POLICY PERSPECTIVES FOR COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES HEARINGS ON FUTURE U.S. SPACE PROGRAMS JANUARY 24, 25 & 26, 1978

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00845R000100080002-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 8, 2010
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: February 1, 1978
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Checkpoints,q,
A NETWORK NEWSLETTER FOR PEOPLE CONCERNED
WITH FUTURE CIVILIZED GLOBAL SYSTEMS
BOX 19127, WASHINGTON, D. C. 20036
PHONE (202) 785-07Q8
Vol. VI No. 1, February 1978
(( Policy Perspectives may be reprinted or published without restrictions. In recent
years our communities, and even our families, have become divided between "softliners"
who would have the U.S. turn weak unilaterally in the face of growing world dangers,
and "hardliners" who would have the U.S. endlessly escalate the Soviet/American race
to produce the power to obliterate world civilization. The following pages are
intended to open creative public discussion of a new power option available to the
President and Congress for the first time in history:- an opportunity to bring the
"softliners" and the "hardliners" together in an unprecedented New American Purpose,
bringing valid hope to the patriotic people of all 150 sovereign nations, and
a renewed sense of pride in America. ))
POLICY PERSPECTIVES
for
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
U.S.HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Hearings on Future U.S.Space Programs
January 24,25 & 26,1978
Howard G. Kurtz,President
War Control Planners, Inc
Box 19127,Washington D.C.20036
T0: Chairman Olin E. Teague
For a very few more years the United States wi.Il have a dominant world
lead in the science and technology race, as exemplified in the field of
the pro-human life-supporting space satellite systems. The choice of
whether humanity will have a worthwhile future may well rest, at the
moment, in the hands of the President of the United States and of the
majority of the Members of the House of Representatives and of the Senate,
as they face the imperative to clarify, before it is too Late, the
goals and commitments of the U.S. Space Program. These goals in turn
must be brought into focus with the as-yet-undecided U.S. long range
strategic objective. We must answer the simple question What Kind of
Future World Order are We, the American People,Trying to Create ? "
Whether the Congress now clarifies, or refuses to clarify, U.S. long range
global objectives to guide U.S. space programs for the coming generation,
is a matter of concern not only for the American people. This Congressional
action, or inaction, is of deep concern to the future generations of all
150 sovereign nations on Planet Earth.
In response to your invitation, I submit for pro and con and creative discussion
just a few highlights from more than twenty years study,work,observation,writing,
speaking and editing in the field of the ever-expanding Kremlin/White House science
and technology and strategic power race,working jointly with my wife Harriet until
her death on June 17,1977.
Discussion is invited under the following seven headings:-
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I. COLLAPSE OF TRADITIONAL NATIONAL SECURITY CONCEPTS
II. CONGRESSIONAL PREOCCUPATION WITH IMMEDIATE PROBLEMS
III. THE PENDULUM SWING IN THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
IV. WHICH NATION WILL PROVIDE WORLD-WIDE INSPIRATION FOR THE FUTURE ?
V. U.S.GRAND STRATEGY THE AMERICAN PEOPLE CAN GRASP AND SUPPORT
VI. THE IMPOTENCE OF CONGRESS TODAY
VII. EXAMPLES OF GLOBAL SPACE SATELLITE POLICY INDECISIONS
I. COLLAPSE OF TRADITIONAL NATIONAL SECURITY CONCEPTS
Throughout recorded history tribes and nations have based their defense planning on
a commitment to increase their powers to kill enemies who threatened. There has been
no other valid basic assumption. But a historic era has been collapsing for more
than two decades, as the top-of-the-line strategic weapons on both sides have become
capable, if unleashed, of annihilating both sides and much , or most, of world populations.
Now , like passengers in two giant airplanes flying toward each other in a cloud,
the citizens of both sides of modern war face the prospect of obliteration. There
no longer is an increased sense of security in public attitudes toward escalating
military budgets. Finding new strategic concepts and objectives has become imperative.
The awesome breakthrough into Space Power has been a by-product of this science and
technology race between the superpowers. In a new sense the leap into the Space Age
dwarfs the earlier breakthrough into the Nuclear Age, because it has provided humankind
~` with an unprecedented cosmic choice a choice of life or death for humanity
. .a .moral choice. On the one hand space power can enhance the probabilities
of the final holocaust, by holding the weapons of extermination over the heads
of all human beings, like the Sword of Damocles hanging over every man and woman
by a thin human hair with the competitive preparations for future space war. The
NAVSTAR satellite navigation complex for which the Congress has authorized funds for
some years, will be able to drop a nuclear bomb, or an ordinary bomb, or a firecracker
within thirty feet of any chosen target on Earth, by unmanned missiles or aircraft.
On the other hand the NAVSTAR space program can provide precise navigation aid for
the public safety in all land, sea and air transport,everywhere on Earth. These
and many other earth-orbiting military and civilian, intelligence and communications
satellite systems can become the unprecedented pro-human global power tools, with
which to begin building the foundations for a future civilized world-wide management
complex capable of stabilizing international relations without threats of war, as
the satellites also assist all nations in their struggles for the production of food,
clothing, housing, energy,clean air & water, health, education and national security
for all populations held within prudent limits. I will provide concrete examples
on following pages.
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II. CONGRESSIONAL PREOCCUPATION WITH IMMEDIATE PROBLEMS
Mentioned in sympathy and not in criticism, due to the increasing pressures and
crises Members of Congress have become somewhat like persons trapped in the hold
of a burning, sinking vessel at sea beating frantically at nearby hot flames
with inadequate brooms unable to force their attentions on the complex
problem of building afire-proof boat or a crisis-proof world order.
The White House has never told the Congress the answer to the question " What Kind
of Future World Order are we Trying to Create ?".
At least publicly, the Congress has never asked.
III. THE PENDULUM SWING IN THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Advancing science and technology and management skills which made possible production
of jet bombers to kill people at unprecedented magnitudes and distances, then made
possible the historic pendulum swin in the opposite direction, to the production of
jet transport planes bringing people closer together into new world community.
Similarly the Soviet/American science and technology race producing global systems
of death, destruction and extermination, has now reached the historic moment when
a pendulum swin in the opposite direction is feasible for the first time in history,
for the gradual development and pragmatic testing of world-wide war prevention systems
and life support systems for all nations.
The Chief Executive of and the Board of Directors of a corporation producing jet
bombers ,and no one below these officials .can make the executive decision
b utilize the same scientists and engineers and specialists in all fields, to
produce, instead, jet transport planes to serve the needs of world civilization.
Similarly, the President of the United States and the Congress .and no one
in the U.S. power structures below these men and women in Government .can make
the executive decision to lead the world in the coming generation in the research
and development and public demonstration of world-sized systems and structures
and legal institutions, to guard the security, independence and development of all
nations (somewhat as Air Traffic Control guards the safety and forward progress of
all airplanes in a cloud).
I am attaching as an appendix to this document, for the purpose of stimulating creative
discussion, the projection of but one concrete example of such an executive decision
which can be made by the President and Congress without further delay. The discussion
agenda was published in December 1973 issue of SPECTRUM, journal of the 160,000
member Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers - IEEE - under the title
" A GLOBAL INFORMATION COOPERATIVE ". This is the projection of greatly increased
programs for military and civilian earth-orbiting,life-serving saCellite services
to provide intelligence and information and communications to help the people of all
nations in their struggles for security,independence and development. I will provide
many specific examples of these services in a moment.
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IV. WHICH NATION WILL PROVIDE WORLD-WIDE INSPIKATION FOR THE FUTURE ?
There are about 150 sovereign nations on the planet. The patriotic people of these
nations have not attached their support to either Kremlin or White House side of the
self-generating race for power to threaten the consumption of scarce energies and
resources for the inflationary production of the power to destroy world populations.
Any politician can understand this world public "gut reaction".
The nation which will deserve world leadership in the coming era will be the
superpower with leadership vision and human concern great enough to (1) meet all
requirements for its own national defense and in addition (2) set the pace for
a next generation competition to develop anddemonstrate and establish tihe operational
feasibility of world-sized systems and institutions to serve the basic needs of
all nations. The earth-serving satellite systems and services can provide the
leading edge for eventual breakthrough into a new Age of Compassionate Power. This
will be the most complex and difficult challenge civilization ever has faced.
Making Planet Earth safe for human futures will dwarf the difficulties of making
the Moon safe for human visits. But all essential elements with which to
begin the historic effort are within reach of the President and Congress.
The life-preserving satellite systems have been developed, and tested, and
proven and within reach of those in authority in the U.S. Government.
Over a year ago NASA chose twenty of its key executives to work together for a
year, inviting opinions from hundreds of outside sources, to project the long
range future for U.S. space programs. The exhaustive report to the Administrator was
titled OUTLOOK FOR SPACE. As this creative team turned in this study to the
Administrator, I believe you will find that the group made a strong private
recommendation to him that the "applications" budgets for research and development
should be raised from about two hundred million dollars a year, to about six
hundred million dollars a year to place these humanity-serving
development programs on an equal level with the space science and manned
spectacular research and development budgets.
These recommendations by the NASA long range planning experts have been ignored.
The Office of Management and BudgQt apparently has imposed the discipline to
keep the NASA budget request to the Congress for these earth-serving satellite
applications down to the traditional, highly inadequate figures. Congress has
been taco preoccupied with near-by flames to try to find the long range national
security interest.
The moment is here. The U.S. has the capabilities. As President Kennedy refocused
American public opinion beyond the Cuban Invasion fiasco by the public commitment of
American creativity and power to make the Moon safe for human visits .today
President Carter and Congress can refocus the world-wide yearning for leadership
toward an end to war, sparked by President Sadat and Prime Minister Begin, by an
awe-inspiring commitment of American creativity and power and character to the
unprecedented task of developing world-sized systems and institutions to guard the
security and independence and progress of all nations.
Missing only is the vision and commitment by the President and Congress.
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V. U.S.GRAND STRATEGY THE AMERICAN PEOPLE CAN GRASP AND SUPPORT
If the American people are to be spared the hopelessness of runaway world crisis,
like a successful football coach the President and Congress will have to maintain
two different kinds of superior strategic power.
For many years the President and Congress will have to maintain superior defense
op wer, to prevent opposing hostile powers from breaking through to their goal of
world dominion. But a nation, or a football team, with nothing more than defense
strategy, in time will lose the confrontation. In addition .
The President and Congress will have to create and maintain superior forward op wer
gradually in the coming years to move all power confrontations down the field
toward the distant goal of a civilized world community of nations,far more complex and
effective than the present United Nations , capable of guarding the security and
independence and development of all nations, large and small.
A large sector of America will continue to work in the defense platoons, defending
the United States against clear and present dangers from hostile foreign powers.
Without a strong defense power the American people face disaster and tragedy.
A large sector of America will be released and channeled in the forward platoons,
as the President and Congress make a large scale, long range, sustained commitment
before the whole world to an unprecedented generation of creativity and new
fields of research and development and testing and demonstration of the prototype
models of the future LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS FOR PLANET EARTH, serving the basic
needs of all nations .with the same boldness and inventiveness and
determination displayed by America in the past generation's world leadership
developing powers of global death and calamity and extermination.
In recent years in America the "softliners" and the "hardliners" have been fighting
each other, further weakening the United States as it has been losing its world
influence. But under the projected new U.S. Grand Strategy the "doves" and the
"hawks" the "softliners " and the "hardliners" the defense platoons
and the forward platoons will be playing on the same team for a change,
striving during the coming generation to lead the nations of the world toward the
goal of new world institutions within which science and technology (knowledge and
skills in all fields) will be harnessed to serve the needs of humanity, rather than
producing the power to rupture or destroy world civilization.
Just as a stimulant to creative imagination, on later pages I will show a few concrete
examples of the forward platoons leading the world in the development of life-
serving satellite systems.
VI. THE IMPOTENCE OF CONGRESS TODAY
The following are a few highlights of space programs already proven, and readily
available for a new world statesmanship.
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The LANDSAT satellite in one orbit around the Earth in approximately 103 minutes,
invades the privacy of every sovereign nation in its path 115 miles wide, gathering
. .communicating to the U.S. .and storing intimate intelligence and information.
This creates one of the most complex and difficult "foreign relations" problems in
history. Once every eighteen days this one LANDSAT satellite inspects in
increasingly minute detail, the sovereign territory of every nation on the planet,
without exception. Yet is has been our experience that members of the Senate and
House Foreign Relations and International Affairs Committees are almost wholly
uninformed on the functioning of these new global power tools which have been
operating for more than four years.
This is only one small part of the problem facing Congress. In one orbit of the Earth
this one "eye in the sky" satellite involves the direct and immediate responsibility
of at least twenty-four Committees in the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Your Committee is quite bold to permit this subject to be discussed pro and con. Other
Committees have refused to allow discussion "because it is beyond the jurisdiction
or the authority of this Committee". This illustrates how the Congress has tended
to abdicate responsibility for determining the character or the objectives of
U.S. global science and technology and strategic power.
During the eighteen days it takes one LANDSAT to cover the entire Earth, garnering
information, its instruments are recording what is scanned, and forwarding this
intelligence to U.S. computers, only 1.8 % of the time. 98.2 % of the time
this American LANDSAT is gathering and storing information from areas that are
foreign to the United States. Wholly unprecedented U.S. foreign policy and
global strategy have become imperative. LANDSAT could be the instrument to
convince all nations of the world that U.S. multinational corporations are
receivins~ preferred access to the knowledge of the energies and resources and
economic potentials of all nations as part of a scheme to dominate the economy
of the whole world .or LANDSAT can become the leading edge instrument for a
transcendent new U.S. national commitment to create new kinds of international
management structures in which all nations will have a voice in the policies and
objectives of open-to-the-public global information systems.
Do "eye in the sky" satellites involve "military" or "civilian" policy? One of the
emerging satellites will contain instruments which will measure the temperature of
the surface water of the oceans, hundreds of miles below, to within a fraction of a
degree. This will be of added value for civilian seastate and weather forecasting.
But this same instrument at the same moment will be able to detect the faint trail
of slightly warmer water rising to the surface, heated by the friction of the
propellor of a silent nuclear submarine, against the surrounding water,leaving a
tell-tale trail of warmer surface water to mark the path of this military submarine.
From here on out "military technology" and "civilian technology" increasingly *aill
overlap, involving simultaneously two or three or eight or nine .Committees
of the House or Senate simultaneously. Satellites monitoring crops along national
borders, simultaneously will be monitoring troop movements across that border. Satellites
monitoring pollution of rivers from sewage or oil spills, also will detect pollution
of the same river from production of nuclear or other weapons.
The Leadership of the House and the Senate have not yet begun to grasp responsibility.
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VII. EXAMPLES OF GLOBAL SPACE SATELLITE POLICY INDECISIONS
1. Trained geologists using LANDSAT imagery available to the public are able to
analyze lineaments and geologic fault to assist in locating new underground gas and
oil and water and mineral resources within the borders of all nations. Should the
multinational corporations which can afford the trained geologists and expensive
equipment have privileged access to the knowledge of all other nations' undiscovered
resources or should the Congress and the President provide leadership toward
unprecedented inter-nation or all-nation management systems to allow all nations
a proper access to this economic intelligence?
2. With millions of human beings on the planet facing slow death through starvation
or malnutrition, the satellites can provide the information foundation for world-wide
inventories or all crops and fibres .computerized predictions of the world's
crops .the health or disease of the crops and advance crops estimates.
Should Kremlin strategists have privileged access to this crop intelligence? Should
American agribusiness interests have privileged use of this intelligence? Should
there be some kind of GLOBAL INFORMATION SERVICES in which all nations receive benefit?
3. The U.S. military and civilian satellites have the capability to provide maps of
all nations, in intimate detail ( in three-dimension projections). The Pentagon through
the Defense Mapping Agency for some years has been helping Central and South American
nations in this way. The U.S. Geologic Survey is the world leader in civilian satellite
mapping techniques. Should the accumulating maps of the world be Soviet classified
military documents? American classified military documents? or should there be an
unprecedented future all-nation mapping service meeting the needs of all nations?
4. In a year-long successful experiment with the ATS-6 communications satellite, a
professor of anatomy at the University of Washington taught a class fifteen hundred
miles away in Alaska both professor and students seeing and speaking with
each other through two-way television relayed via satellite. With strong U.S. leader-
ship on a world scale for the next twenty years,high quality education could make
inroads to all of the illiterate and uneducated and remote billion human beings.
Over a year ago the Office of Management and Budget forced NASA to give up this
creative work, so U.S. corporations could find profit selling their creativity in
this field to foreign nations and now Canada. and Germany and Japan have
surpassed the United States in this dramatic leading edge into a worthwile future
for humankind. Congress did not object.
5. In another successful one-year experiment in Alaska damaged babies and injured
or sick adults in villages 500 miles from a doctor, were examined and treated regularly
by a distant doctor through two-way television relayed via broadcast satellites.
Combined with a generation of outreaching medical and public health education, these
"doctor in the sky" satellites could be a leading instrument in.a new U.S. world strategy
to assist the world in providing food for the hungry,cloth for the naked,medicine for
the sick, shelter for the shivering and security for the nations. The Office of
Management and Budget forced NASA to stop this creative work for reasons similar to
the above. Congress appeared to be too busy to care.
May I conclude with two points:- (1) we have mentioned only a small fraction of the
satellite capabilities already developed and (2) within NASA and each of the other
Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Government there are very large backlogs of valid,
feasible,pro-human concepts and services waiting to be put into the creative stream of
research and developent and demonstration to assist all nations in their struggles for
security and independence and development. What kind of future world order are we
trying to create? Can Congress answer that question? The whole world might like to know.
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ONE EXAMPLE OF AN EXECUTIVE DECISION WHICH CAN BE MADE BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE
UNITED STATES, AND CONGRESS, TO SIGNAL A NEW WORLD COMMITMENT TO LIFE AND HOPE
Reprinted from December 1973 SPECTRUM, journal of the 160,000 member Institute of
Electrical and Electronic Engineers -IEEE - to stimulate creative professional,
public and political discussion. This is an expansion of President Eisenhower's
"Open Skies" policy magnified a thousand times by today's global satellite technology.
Proposal for a global information cooperative
The American people through their government
could announce to the world a large scale, long-
range, sustained commitment to build a giant open-
to-the-public Global Information Cooperative...
finked to a greatly expanded ten year series of
earth-orbiting, intelligence-gathering satellites and
other global information-gathering sources. The ob-
jective of this Global Information Cooperative would
be:
I. To maintain a public inventory of potential public
danger for the planet, whether from threat of war, or
pollution, or draught, or hurricane, or blight, or ship-
wreck, or any other threat to the general wellbeing
of human beings everywhere, and
II. To provide earth resources development infor-
mation assisting the economic progress and human
wellbeing for people of all nations. All nations will be
invited to cooperate as part of an eventual broader
War Prevention Decade of new research and devel-
opment and testing.
All nations would be invited to cooperate by as-
signing experts and research teams to work together
in a large Global Information Research Park sur-
rounding the Cooperative. This would include military
experts, intelligence experts, agricultural experts,
geologic survey experts, and specialists in all relev-
ent fields. There would be no classified information,
no secrets. Anything that can be seen or detected or
discovered through outerspace instrumentation
would be available to the people and the nations of
the world.
Information would be made public on large illumi-
nated information display walls, and would be stored
in computers for reference. Communications links
would be maintained with the world radio, television,
and printed news and public information media. This
mobilization of information research and develop-
Checkpoint
BOX 19127, WASHINGTON, D. C. 20036
Address Correction Requested
A project ojWarControl Planners, Inc., which is anon-profit,
educational corporation incorporated in the State ojNew York
(Box 35, Chappaqua, N. Y.J. The newsletter CHECKPOINT
will be sent jiee to any who request it. Contributions are
invited to cover costs ojprinting and mailin and are tax de-
uctt e. a co-or enators ore Howard and Harrier Kurtz.
A ress all correspondence to the Washington Ojfice:
Box /9127, Washington, D. C. 20036 -Phone [phone].
Volume VI, No.l February 1978
ment for the future safety and wellbeing of the peo-
ple of all nations would proceed with American ini-
tiative, no matter what nations withhold cooperation at
first. Nations would be free to join the cooperative at
any future time.
There would be no need to first "negotiate" with
potential enemies before the American people lead
the people of all nations gradually toward a new age
of openness. Potential enemies on both sides of all
confrontations would be invited to see inside their
own country what American reconnaissance satel-
lites already see.
All nations capable of launching surveillance sat-
ellites would be invited to link them to the Global In-
formation Cooperative. All nations would be invited
to build similar open-to-the-public information cen-
ters, linked to central information receivers, and
storage facilities, and retrieval facilities. All nations
would be free to install receiving facilities to be
linked directly to the eyes-in-the-sky.
Howard and Harriet Kurtz
War Control Planners, Inc.
Box 19127
Washington, D. C. 20036
Howard G. Kurtz spent twenty-two years (1932-
1954) in airline management positions and twelve
years (1954-1966) in the management consulting
firm of Handy Associates, Inc. Since 1966 he has
devoted his full-time to War Control Planners, Inc.,
of which he is president.
Harriet B. Kurtz graduated from Wellesley College in
1937, and Union Theological Seminary in 1962. She
was ordained to the ministry of the United Church of
Christ in 1964, with a mission in the field of war and
crisis as her particular charge.
Public Affairs
C I A
Washington D.C. 20505
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PAI D
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