I. INTRODUCTION
In
its May 2, 1946 report, Preliminary Design for an Experimental
World Circling Spaceship, the Douglas Aircraft Corporation examined
the potential value of satellites for scientific and military
purposes. Possible military uses included missile guidance, weapons
delivery, weather reconnaissance, communications, attack assessment,
and "observation."
It was not until almost nine years later, on March 15, 1955, that
the Air Force issued General Operational Requirement No. 80, which
established a high-priority requirement for an advanced reconnaissance
satellite. The document defined the Air Force objective to be
the provision of worldwide surveillance or reconnaissance of "preselected
areas of the earth" in order to provide warning of ballistic
missile attack, collect intelligence to support national intelligence
requirements as well as emergency war plans, and to determine
"the intentions of a potential enemy and the status of his
warmaking capability."
Over the next five years the U.S. reconnaissance satellite program
evolved in a variety of ways. The Air Force program was first
designated the Advanced Reconnaissance System (ARS), then SENTRY.
Management responsibility for SENTRY was transferred from the
Air Force to the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), established
on February 7, 1958, and then back to the Air Force in late 1959-by
which time the program had been renamed SAMOS.
Concern about the length of time it would take to achieve the
primary objective of the SAMOS program-a satellite that could
return its imagery by scanning the exposed film and returning
the recorded data electronically-was expressed by the President's
Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities (PBCFIA)
in an October 1957 report. The board stressed the need for an
interim photographic reconnaissance system that would be available
before either SAMOS or OXCART, the planned follow-on to the U-2
aircraft, would become operational.
Such considerations led President Dwight D. Eisenhower to approve,
also on February 7, 1958, a CIA-led program to develop a reconnaissance
satellite. The program, which would soon be designated CORONA,
focused on development of a satellite that would physically return
its images in a canister-an objective that had been a subsidiary
portion of the SAMOS program. The CIA would provide the payload,
handle the contracting, and be responsible for security. The Air
Force would be responsible for the boosters as well as launch
and recovery operations. As was the case with the U-2 project,
the CORONA program would be managed by the CIA's Richard M. Bissell,
Jr., the DCI's Special Assistant for Planning and Development
(who would officially become Deputy Director for Plans on January
1, 1959). Air Force Brig. Gen. Osmond J. Ritland, his U-2 deputy
and Vice Commander of the Ballistic Missile Division, would reprise
his role as deputy.
In
early 1958, there was still great uncertainty and even more concern
about the extent of the Soviet missile threat. A November 1957
national intelligence estimate advanced from 1960-1961 to 1959
the date when the Soviets might have ten intercontinental ballistic
missiles (ICBMs) available for operational use. While the U-2
overflights of the Soviet Union, which started in 1956, had alleviated
concerns about a bomber gap, the flights were too few and covered
too little territory to definitively confirm or refute claims
of a substantial Soviet missile edge in the coming years.
The urgency attached to developing a successful reconnaissance
satellite led, in addition to the approval of the CORONA program,
to the creation of a special Air Force office to manage the SAMOS
effort, and ultimately, to the 1961 creation of a top secret National
Reconnaissance Program (NRP) and an organization to coordinate
that program-the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).
The NRO was different from most other government organizations
in two ways-its very existence was classified and its key components
were actually elements of the Air Force, CIA, and Navy. In the
five years following their creation, the NRP and NRO were the
subject of intense battles between the CIA and the civilian and
uniformed Air Force officers who ran the NRO. At first the battles
primarily focused on the authorities of the NRO and its director.
Subsequently, a major aspect of the conflict involved decisions
concerning new reconnaissance systems.
Only now, with the declassification of internal histories and
supporting documents, as well as the willingness of key individuals
to speak of their roles, is it possible to begin to examine in
detail the battles that occurred between 1961 and 1965. The outcome
of a number of those disputes had long-term implications for the
way in which the NRP was managed for the next several decades
as well as the nature of the U.S. reconnaissance systems which
orbited the earth.
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