MINUTES OF THE ARGO STEERING COMMITTEE MEETING OF 10 JUNE 1968

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: NGA Records (Formerly NIMA)
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80T01137A000200060034-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 28, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 26, 2010
• Sequence Number: 34
• Publication Date: June 10, 1968
• Content Type: MISC

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EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
WASHINGTON
MINUTES OF THE
ARGO STEERING COMMITTEE MEETING
OF 10 JUNE 1968
LIAISON REPRESENTATIVES
This d^^. .or? r- cl's of - p~Bes
No. LL-of /L opia~, Scrics _`~_
The first meeting of the newly constituted ARGO Steering Committee
was held on 10 June 1968 in the Executive Office Building. By way
of introduction, the chairman noted that this committee activity rep-
resents a continuance of the ARGO study program which was conducted
during the past year by the civilian agencies to determine if photog-
raphy from the existing reconnaissance satellites could be of use to
them. In its report of March 1968, the study concluded that there
were a number of likely possibilitiesdeserved further study.
This indication of potential led to propose a continuation 25X1
of the ARGO Steering Committee to oversee the further development of
these possibilities and to act as an interface between the civilian
agencies and the intelligence community in matters concerning these
applications.
All the invited agencies have now agreed to this proposal and have
nominated the people in attendance as their representatives. The
Director of Central Intelligence has endorsed this activity and has
appointed the Chairman of the USIB Committee
for Imagery, Requirements and Exploitation, as his liaison represen-
tative. continues to be the representative from
the Defense Intelligence Agency. In recognition that the committee
will need technical advice and assistance in connection with both
the collection systems themselves and the photographic product of
those systems, the Director of the National Reconnaissance Office
has appointed as his representative and
the Direc nal Photographic Intelligence Center has
appointed
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The function of the ARGO Steering Committee, as agreed to by the
participating agencies, is to (1) collect and consolidate the needs
of each of the civilian agencies for data from the existing recon-
naissance satellite systems; (2) see that these needs are made
known to the intelligence community; (3) discuss with the intel-
ligence community procedures for handling the data for these
purposes.
The chairman pointed out that the committee activity assumes that
there is a strong incentive within each participating agency to make
use of existing intelligence resources and to establish a demonstrable
need for data to support the uses that were identified in the ARGO
report. The activities of the committee itself, therefore, will be
directed toward:
Stimulating the member agencies to conduct pilot
demonstrations and studies to show feasibility and
utility of those applications of interest to them.
Arranging for data and advice from the intelligence
community to support these studies.
Reviewing the results of the studies and submitting
justifications for data collection to COMIREX.
Assisting member agencies in planning for the analysis
and handling of needed data.
Discussing security requirements for this data or its
derivatives with the intelligence community.
Each of the members discussed briefly the status of their agencies'
interest in the ARGO activities, summarizing the applications in
which they had the most immediate current interest. As a result
of these discussions, the committee agreed that the following specific
applications were of most likely interest and feasibility:
- Foreign crop production assessment (Agriculture, AID).
- Foreign census estimates (AID).
- Regional maps and surveys (AID).
- Snow coverage measurement (Commerce).
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Harbor mapping (Commerce).
- Geographic updating for topomaps (Interior).
- Sea ice surveillance (Commerce).
- Resources data base for Emergency Planning (OEP).
The members agreed that the priority job of the committee for the.,
next six months to a year should be the development of papers on
each of these subjects which would justify the need for data from
the current satellite systems. Each of these papers should be
backed up by pilot demonstrations or study results which would
establish the technical feasibility of the application, the utility
of the data to the user agency, and the procedures that would be used
by the agency for analyzing and exploiting the data and for using
the information derived therefrom.
Agriculture and AID discussed briefly their plans for conducting
a pilot study on the assessment of foreign crop production and
indicated that they would have a specific study plan ready in a
few weeks for committee review. They agreed to present this plan
at the next meeting of the committee.
The chairman requested the Department of the Interior to arrange
a briefing for the committee at its next meeting on the status of
the Interior program for using data from the current reconnaissance
satellites for its domestic mapping program. Although it is not
the function of this committee to deal with domestic cartographic
uses, the experience that Interior has had in applying this kind
of data to their map-making will give the committee a useful insight
in what kind of problems to expect with regard to other uses.
Since the committee may be interested in recommending photography
for mapping foreign countries or regions of interest to AID, the
chairman requested the DIA to present a report to the committee
at the next meeting concerning the status of foreign mapping and
photographic coverage.
The meeting was adjourned with an agreement to meet again on 10 July
at 10:00 A.M.
Chairman, ARGO Steering Committee
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