"The camera, I think, is actually going to be our best inspector."
-- JOHN F. KENNEDY on television, December, 1962
"That function [inspection] can now be assumed by satellites. Maybe I'll let you see my photographs."
-- NIKITA S. KHRUSHCHEV to Paul Henri Spaak, July, 1963
THE PRESIDENT of the United States and the Premier of the Soviet Union were referring to one of the strangest secrets of the Cold War, a secret which was scarcely a secret at all. Kennedy and Khrushchev were alluding to a revolutionary tool of espionage, the camera-bearing "spy in the sky" satellite. And it was clear that neither had been fooled by the elaborate security precautions of the other.
The United States had been orbiting SAMOS spy satellites over the Soviet Union since 1961, and the Russians were known to have the capacity to track them. With similar technique and purpose the Soviets started in 1962 to send up their COSMOS satellites under the vigilant eye of the U.S. tracking system.
By 1963 aerial reconnaissance had become the most secretive operation of the Pentagon. Yet, ironically, when SAMOS was first tested in 1960, its virtues were graphically described in official pronouncements. Indeed, the electronic and optical laws upon which it was founded had long been the property of the scientific community, Russian and American alike.
Until Francis Gary Powers was shot down in his U-2 over Russia on May 1, 1960, little had been disclosed about SAMOS. But a summit meeting in Paris was being held that month and the Eisenhower Administration was emphasizing its determination to keep the Soviet Union under surveillance despite the U-2 incident. Suddenly, from the depths of the Pentagon, came a spew of previously highly classified details. By following the official disclosures over the next several months, a diligent Russian analyst could easily have pieced together the following description of the remarkable satellite:
SAMOS, the name of a Greek island, was a contraction for Satellite and Missile Observation System. The project was in an advanced state of development and the White House had given it a "DX" rating, which meant it was one of the handful of Pentagon programs with the highest national priority. Still, it was to be pushed even faster on a budget of just under $200,000,000 a year.
SAMOS was designed to be operational by 1962 and to take photographs with detail equal to what the human eye could see from a hundred feet. The satellite was launched [i] by an Atlas-Agena rocket, standing ninety-five feet high, or a Thor-Agena rocket, with a height of seventy-eight feet.
The Agena, or second stage, was made by the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, designers and producers of the U-2. It was that part of the rocket which went into orbit. The satellite weighed 4,100 pounds and was twenty-two feet tall and five feet in diameter. It circled the earth upright like a giant cigar, carrying a 300-to-400-pound gold-plated instrument package.
SAMOS was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, into a polar orbit from which it could photograph every nation in the world as the globe rotated under it. The camera could be shut off when the satellite was off target, thereby conserving power.
(By 1964 reliable reports indicated that a SAMOS was passing over the Soviet Union eight to twelve times, and over Communist China two to four times, every day.)
Orbits varied: some carried the satellite around the earth at an equal altitude of 300 miles; others were purposely egg-shaped so that the satellite dropped as close as 150 miles. From this height a telescopic camera with a focal length of 120 inches could photograph objects two and a half feet wide.
In April, 1959, Amrom H. Katz of the RAND Corporation, a semi-official research group for the Air Force, wrote that camera lenses with a 240-inch focal length had already been developed.
In April, 1960, Howard S. Stewart, a University of Rochester optics expert, indicated in International Science and Technology that it was possible to develop satellite cameras capable of "resolving two objects three inches apart from 125 miles up."
In February, 1964, the Air Force's Aerospace Medical Division reported that astronauts could readily spot missile bases, encampments and troop movements from 100 miles in space.
There were four types of SAMOS satellites: one carried television cameras for transmitting simultaneous pictures back to earth; a second carried conventional cameras for producing more detailed photographs that could be ejected on command and recovered in big nets strung from aircraft; [ii] a third carried both types of cameras; and a fourth incorporated eavesdropping equipment.
The fourth version was known as the "ferret." It could pick out radar and communication centers, and pinpoint missile sites by their radio guidance signals. It could also tap microwave telephone links. The SAMOS photographs could locate enemy military targets and provide instantaneous indications of troop or supply build-ups.
The reconnaissance satellite would be subject to some of the limitations of the U-2. It could be frustrated by clouds which cover 60 percent of the earth at all times. But it could provide pictures of the northern stretches of the Soviet Union that were beyond the reach of the U-2. And it would be much less vulnerable to defensive measures. SAMOS' orbit could readily be determined by Russian tracking stations, and theoretically the satellite could be destroyed by an anti-satellite missile (the United States began experimental tests with such a system in 1963) But if it were hit by a rocket, it would burn up on re-entry into the earth's atmosphere and the evidence would be destroyed. And it would be a considerably more difficult target than a U-2 flying ten times lower.
Besides, SAMOS could carry a rocket motor which, on command from the earth, would enable it to move evasively. On the assumption that Soviet spy satellites would incorporate similar devices for evasion, the Air Force started work in 1960 on SAINT (Satellite Intercept). It was to be a maneuverable satellite which would rendezvous with an enemy vehicle in orbit and inspect it by electronic means such as television. Ultimately, it was to have the capacity to neutralize or destroy an enemy satellite. [iii]
Another reconnaissance system also came into view during this period. It was MIDAS (Missile Defense Alarm System), designed to detect missile launchings with infra-red sensors. MIDAS' weight and dimensions were virtually identical to those of SAMOS. It was fired into orbit by the same rocket and it was also produced by Lockheed.
By detecting the intense heat given off by rocket exhaust during take-off, MIDAS was to provide a thirty-minute warning of enemy attack. This would double the fifteen-minute alert of BMEWS (Ballistic Missile Early Warning System), a massive radar in Thule, Greenland, which would pick up an incoming ICBM halfway between launch and impact. MIDAS' infrared instruments were so sensitive that they could detect a lighted cigarette from a distance of eight miles. During one test launching the heat sensors sent out signals set off by a coffee pot on the firing pad. (MIDAS encountered a series of difficulties which ran the research and development bill up close to $500,000,000. But in May and July of 1963 the satellite succeeded in detecting missiles launched from Florida and California.)
Another satellite launched with much public fanfare in 1960 was TIROS. Its cameras were to televise cloud cover and storm conditions in order to promote better weather prediction. Such surveillance obviously could be of great value in timing SAMOS launches for moments of minimum cloud cover over the Soviet Union. [iv] But in Senate testimony in July, 1961, James E. Webb, NASA's director, denied Soviet charges that the weather satellites were for purposes of espionage. He asserted that it was perfectly lawful for satellites to be flown over foreign territory just as ships freely sail the high seas. National sovereignty extends only to air space, Webb contended, and ''as to outer space where there is no air, this is a completely open field."
The head of NASA was betraying the fears of the administration that U.S. satellites operating over Russia would be shot down by Soviet propaganda. When President Kennedy took office, he was faced with three alternatives: (1) to continue the semi-public practices of the Eisenhower Administration; (2) to shut off all official discussion and disclosures about the espionage satellites; or (3) to make the program "overt" by proposing a new "open skies" plan and submitting all satellite photographs to the United Nations.
The last recommendation was privately proposed by a group of prominent scientists at the outset of the Kennedy Administration. They argued that there was a presumption of guilt in surreptitious activities and that the Soviet Union could play upon this as justification for shooting down a SAMOS or securing a UN resolution condemning the practice. On the other hand, they contended, if the operation were placed under the UN, the Soviets would be hard-pressed to destroy SAMOS either with rockets or words.
The Kennedy Administration quickly decided that secrecy was a safer course. When SAMOS II was successfully launched on January 31, 1961 -- eleven days after Kennedy took office -- the Pentagon prohibited the release of any details about it. This prohibition soon developed into an absolute ban on any discussion of the satellite, even in areas of prior official revelation. It was thereafter impossible to obtain official confirmation that in fact SAMOS existed. Future announcements were restricted to such words as: "A satellite employing an Atlas-Agena B booster combination was launched by the Air Force today. It is carrying a number of classified test components."
Since security, if any, had long since been breached by the original SAMOS disclosures, it was clear that the administration had international political purposes in mind in its new crackdown. The likeliest explanation was that it hoped to avoid provoking the Russians into countermeasures against SAMOS. Khrushchev had known for years that the U-2 was flying over Russia, but he said nothing until his hand was forced by the Powers incident. Might he not be inclined to maintain a similar silence on SAMOS, particularly since his own satellites were the first to fly over the United States and other nations?
The answer was quick in coming. SAMOS II was hardly off the pad before the Russians protested. Their complaint, which was formally carried to the United Nations in March, 1962, was summed up on December 3 of that year by Platon D. Morozov, the Soviet delegate to the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.
"Such observation," he said, "is just as wrong as when intelligence data are obtained by other means such as by photography made from the air. The object at which such illegal surveillance is directed constitutes a secret guarded by a sovereign state and, regardless of the means by which such an operation is carried out, it is in all cases an intrusion."
The standard reply of the United States was that a nation's sovereignty extends only to the air space above it. Officials noted that in the first three years of the space age neither the United States nor the Soviet Union had claimed its territorial sovereignty was infringed by satellite overflights. In the absence of protest or international agreement to the contrary, these officials maintained that a common law had been established, giving any nation the right to orbit satellites over another.
On January 13, 1962, the United States asserted formally that this freedom of movement in space had been endorsed by the UN General Assembly in its unanimous resolution the previous month on "international cooperation and the peaceful uses of outer space."
The resolution stipulated that international law and the United Nations Charter were to apply to outer space and that celestial bodies were not to be subject to national appropriation. The United States interpreted this as a contradiction of the Soviet argument that SAMOS violated national sovereignty.
To demonstrate its sincerity in subscribing to UN supervision of space, the United States pledged, shortly after the UN Space Registry was established in February of 1962, that it would list all of its satellites.
From time to time knowledgeable space watchers in the United States and Europe noted, sometimes in print, that more objects were in space than had been reported to the UN. Playing upon the deep secrecy surrounding the SAMOS program, the Russians alleged that the United States was concealing some of its launches.
These allegations imposed a nasty dilemma upon the United States Government. If it were to dispose effectively of suggestions that it was cheating, it would have to open up the SAMOS firings to much greater publicity. But this would run counter to the basic policy decision not to provoke the Russians.
Or the United States could publicly produce evidence that the unlisted objects in space were of Soviet origin. But this would expose the fact that the United States possessed a vast electronic network which kept a precise watch on all Soviet space operations. And the CIA and the Pentagon were opposed to providing the slightest help to the Russians in compromising the network.
Their opposition was twofold. First, if it were officially admitted that the United States was eavesdropping along the Iron Curtain, nations providing the clandestine facilities might be subjected to severe Russian pressure, as they were after the U-2 incident.
The second argument was expressed in a news conference on December 6, 1962, by Arthur Sylvester: "We are trying to keep intelligence [secret], not only what we gather but how we gather it ... We know that lots of things that two years ago we assumed our adversaries had, they did not have. We know this by what they're spending money to get. What we are trying to do in this field is to make it as difficult as possible for them. We are trying not to wrap it up, put it on a silver platter and hand it to them. We are trying to make them spend as much time and effort as we have to."
Defense Secretary McNamara was particularly jealous of the secrecy policy. He was incensed when Hanson Baldwin, the military-affairs analyst of the New York Times, disclosed in June, 1962 -- clearIy on the basis of SAMOS reports -- that the Soviets were erecting concrete storage "coffins" for their ICBMs. McNamara was disturbed that Baldwin's report might have given the Russians an indication of the excellence of SAMOS. He apparently did not comprehend that he himself had exposed SAMOS' effectiveness when he announced the month before that the United States was in a position to locate and destroy Soviet missile sites.
Arrayed against McNamara and the secrecy policy were those in the State Department who saw great propaganda value in destroying the myth that the Soviets could do no wrong in space and that they had suffered fewer failures than the United States. This viewpoint prevailed in September, 1962, when the government claimed that in the two previous years the Russians had failed in five attempts to reach the planets -- two to Mars and three to Venus.
In trying to substantiate the claim, the fears of the CIA and the Pentagon were realized. A Pandora's box of black electronic arts was opened. Out of it came revelations of a world that was unknown to the vast majority of Americans, if not to the Soviet leaders.
The United States had detected the Russian space failures through a surveillance system known as SPADATS (Space Detection and Tracking System). It was a complicated network of electronic fences, stretching across the United States, and sensitive radios and radars hidden along the perimeter of the Soviet Union. The network was so effective that no Soviet rocket could get off the ground without its being known within a few minutes at the North American Air Defense Command in Colorado Springs and at the CIA and the White House.
The first point of detection was a radar and communications system in the Middle East. It was centered in Turkey at small Black Sea towns such as Zonguldak, Sinop and Samsun. There, powerful radars and listening gear monitored the countdowns and rocket launchings at the main Soviet missile sites near the Aral Sea.
The radars, which went into operation in 1955, could reach at least 3,000 miles. The scope of the listening gear was suggested by an advertisement which slipped uncensored into Aviation Week on February 25, 1963:
Modern electronic counter-measures are an important deterrent and intelligence tool for the military services. "Ferreting" ECM systems -- for the detection, location and analysis of foreign electromagnetic radiation associated with radar, missile command and communications -- are a demonstrated capability of Babcock's military products division, where operational ferreting systems are in production ...
Another indication of the potential of the eavesdropping equipment got out the following month. Senator Barry Goldwater, a general in the Air Force Reserve, disclosed that an "electronic ear," operating in planes off Cuba, was so sensitive that it could pick up the sound of various machines to the point of detecting a small generator in operation.
At the same time, the Pentagon was perfecting super-range "over the horizon" radar and the Air Force had installed highly sensitive atmospheric pressure gear which could provide instantaneous indications of a Soviet missile launching.
After a rocket had been detected by the Middle East system, it would next be picked up by the BMEWS radar in Greenland, which kept watch over the Arctic, or by the large saucer-like radar at Shemya in the Aleutians, which tracked Soviet test rockets as they flew out over the Pacific.
The third point of detection and the most precise was NAVSPASUR (Naval Space Surveillance System), an electronic fence stretching from Georgia to Southern California. Transmitters in Alabama, Texas and Arizona created the fence by sending out a beam of radio signals which were deflected back to one of four receiving stations when an object passed through them.
By running the angles of deflection through a massive computer at Dahlgren, Virginia, it was possible to determine a satellite's orbit, position, size and weight (NAVSPASUR was so sensitive that a piece of wire one-sixteenth of an inch in diameter was detected in 1960 when it separated from a U.S. satellite). It was also possible to calculate the exact time and place of launch and predict the future path of the satellite.
Many officials felt that too much was being revealed about these secret electronic systems. Nevertheless, NASA continued until April, 1963, to list Soviet launchings in the Satellite Situation Reports it issued twice a month.
Then there was an abrupt and unexplained return to the previous practice of secrecy. The House Information Subcommittee sought an explanation, but NASA spokesmen said all they knew was that the tracking system was controlled by the Pentagon, which refused to release the information.
This prompted the subcommittee's chairman, John E. Moss, the California Democrat, to observe: "The taxpayers certainly should not be called upon to spend billions of dollars on our space programs without being given all the facts necessary to make an intelligent judgment as to whether we are behind, ahead, or at least keeping pace with, Russian space efforts."
Despite the fact that the policy of secrecy was perpetuating a false image of United States inferiority in space, the administration held to its practice of suppressing the truth about Soviet failures. Despite the fact that nuclear test-ban negotiations were threatened by public ignorance of the elaborate array of U.S. detection devices, the administration refused to embark upon even a modest program of education.
It was a strange anomaly, indeed. The United States was seeking to hold its tongue about secrets that were no longer secret to the Russians. In November, 1962, the Soviets, indicating their complete awareness, dropped their long-standing demand for a ban on spy-in-the-sky satellites. This opened the way to a United States-Soviet agreement on the peaceful uses of outer space. Why the Russian about-face? Electronic experts suggested the Russians were developing a spy satellite of their own and did not wish to be inhibited by international prohibitions on such devices.
Khrushchev's son-in-law, Alexei Adzhubei, the editor of Izvestia, seemed to substantiate this theory in a speech in Helsinki, Finland, on September 2, 1963.
"One Western paper," Adzhubei said, "has published a picture taken of Moscow by a satellite from a height of 750 kilometers [about 465 miles] in which the Izvestia building is plainly discernible. We do not publish pictures of this kind, but I believe that we could print a similar picture of New York taken by one of our satellites."
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Notes:
i. SAMOS I failed to achieve orbit on October 11, 1960. SAMOS II was a success on January 31, 1961.
ii. In July, 1963, the Outstanding Unit Award was presented to the 6593 Test Squadron at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii. The Air Force said the squadron had achieved 70 percent success in its capsule recoveries.
iii The project proved much more complicated than SAMOS, however, and in 1962. its operational date was extended to 1967 at the earliest.
iv. Dr. S. Fred Singer, director of the National Satellite Weather Center at Suitland, Maryland, declared in a speech on February 20, 1963 that TIROS had been so used to plan U-2 flights over Cuba during the missile crisis in October, 1962.