PROPOSED ADDITION TO BRIEFING FOR THE NORTH ATLANTIC COUNCIL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01676R000400090026-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 1, 2003
• Sequence Number: 26
• Publication Date: July 24, 1964
• Content Type: MEMO

Approved Foif lease 2*VO81O5' PIq 2DP80BO16 000400090026-3
!)i AFT 24 July 1954
SUBJECT: Proposed Addition to Briefing for the
North Atlantic Council
1. As I am sure you know from recent press re-
ports, Soviet Premier Khrushchev has said on several
occasions that the United States also has a satellite
reconnaissance program. Premier Khrushchev is correct
about this. Satellite photographic reconnaissance is
one of our valuable intelligence collection tools.
le have been successful for several years in utilizing
satellite photography, along with other intelligence
collection activities, to provide us with information
essential to the security of the United States and its
allies. As you are aware, in the Soviet Union State
secrecy is both a military resource and an historic
policy. Because of this secrecy, the Free World is
dependent upon intelligence resources to redress the
disparity, and we have found satellite photography a
useful addition to our other resources in this effort.
2. Satellite photographic reconnaissance, how
ever, has a number of problems related to it and it
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has certain inherent shortcomings. In addition to
being extremely expensive in materials and money, such
a system is necessarily highly sophisticated in equip-
went and technique, and it is difficult to maintain
a regularly scheduled program. Moreover, as our astro-
nauts have observed during their earth orbits, the
earth is at all times shrouded by largo areas of cloud
cover. This, added to the fact that through overhead
photography one can identify a building but cannot
determine what work is going on within it, constitute
important limitations on satellite photography as an
intelligence collection means.
3. Nevertheless, as I have said we regard this
collection device as presently useful; we are confident
that as its development proceeds over the next several
years it will become increasingly valuable. Moreover,
we consider it to be a legal and Justifiable activity
which violates no national sovereign territory. In
support of this position, the United States has con-
tended, in the United Nations and elsewhere, that outer
space should be reserved for peaceful programs, that
outer space is free and open for exploration by all
states, and that we do not consider the use of photo-
graphic satellites to he illegal or aggressive.
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Dear Tommy:
28 July 1964
As I told you on the phone Friday, it seemed to me
that the proposed statement to the North Atlantic Council
concerning our satellite photography went really further
than It should in suggesting the extent to which satellite
photography makes an input to our intelligence inventory
and, in addition, would be a valuable means of policing
disarmament agreements. It is this latter point which
concerns me particularly and I think you will agree with
me that the difficulty we have encountered in Cuba in
disproving rumors and gossip and "proving the negative"
is an indicator of the difficulties encountered in depending
upon aerial photography as a total verification of resource.
Attached is a suggestion for a brief and more con-
densed statement which might be used with NAC. It may
be that you will wish to expand this statement somewhat
in order to meat the needs you feel to important.
However, I would avoid the impression that satellite
reconnaissance, good as it is, is in any way a substitute
for on-site inspection.
,'Sincerely,
/11/ John
John A. .M cCone
Director
Attachr>ment: Proposed Addition to Briefing for the North Atlantic Council, 24 Jul 64
#1 Original w/att - Addressee
#2(1)- DCI Chrono w/att .
#31 - DCI State File w/att
#41 - ER w/o
#51.- IR. Jack Smith w/att
TS #188563
Copy - / ; Z
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