ESPIONAGE - THE SPIES ABOVE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01601R000300340078-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 8, 2001
• Sequence Number: 78
• Publication Date: August 30, 1971
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

STATINTL
Approved For Release 2001/0.-Y
s~ : Cl 7 DP80-01.601 RO
~.
ESPIONAGE
The p;ks Above
If a U-2 overflight could once pro-
yoke crisis, as the Francis Gary Powers
incident did in 1960, the. elaborately pre-?
cise spy satellite systems of the U.S.
and Soviet Union a decade later have
created and enforced a de facto "open
skies" policy between the two super-
powers. Today such satellites slide
through space like disembodied eyes re-
cording an astonishing variety of ' in-
format.on. Just over a month ago, for
example, the Pentagon revealed that the
latest Soviet SS-9 ICBM ground tubes
arc exactly 20 ft. in diameter.
Neither county, naturally, is very
talkative about its espionage system. But
t/
in a new book, Secret Sentries in Space
(Random house; $7.90, Philip J. Klass,
senior avionics editor of Aviation Week
s Space Technology, offers a first, fas-
einating look at the space hardware that
has,-so far, contributed to global stabil-
ity. By allowing the two major nuclear
powers to examine one another's military
installations in exact detail, the satellites
have considerably diminished the danger
of war through.miscaiculation.
Florida Force. During the 1961 Ber-
lin crisis, the "first generation" of Dis-
coverer satellites was aloft, and John
Kennedy was able to show Soviet For-
eign Minister Andrei Gromyko plio-
of U.S. aircraft in Florida and the Amer-
ican task . force assembled in the Ca-
ribbean. "What role, if any, Russian sat-
ellite pictures played in. convincing
Kremlin leaders that the U.S. was pre-
pared to go the limit," Klass writes,
"probably is known only to a few Rus-
sianlcader.s."
'T1ie author concludes that "the au-
toniatons-in-orbit, adolescent as their
performance was at that stage, had kept
the two giant thermonuclear powers
from bombing into World War III at
least once, perhaps twice." Another
round of reconnaissance dueling came
last year over the Middle lust, when
U.S. satellite pictures confirmed that
RECOVERING CAPSULE.
Also for poppy fields,
the Soviets and Egyptians had moved
missiles into the cease-fire zone, in vi-
olation of the cease-fire agreement.
Klass submitted proofs of his book
to the CIA and the Pentagon; they ob-
jected td its publication but made no
tratiod of for range Russian missiles,
Klass reports, is behind the Urals in Cen-
tral Asia and in Siberia.
Narcotics Film. Besides sniffing out
weaponry, spy satellites provide a va-
riety of 'data for civilian use-in gco-
logical studies, for example,. or even
narcotics control. Color film pictures of
the poppy fields of Southeast Asia and
elsewhere,- taken from satellites, have
been projected at the White lIouse.
When President Nixon referred recently
to international control of narcotics, he
had in mind the, U.S. capability to
point out the exact locations of the
world's poppy fields.
In the past 18 months, the Soviets
have moved one step ahead of the. U.S.
They have devised a killer satellite that
can track, inspect and blow up another
satellite aloft. The situation is not un-
like . drat in the Janics Bond epic You
Only Live Twice. The U.S. is still de-
veloping such a destroyer, and the pos-
sibilities are ominous. Should one side
decide to knock out the other's spies,
Klass concludes, "it will turn space into
a battleground, precipitate a still more
costly arms race and return the world
to the perilous days of thcJate 1950s."
STATINTL .
move to stop it. No one else has writ-'
ten in comparable detail about spy sat-
ellites. Klass describes, for example, the
nation's latest SAAMOS,(satellite and mis-
sile observation system); "the Big Bird,"
launched just twomonths ago. A giant,
twelve-ton spacecraft capable of working
aloft for at.least several months, the
Big Bird combines the capabilities of sev-
eral earlier satellites: It can transmit
high duality pictures by radio, and eject
tographs indicating exactly how few
JCl3Ms the Soviets really had. "I be-
lieve," says Klass, "that after Gromyko
saw those. pictures he persuaded Khru-
shchev to back down." ,
Similarly, Klass writes, "the President
entered the Cuban missile crisis with a
tegic missile an 8' rt er".si renglth, thanT s c
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time, the Soviets undoubtedly used their ice and snow to locate Sovict undcr-