Lack of Intelligence
America's secret spy satellites are costing you billions, but they can't even get off the launch pad
The United States has invested $200 billion over the past four decades developing and operating its supersecret spy satellite programs. In this new age of terrorism, and as the nation faces bellicose regimes like North Korea and Iran, these programs are more important than ever. But there's a problem. The agency that builds and operates the satellites, a little-known outfit called the National Reconnaissance Office, is in crisis. Despite its $7 billion annual budget, its satellites don't always work as promised. Its projects run billions in the red and years behind schedule. Some national security experts say the place just doesn't work.
The NRO, for these and other reasons, is being shoved to the sidelines in President Bush's war on terrorism. Last year, U.S. News has learned, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and CIA Director George Tenet created a new top-secret office to develop cutting-edge spy satellite technologies. The office is an arm of the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology. The new office maintains bogus commercial "cover" facilities outside the agency's headquarters in Langley, Va., and CIA officials are talking to defense contractors about developing new satellites. "Tenet formed the office," says a former senior Pentagon official, "because he wanted exquisite intelligence collection capabilities." According to several former Pentagon and CIA officials with close ties to U.S. intelligence, the office was created, in part, because of the NRO's declining performance. The CIA denies this but won't discuss the new satellite operation.
The NRO, created in 1961 as part of the Defense Department, develops and operates satellites for the CIA, the National Security Agency, and others in the intelligence community. In its heyday, the satellite agency was revered for tackling remarkably difficult technical challenges, a feat that allowed the United States to watch and eavesdrop on adversaries half a world away during the Cold War. That technological edge is still critical. During the war in Iraq, the NRO's satellites provided the U.S. military with detailed photographs of Iraqi armed forces. Earlier this year, the agency's eavesdropping satellites furnished the NSA with intercepted telephone conversations leading to the arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a key al Qaeda figure involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Spy blunders. But intelligence and national security experts warn that the NRO is now so beset by problems that there is no guarantee America will be able to maintain its huge advantage in space. Failed management, bungled technical assessments, and repeated engineering and testing failures have plagued the NRO for years. The agency's missteps are costing taxpayers billions of dollars and jeopardizing national security, say intelligence and defense officials. Non-NRO national security space programs are facing similar problems (Page 40). But NRO satellites are unique because they can provide kernels of intelligence that may help prevent a new terrorist attack or locate hidden weapons of mass destruction. When eavesdropping and imaging satellites fail or programs run way behind schedule, U.S. intelligence agencies can't know what was missed. "We probably won't go blind," says Jeffrey Richelson, author of several books on U.S. spy satellites and the intelligence community, "but it means we could have much less coverage on any given day."
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