 

NRO Staff had no inputs at all. While perhaps too much should not be 

made of those facts, they are interesting enough to require mention. 

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that Itek, Perkin-Elmer and Eastman Kodak were all performing hard- . ware studies, although a rather substantial NRO commitment to. EK had 

been made and the CIA commitments to Itek and Perkin Elmer were 

relatively large ~ . (EK was stretched to the limits of ita capacity by 

GAMBIT, GAMBIT-CUBED, a NASA lunar camera .project being monitored by Greer's office. and studies associated with the impending decision on MOL -- the Manned Orbiting Laboratory). McMillan reported 

to Vance that the original Eastman S-2 system still appeared to be the 

most promising approach. adding that he proposed to select either Itek 

or Perkin-Elmer to develop an alternate camera configuration. In the 

spacecraft area, General Electric's proposal had the advantage of 

Lockheed's and a TITAN IIlX seemed to be best suited as the booster. 

McMillan proposed using a four-capsule re -entry vehicle configuration 

initially, with the possibility of shifting to sixteen small re-entry 

vehicles in some future modification. 127 

The reaction from Raborn was strikingly like the reactions Of' 

McCone, Carter, and Wheelon to comparable proposals on similar 

occasions in the past. First, he politely protested McMillan's apparent 

intention of unilaterally selecting a specific search system for development; second, he invoked the still-pending Land Panel report as a 

reason for not proceeding precipitately; and, finally, he made the none'-

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too-diplomatic point that only he and Vance could make the "final 

judgement on any specific search and surveillance system." Vance 

had earlier cautioned McMillan to proceed most cautiously in making 

program commitments to Eastman, but McMillan, who was convinced 

that the Eastman system was by far the best prospect, had continued to 

invest in the Eastman approach. The Land Panel proposed no solution, 

of course, merely urging further study. 128 Raborn's suggestion that 

McMillan had exceeded the authority entrusted to him seems to have -

had some foundation. The 'maneuver, not 'very skillful in its essentials. -.;;l 

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ended as catastrophically as its predecessors. I 

In late June Dr. McMillan-despairingly summed up the now massiVe --

problem of NRO-CIA relationships both as he saw it and as it appeared 

to others. In a comment on a paper written by an outsider who had 

looked into the problem of satellite reconnaissance, he noted:129 

To caricature. .. Ohe] findings somewhat, they paint the situation 

as one of intense competition between USAF and CIA, in which 

there is no real mechanism for resolution. Recommendations include "improved communications" and __ technical reviews byoutside experts. It seems to me, rather, that the executive agent 

(Secretary of Defense] should be urged to exert his authority. 

not to abdicate it, or to acquiesce in its rejection. 

The purpose of the NRO reorganization -carried through in the late -

summer of 1965 was precisely that desired by Dr. McMillan -- to 

provide a mechanism for resolving increaSingly intense competition 

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between the CIA and the NRO. The basic difficulty was readily defined: 

although the 1963 charter made the Secretary of Defense the executive: . 

agent for reconnaissance and the Secretary had formally delegated his 

authority to the Director, ~ational Reconnaissance Office, the DNRO 

was unable in practice to act decisively on key issues. In practice, 

Dr. Fubini had been exercising much of the authority nominally assigned 

to the DNRO, while Mr. Vance reviewed or approved .... or even made .. -

many of the major program decisions. Dr. McMillan's impotence was 

particularly apparent in matters affecting new program proposals and 

in problems involving NRO"CIA prerogatives. 

From the facts a variety of inferences may be drawn. First, Dr. 

McMillan had excellent reason to be apprehensive that the authority of 

the DNRO would be diluted .. - perhaps very substantially -- by a reorganization arranged by Fubini, Vance, and Raborn. He obviously 

was aware of the reorganization discussions, but there is no indication 

that he participated in them. .Second, McMillan had felt obliged to call 

on Vance for support more and more frequently during the spring and· 

summer of 1965. His approaches to Raborn were largely ignored; 

Raborn chose. w discuss issues with Vance rather than with McMillan, . 

and Raborn's attitude toward the NRO was not much different from that 

of McCone. Third, McMillan had been unsuccessful in converting .Vance 

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to his viewpoint (as witness his pseudo-success in the matter of 

CORONA payload condition data), and by engaging the Deputy Secretary 

of Defense in what had the appearance of rather minor squabbling over 

administrative de~ails made Vance impatient. Whether McMillan's 

course was chosen with the advice and consent of Fubini is uncertain, 

but there is evidence that he believed Fubini supported the classic. NRO 

outlook. Certainly the Fubini "draft Presidential directive" of iate 

April seemed to reflect McMillan's views •. But Fubini also figured 

prominently in the negotiations that led to the 11 August 1965 reorganization paper, which suggests that he was appreciably more willing to 

see merit in the CIA viewpoint ·than McMillan understood. McMillan 

seems to have put too much trust in Fubini's influence,. while Fubi~ 

wanted to appear a conciliator rather than an NRO extremist. Wh~er 

McMillan's resignation was deemed essential to reconciliation of CIANRO differences, was prompted by his opposition to the terms of the 

reorganization. or even was a quid pro quo for CIA concessions remains uncertain, but the .connection between the reorganization and the 

reSignation is most difficult to overlook. 

The agreement that Vance and Raborn approved on 11 August' 1965 

put a new face on the National Reconnaissance Office. It substantially 

reduced the authority of the Dire.ctor, transferring many .of the right. 

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and responsibilities of that post to a special Executive Committee . . , 

(ExCom) of three voting and one non-voting members: the Deputy, 

Secretary of Defense, the Director of Central Inte~ligence, the 

Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology. and 

(non-voting) the Director, National Reconnaissance Office. (In the 

event of an ExCom impasse, the Secretary of Defense was to sit with 

the Committee and make the final decision). 

Somewhat strangely, the functions alloca~ed to the National 

Reconnaissance Program were in many respects more clearly defined, 

and more logically, than those assigned in the earlier and more forceful 

charter of 1963. It was not clear, however, whether the National Reconnaissance Office had sufficient authority to exercise those functions; the 

ExCom was in most respects the supreme authority. Howeve'r; the 

DNRO was pro-vided with a seat on the ExCom (and also on the United 

States Intelligence Board when matters of concern to the NRP were on 

the agenda), and thus acquired a more direct voice in affairs than had 

been the case with a de facto ExCom composed of Vance, Fubini, McCone, 

and Wheelon. Whether "a voice" was important remained to be determined. 

Certain other differences between the 1963 and the 1985 agreementa 

had partic..t.1Ci.,L· significance. The Director of CentrallDtelligence, for 

example, had acquired spedfic authority to review and approve the NRP 

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budget each year and the Deputy Director, NRO, was to "act for and 

exercise the powers of the Director, NRO during his absence or disability." Another important proviso was that "the NRO staff will report to the DNRO and DDNRO and will maintain no allegiance to the 

originating agency or Department." The DNROts authority to modify 

or alter program assignments was conditioned by a "subject to review 

by the Executive Committee" clause, as was his budgetary responsibility. 130 

As had his predecessor, Dr. McMillan left a memoir with" Secretary 

McNamara when he departed. It was, in the main, a resume of accomp1ishment.· But in its course he included some comments on the new 

agreement and on the organization it generated. McMillan thought the 

document was "intended to palliate some of the frictions which were" 

charged to the prior agreement." He believed "it has weakened considerably the structure provided by that prior agreement ..• " The dangerous 

ambiguities, he felt, lay in the definition of the authorities of the Executive 

Committee and the Secretary of Defense, in omitting references to the 

reconnaissance operation area where DNRO functions were defined, and 

in neglecting to provide a "focus of responsibilities for actions undertaken 

under the NRP." McMillan felt that the shortcomings could be overcon:ae " 

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naissance program might well require the tntervention of the Secretary . ' 

, ' 131 

and Deputy Secretary of Defense. 

Even before Dr. McMillan's formal retirement, Dr. Alexander H, 

Flax. A •• i.tant Secretary of the Air Force for R.D, w •• named to be 

his successor as Director, National Reconnaissance Office. The problems that had so troubled McMillan remained also; on the first day of 

his official occupancy of the post, Dr. Flax was confronted by an 

announcement that the CIA had discontinued the Program B structure 

characteristic. of the earlier NRO and had substituted a complex 

pyramidal organization under Dr. Wheelon. 132 But there were early 

indications that the response might be different: Flax replied to the 

CIA reorganization notice with the comment that necessary guidelines 

and working relationships could certainly be worked out. l;i3, 

In October 1965, when Dr. Flax became Director of the NRO. the 

future of the organization was very uncertain. Specifically, how 

effectively the DNRO could operate under its new charter remained to 

be determined. 

Notwithstanding the apparent disabilities incurred under the August 

1965 arrangement of functions, Flax began his DNRO tenure with some 

significant advantages. Possibly most important. he had no background 

of acrimony to overcome in his dealings with the CIA; the personal 

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differences so marked in the McMillan-Wheelon relationship were 

absent. But he would have to cope with the substantial backlog ot 

resentment built up on both sides during the extended period of tension 

between McMillan and Wheelon. And the SUbstantive problems of the 

previous regime remained. Chief among these were a decision on a 

new search system, the CORONA management contusion, and differences 

over the composition of future programs. The great uncertainty was how 

·the newly constructed executive arrangement would work in practice; 

Dr. McMillan's exceptions and questions were well taken, although 

possibly more pertinent to the situation in which he had found him~elt 

than that which Flax faced. 

In 1960 Dr. Charyk had set for h~mself the task of accumulating the 

resources and authorities needed to support a truly national reconnaissance effort. He had left the task unfinished, although at the time of 

his departure what remained seemed to be only to consolidate assigned 

resources and to implement signed agreements. 

Two unanticipated developments interfered with an. easy resource 

consolidation: CORONA did not phase out, and the CIA claimed rights 

to development oi the next generation search system. In the matter ot 

implementing agreements there were similar difficulties, particularly 

as they affected the extension of DNRO authority over the "CIA sector" 

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of the national reconnaissance activity. And in attempting to secure

control of resources and authorities Dr. McMillan was repeatedly

outmaneuvered. At the close of Dr. McMillan's tenure the original

task still was incomplete and there was reason to wonder whether the

NRO would be continued in anything like the form Charyk had envisaged.

Dr. Flax therefore was confronted not only by the tasks Charyk

had left undone, but also by the considerable difficulties created by

McMillan's disastrously unsuccessful efforts to carry through Charyk's

plan. Nevertheless Flax had one substantial advantage his predecessor

had lacked: although it was far from welcome, and although prepared

without the apparent knowledge or participation of any of the NRO Staff,

a new charter certifying to the permanence of the NRO had been drawn,

approved, and issued. Validation of the NRO's mission occurred in the

face of a formal CIA recommendation that the organization be reduced to

the status of a coordinating agency with no executive authority. Given

that the NRO at the time of McMillan's departure was probably less

influential than at any time since its creation, much that was encouraging

could be found in the reaffirmation of DOD determination to preserve,

indeed to strengthen the principle of a National Reconnaissance Office and

a National Reconnaissance Program.

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Bibliography 

Chapter V 

66. MFR, Maj Oen R. E. Greer DirlSP, (pgm A) 15 Aug 63, Subj: 

67. 

Plans for Ultra High Resolution Satellite Reconnaissance, in 

Greer files. 

2103, Dir/Program B(Ledford) to DNRO, cy to 

(Greer), 23 Aug 63, in NRO Staff files. 

68. MFR, Roswell Gilpatric, D/SOD, 22 Aug 63, Subj: Mr. McCone's 

Concerns Regarding NRO, in NRO Staff files; interview, B/Gen 

J. L.Martin, DirlSP, by R. L. Perry, 25 Jan 66. 

69. MFR, R. Gilpatric D/sOD 5 Sep 63, Subj: Discussion with Mr. 

McCone Regarding NRO; Memo B/Gen J. L. Martin, Dir/NRO 

Staff to E. Fubini, DDR&E, 28 Aug 63, no subj, in NRO Staff 

files. 

70. MFR, B. McMillan, DNRO, 11 Sep 63, SUbj: Meeting with Mr. 

McCone on 11 Sep 63, in NRO Staff files. 

71. Memo J. C. McCone, DCI to McG. Bundy, White House, 10 Sep 63, "'i 

no subj: NRO Staff files. 

. 72. MFR McMillan, 11 Sep 63; MFR, Gilpatric, 5 Sep 63 and 22 Aug 63; . 

both in NRO Staff files. 

73. The' McMillan Memos for Record, beginning with 11 Sep 63 are in 

the NRO Staff files . 

", 

. " .. Memo, B. McMillan, DNRO to DCIA, 11 Sep 63, Subj: .Implementation 

of the Purcell Panel Reco.nmendations, in NRO Staff files. 

M mo, R. Gilpatric to FlAB, 13 Sep 63, Subj: DOD Response to 

6, "/63 Memo from White House re FlAB Recommendations Concerning NRO, in NRO Staff files. 

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76. "seen in draft"), 31 Oct 63, Subj: Brief 

Gen Greer at Aerospace, '21 Oct 63, cy 

in NRO Staff fUes, with notes by B/Gen J. L. Martin, Dir/NRO 

9 Nov 63, subj: Memorandum of Record 

NPIC, 31 Oct 63 in NRO Staff files. 

77. Ltr, A. D. Wheelon, D/Dir (S&T) CIA, to Dr. B. McMillan, 

DNRO, 5 Nov 63, No 8ubj: Draft Ltr, McMillan to ~eelon, about 

8 Nov 63 Not sent, Cys in NRO Staff fUes. 

78. Ltr, J. A. McCone, DCI, to R. L. Gilpatric, DlsoD, 8 Nov 63, 

No subj: Cy in NRO Staff files. 

79. Memo, Col P. E. Worthman, to B/Gen J. L. Martin, Dir/NRO 

Staff, 21 Nov 63, Subj: Contact Between Dr. Wheelon and Colonel 

Battle; MFR Worthman, 2 Dec 63, Subj: Unified CORONA Management, both in NRO Staff files. 

80. Draft Memo, for signature of R. L. Gilpatric, D/SOD and J. A. 

McCone, DCI, 4 Dec 63 (not signed) Subj: Establishment of NRP 

Review Committee; Ltr McCone to Gilpatric, 10 Dec 63, No subj: 

Memo, Gilpatric to B. McMillan and E. G. Fubini, 10 Dec 83, 

Subj: NRP Review Committee; MFR McMillan, 11 Dec 83, No 

subj: all in NRO Staff files. 

81. MFR McMillan, 11 Dec 83, no subj, in NRO Staff files. 

82. Ltr, J.A. McCone, DCI, to B. McMillan, DNRO 13 Dec 63, in 

NRO Staff files. 

83. Ltr, McCone, to McMillan, 13 Dec 63; Memo B. McMillan, DNRO, 

to SOD and DCI, 12 Dec 63, No subj: Memo, McMillan to DCI, 

10 Dec 63, Subj: Management of CORONA Project; Memo, McMillan 

to Dir /NRO Staff, 10 Dec 63, SUbj: Advance Planning tor ~e NRP; 

all in NRO Staff files. 

-84. Memo, B. McMillan, DNRO, to A. B. Whee lon, CIA, 14 Dec 83, 

No subj: in NRO Staff tiles. 

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85. Draft notes on meeting between E. Fubini and B. McMillan, 

A. B. Wheelan, (7?) December 63, in NRO Staff1iles. 

86. MFR, E. Fubini, "Dictated.in Mr. McCone's presence, " 

13 Jan 64, No subj: in NRO Staff files. 

87. Memo, B. McMillan, DNRO, to Cyrus Vance, D/soo, 12 Feb 84, 

with cy Ltr, McMillan to J. A. McCone, Dir/CIA, 12 Feb 63, 

No Subj: Both in NRO Staff files. 

88. Draft, Unsigned Memo for Signature of R.S. McNamara, SOD, 

to DNRO, Feb 64; Draft, Unsigned Memo, B. McMillan DNRO, 

to Directors Program A, B, Feb 64, both in NRO Staff files. 

89. 908 and 6909, CIA to DNRO and Lockheed, 13 May 64, 

files. 

90. Memo, A. D. Wheelan, D/DirCIA to B. McMillan DNRO, 9 Mar 63, 

no subj; in NRO Staff files. 

·91. B. McMillan, DNRO, to D/sOD, 12 Jun 64, no subj: Msg 

677, SAFSP to SAFSS 18 Apr 64, both in NRO Staff files. 

92. Ltr, B. McMillan, DNRO, to A. D. Wheelon, CIA, 15 Jan 64, 

no subj; in NRO Staff files. 

93. Ltr, A. D. Whee lon, D/Dir CIA to B. McMillan, DNRO, 12 Mar 64, 

no subj: Ltr McMillan to J. A. McCone, DirCIA, 3 Mar 64, no 

subject; both in NRO Staff files •. 

94. Memo, B. McMillan, SAFUS, to SOD, 12 Dec 63; subj: Possible 

NRO/CIA Issues; in NRO Staff files. 

95. Memo, Clark B. Clifford, Chmn, FlAB to the President, 2 May 64, 

Subj: National Reconnaissance Program, in NRO Staff files. 

96. 

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Memo,. McGeorge Bundy, Pres/Asst for Natl Secy to SOD, Db·/CIA, 

22 May 64: Subject, National Reconnaissance Program; Memo, 

C. Vance D/SOD, to Bundy, 2 Jun 64, Subject, Memo for the 

Pres ioer.:., by the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, 

re: National Reconnaissance Program, both in NRO Staff files. 

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97. DNRO to Maj Gen R. E. Greer, and CIA to 

26 June 64, in NRO Staff files. 

98. Memo for Record, B. McMillan, 28 May 64, Subj: Meeting with 

Mr. McCone, -- May 28, 1964, in NRO Staff files. 

99. MFR, McMillan, DNRO, 12 Jun 64; Memo, McMillan to D/SOD, 

12 Jun 64, no subj; Memo, McMillan to J. A. McCone, Dir/CIA, 

12 Jun 64, no subject; all in NRO Staff files. 

100. Memo, B. McMillan DNRO to Lt Gen M. S. Carter, Actg-Dir/CIA, 

30 Jun 64, no subject; Memo, Carter to McMillan 30 Jun 64, no 

subject; MFR, McMillan, 25 Jun 64, no subject; all in N~O Staff files. 

101. Memo, Lt Gen M. S. Carter, D/Dir/CIA, to DNRO, Subj: Your 

Memorandum for Record, dated 25 Jun 641 in NRO Staff files. 

102. Memo, Lt Gen M. S. Carter, Act/Dir/CIA, to C. R. Vance, 

D/SOD, and B. McMillan SAFUS, 20 Jun 64, no subject: in NRO 

Staff files. ' 

103. Memo, A. D. Wheelon, D/Dir/S&T, CIA, to DCI, 31 Aug 64; 

Subj: Conduct of the FULCRUM Program; in NRO Staff files. 

104. MFR, McMillan, 25 Jun 64; Memo, Carter to DNRO 29 Jun 64; 

both in NRO Staff files. 

105. MFR, B. McMillan, DNRO, 7 Ju164, Subj: CIA Management of 

Satellite Projects, in NRO Staff files. 

106. Memo, E. G. Eubini, DDR&E to SAFUS, 2 Ju1 64, Subj: Broad 

Coverage System, in NRO Staff files. 

107. MFR, McMillan, 7 Jul 64; Memo, McMillan to R. S. McNamara, 

SOD, 7 Jul 64, no subj;, Ltr, C. R. Vance, D/SOD, 8 Ju1 64, no 

subj: both in NRO Staff files. 

. 108. Memo A. D. Whee lon, D/Dir(S&T), CIA to DNRO, 9 Jo1 64, 

subject: Funding for Project FULCRUM; in NRO Staff fUes. 

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109. Memo, Col Ledford, D/Prgm B, to DNRO, 10 Ju164, Subj: 

Addendum to Pgm B's FY 65 Budget; in NRO Staff files. 

110. MFR, B. McMillan, DNRO, 13 Aug 64, no subj, in NRO Staff 

files; MF.R, Col D. L. Carter, NRO Staff, 13 Aug 64, subj: 

CIA Planning FULCRUM in NRO Staff files; Memo, Col J. C .. 

Ledford, Asst/DirlSpec Activities, DDS&T to D/Dir, S&T, .CIA 

20 : CORONA Operations Officer; Palo Alto Calif.; 

892, Ledford to Contr Officer LAC (PA), 21 Jul 64: 

9, CIA to Lockheed Contr Ofcer aU 'in NRO Staff 

files; Ltr C. R. Vance D/SOD, to J. McCone D/CIA 29 Ju164, 

no subject; in NRO Staff files. 

111. M 1593, DNRO to Maj 

112. 

Col (pgm B) 12 Aug 64 

17 Aug 64,. both in NRO Staff 

same, 

Webb, 

27 Oct 

Col P. E. 

64, Subject, 

to CIA, 6 Nov 

B, 6 Nov 64 (the 

Maj Gen R. E. Greer 

20 Nov 64 

03, Ledford 

Carter, D/Dirl 

~ SAFSP, ·4 Dec 

_9198, Ledford to 

in NRO Staff files. 

E. Greer, (pgm A) and 

2316, CIA to LAC !!.!! 

5, 

9 Dec 64; 

11 Dec 64; all 

113. 318!1i1Ma Gen R. E. Greer, DirISP, to B. McMillan, 

64 2050, Mc and Col J •. C. 

Ledfor'd'.ir Program , 30 Nov 64 , Carter to.McMillan, 

2 Dec 54 9045, Carter to Dec 64~775, Carter 

to LAC A cr (CIA) 18 Dec 8677, Carte~cMillan, 

2 Dec 34; McMillan 4 Dec 64; (regarding the 

Webb affair) 100, A. B. Whee lon, , C~cMil1an,. ui. Jan 65; 

~213. to STC!!.!!, 12 Dec 64_2100, McMillan 

to CIA et al. 

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114. Draft memo, B. McMillan for C. Vance, 9 Mar 65, apparently 

not sent, cy in NRO Staff tiles. 

115. Memo, B. McMillan, DNRO, to D/sOD, 5 Mar 65, n/a; memo, ',: 

B/Gen J. T. Stewart, Dir/NRO Staff to Dr. E. Fubini, DDR&E, 

10 Mar 65 w/dratt ltr, C. Vance to J. 'McCone, nld, n/s; meino, 

McMillan to LtGen M. S. Carter, O/Dir/CIA, 15 Mar 65, n/a, 

w/encl, draft Msg from DNRO to Dirs pgm A, pgm B, 15 Mar 65; 

ltr, Carter to McMillan, 16 Mar 65, n/s, all in NRO Staff files. " 

116. The correspondence on these matters is, to say the least, 

voluminous. An excellent account of the early contract difficulties 

is contained in Memo, Maj Gen R. E. Greer, DirlSP to B. McMillan, 

DNRO, 21 Sep 64, Subject: LMSC Contracts Utilizing AlP, and 

attachments; Memo, J. S. Seay, SAFSP, to Greer, 21 Sep 64, 

Subject: Negotiations on LMSC ICS Contract, and Ltr, R. R. 

Kearton, V/Pres. LMSC to Greer, 18 Sep 64. A report on security 

matters, to DNRO, 23 Sep 64, and Ltr, McMillan to Lt Oen M. S. 

Carter, D/Dir/CIA, 2 Mar 65, summarize the early problems; 

Memo, McMillan to D/sOD, 5 Mar 65,resum's the aftair. The 

capstone items are detailed in Ltr, Carter to McMillan, 16 Mar 65, 

all in NRO Staff files. 

'. 117.Abstract of CIA Proposed Agreement on NRP, 26 April 1965. 

118. There are three sources for information on the Itek episode: memos 

for record by Col P.E. Worthman dated 24 and 25 Feb 65; memo for 

record, undated, by Lt Col H. C. Howard, all in NRO Staff files; and 

a lengthy and detailed ,memo for record by B. McMillan which recounts 

the specifics of a meeting between McMillan and the chief officials 

of Itek. The McMillan MFR is dated 25 Feb 65. It was 'sent to 

C. Vance via a covering memo later that day (memo, McMillan to 

C. Vance, 25 Feb 65, nls, in McMillan MFR files); the note to 

Vance mentions a previous conversation between the two concerning 

the same subject. As the McMillan memos are both dated 25 Feb, 

it would appear that he saw Vance upon his return to Washington that 

evening; the meeting with Itek officials took place after 5 p. m. 

(1700 hours) in Boston. Worthman took the 4 p. m. call from Itek 

that first disclosed to the Air Force Itek's decision; both McMillan 

and Wheelon were attending a meeting of the Land Panel in Boston 

at the time. 

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119. Memo, B. McMillan, D/NRO, to D/soD, 5 Mar 65, nls, in NRO 

Staff files. An attached note from McMillan's secretary confirms 

the mode of delivery. 

120. Memo, B. McMillan to C. Vance, 24 Mar encl draft 

directive to Dirs pgm A and pgm Band Ms 55, CIA Hq 

to CIA Sunnyvale with into copy to DNRO, memo, 

McMillan to Vance, 29 Mar 65, nls, wlcy memo, McMillan to 

Lt Gen M. S. Carter, D/Dir/CIA, 29 Mar 65, all in NRO Staff files. 

121. Holograph notes marked "Dr. McMillan used at PFIAB April 2, 

1965, " in NRO Staff files. 

122. Ltr, B. McMillan to C. Vance ("Dear Cy"), 12 Apr 65, nls, in 

NRO Staff files. . 

123. "Talking Paper, NRO Organization, " 23 Apr 65; MFR, B. McMillan, 

D/NRO, 22 Apr 65, subj: Relation of the Satellite Operations Center 

to the NRO; memo, E. O. Fubini to SOD, 22 Apr 65, subj: Proposed 

Presidential Directive; all in NRO Staff files. 

124. Memo, C. Vance, D/sOD, to B. McMillan, 30 Apr 65, n/s; ltr, 

McMillan to V/Adm W. F. Raborn, Dir CIA, 3 May 65, n/s; Ur, 

Raborn to McMillan, 25 May 65, n/s; ltr, Raborn to Vance, 

25 May 65, in NRO Staff,files; 

125.Ltr, B. McMillan, Dir NRO to W.F. Raborn, DIR CIA, 25 May' 65, 

nls in NRO Staff files. 

, 126. Ltr, W. F. Raborn, Dir/CIA, to C. R. Vance, D/SOD, 3 Jun 65, 

nIsi ltr, B. McMillar., SAFUS, to Raborn, 14 Jun 65; MFR, 

B/Gen J. T. Stewart, Dir/NRO Staff, subj: Telephone Call from 

Admiral Raborn, 18 Jun 65; all in NRO Staff files. 

127. Memo, B. \llcMillan, DNRO to D/SOD and Dir/CIA, 13 Jul65, 

subj: New ;:-",T.ellite Search/Surveillance System, in NRO Statf files. 

128. Memo, W. F. Raborn, DCI, to C. R. Vance, D/SOD, 20 Jul 65; 

memo, D. F. Hornig, President's Special Asst for Sci and Tech, 

to Vance, 30 Jul 65, both in NRO Staff files. 

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129. Memo, B. McMillan, SAFUS, to C. Hitch, Asst SOD/Fin Mgt, 

16 Jun 65, n/ s, in NRO Staff files. . 

130. Agreement for Reorganization of the National Reconnaissance 

Program, signed by C.R. Vance, D/SOD, and W. F. Raborn, 

DCI, 11 Aug 65, cy in NRO Staff files. A clause-by-clause 

comparison of the 1963 and the 1965 agreements was prepared 

and has special interest. 

131. Memo, B. McMillan, SAFUS, to SOD, 30 Sep 65, subj: Comments 

on NRO and NRP in NRO Staff files. The document is moderately 

lengthy but deserves to be read if only because it brings to a focus 

Dr. McMillan's feelings concerning the NRO-CIA relationship, 

which he clearly believed to lie at the heart of most NRO management problems. 

132. Ltr, R. Helms, D/Dir/CIA to A. H. Flax, DNRO, 1 Oct 6.5, n/s, 

in NRO Staff files. 

133. Ltr, A. H. Flax, DNRO, to R. Helms,. D/Dir/CIA, 6 Oct 65, n/s 

in NRO Staff files. 

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