LETTER TO THE HONORABLE RICHARD HELMS FROM DONALD F. HORNIG

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79B01709A000600060004-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 8, 2003
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: December 16, 1966
• Content Type: LETTER

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'err/
December 16, 1966
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Here is a memorandum from Dr. Land and Dr.
Purcell commenting on the Reconnaissance Panel
meeting that was held last week on SIGINT satel-
lites. Although this came to me just this morning,
I thought you would like the opportunity to read it
before our meeting this afternoon.
Sincerely,
25X1 NRO
Donald F. Hornig
Special Assistant to the
President for Science
and Technology
The Honorable Richard Helms
Director
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, D. C.
25X1A hnclosure, ^#57, 323
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5 DEC 1966
Dr. D. F. Hornig
25X1 D
Last week the Reconnaissance Panel spent two days in dis-
cussion with the CIA, NSA and NRO regarding SIGINT collection by
satellite. It was not our intention to arrive-at any detailed
conclusions based on this one meeting and we did not conduct our
discussion with this in mind. However, certain impressions about
the program did come through and it may be useful for you to know
our tentative thoughts on the subject.
First, we are distinctly impressed by the individual com-
petence and thoroughness of the people that we talked to and with
the technical sophistication of the systems in use and under
development. At the same time, we feel that too little of this
tclent and technology is focused on the most critical questions
of today and tomorrow.
Regarding the requirements making process in general, the
recognizes the difficulties the intelligence community faces
in establishing consistent and reasonable requirements and
priorities. We know that there is an unlimited demand for informa-
tion distributed among many equally influential agencies and that
all -their needs must be somehow accommodated in the overall
taVement of national requirements. We also recognize that, as
practical men, those who establish requirements only ask for
those things that they understand can be feasibly obtained.
However, it appears to us that in this environment three elements
of information have been lacking which, if made regularly available
to the requirements system, would help make the process more
ef-fective. They are: first, a clear statement of the important,
intelligence questions; second, a description of how our resources
are allocated to answer each question and what.our probability of
success is; and third, analyses by the collection agencies which
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describe a spectrum of feasible systems and their capabilities
for fulfilling hypothetical variations of the requirements. We
25X1 D encourage the initial efforts that the intelligence community has
made in these areas.
IF`i.nally, the Panel spent considerable time discussing systems
which might meet the urgent requirement to determine the charac-
teristics of the Soviet ABM systems. We believe that the Panel
25X1D in general would agree that the decisions that would be influenced
by the information gathered about these defenses are of such
magnitude that we ought not be satisfied with any collection 'system
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detail if you so desire .
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We gill be happy to look at any of these points in more
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