NRO Declassified/NIMA - Ptech/DHS terrorist Amit Yoran-In-Q-Tel

[Dig]

National Reconnaissance Office!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The NRO is the most powerful government agency!  Much more powerful than FBI/CIA/NSA

VIGILANT GUARDIAN
http://www.apfn.net/Messageboard/02-12-04/discussion.cgi.40.html
Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold, commander of the Continental U.S. NORAD Region (CONAR) at Tyndall AFB, Fla., was informed by Marr about the suspected hijacked aircraft shortly after 8:40 a.m. Arnold, who then headed the 1st Air Force for Air Combat Command, was in Air Operations Center preparing for another day of a major NORAD counter-terrorism exercise that morning called "Vigilant Guardian."

September 11, 2001

The National Reconnaissance Office in Chantilly, Va.,

a branch of the military intelligence community

that operates the nation's spy satellites

was engaged in a similar exercise in which a

passenger jet leaving the nearby Dulles Airport would

crash into the NRO building.

"I told him to scramble; we'll get clearances later," Arnold said. On Sept. 11, a time consuming bureaucratic procedure was required before scrambling defensive interceptor jets. FAA officials had to contact the National Military Command Center (NMCC) and request Pentagon air support. The NMCC then had to call NORAD's command center and ask about availability of aircraft and finally approval had to come from the Defense Secretary - Donald H. Rumsfeld - before launching fighters. This time consuming procedure was the result of a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction dated June 1, 2001.

The Committee of 300 Writer Coleman talks about them:

Wake up America! - Dr. John Coleman (Illuminati, Committee of 300)

1 hr 43 min - Aug 8, 2006 -  (104 ratings)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=170819614143019768

[Dig]

Guys, NRO are the guys telling AT&T/Sprint/etc. to spy on us without a warrant.

they are the ones controlling all data mining shit!

this is so timed perfectly for the bullshit FISA crap.

Bush was told to tell everyone they were going to die if FISA was not passed.

now they are trying to blow up their secrets.

exactly what the f**k is NRO planning against Americans anyway?

[Dig]

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/

In September 1992 the Department of Defense acknowledged the existence of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an agency established in 1961 to manage the development and operation of the nation's reconnaissance satellite systems.  The creation of the NRO was the result of a number of factors.

    On May 1, 1960 Francis Gary Powers took off from Peshawar, Pakistan on the U-2 mission designated Operation GRAND SLAM.  The flight was planned to take him over the heart of the Soviet Union and terminate at Bodo, Norway.  The main target was Plesetsk, which communications intercepts had indicated might be the site of an ICBM facility.1  When the Soviet Union shot down his plane and captured him alive, they also forced President Dwight Eisenhower to halt aerial overflights of Soviet territory.

    At that time the U.S. had two ongoing programs to produce satellite vehicles that could photograph Soviet territory.  Such vehicles would allow far more frequent coverage than possible with manned aircraft.  In addition, they would avoid placing the lives of pilots at risk and eliminate the risks of international incidents resulting from overflights.

    The Air Force program, designated SAMOS, sought to develop a number of different satellite systems--including one that would radio its imagery back to earth and another that would return film capsules.  The CIA program, CORONA, focused solely on developing a film return satellite.

    However, both the CIA and Air Force programs were in trouble.  Launch after launch in the CORONA program, eleven in all by May 1, 1960, eight of which carried cameras, had resulted in failure--the only variation was in the cause.  Meanwhile, the SAMOS program was also experiencing difficulties, both with regard to hardware and program definition.2

    Concerns over SAMOS led President Eisenhower to direct two groups to study both the technical aspects of the program as well as how the resulting system would be employed.  The ultimate result was a joint report presented to the President and NSC on August 25, 1960.3

    As a result of that meeting Eisenhower approved a first SAMOS launch in September, as well as reorientation of the program, with the development of high-resolution film-return systems being assigned highest priority while the electronic readout system would be pursued as a research project.  With regard to SAMOS management, he ordered that the Air Force institute special management arrangements, which would involve a direct line of authority between the SAMOS project office and the Office of the Air Force Secretary, bypassing the Air Staff and any other intermediate layers of bureaucracy.4

    Secretary of the Air Force Dudley C. Sharp wasted little time creating the recommended new structure and procedures.  On August 31st Sharp signed Secretary of the Air Force Order 115.1, establishing the Office of Missile and Satellite Systems within his own office to help him manage the SAMOS project. With Order 116.1, Sharp created a SAMOS project office at the Los Angeles headquarters of the Air Force Ballistic Missile Division (AFBMD) as a field extension of the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force to carry out development of the satellite.5

    The impact of the orders, in practice, was that the director of the SAMOS project would report directly to Under Secretary of the Air Force Joseph V. Charyk, who would manage it in the Secretary's name. In turn, Charyk would report directly to the Secretary of Defense.6

    The changes would not stop there.  The urgency attached to developing a successful reconnaissance satellite led, ultimately, to the creation of a top secret program and organization to coordinate the entire national reconnaissance effort.

    Several of the documents listed below also appear in either of two National Security Archive microfiche collections on U.S. intelligence.  The U.S. Intelligence Community: Organization, Operations and Management: 1947-1989 (1990) and U.S. Espionage and Intelligence: Organization, Operations, and Management, 1947-1996 (1997) publish together for the first time recently declassified documents pertaining to the organizational structure, operations and management of the U.S. Intelligence Community over the last fifty years, cross-indexed for maximum accessibility.  Together, these two sets reproduce on microfiche over 2,000 organizational histories, memoranda, manuals, regulations, directives, reports, and studies, totaling more than 50,000 pages of documents from the Office of the Director of Central Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, military service intelligence organizations, National Security Council, and other official government agencies and organizations.

Document 1
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/01-01.htm
Joseph Charyk, Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense
Management of the National Reconnaissance Program
24 July 1961
Top Secret
1 p.

The organizational changes resulting from the decisions of August 25, 1960 and their implementation left some unsatisfied.  In particular, James Killian and Edwin Land, influential members of the President's intelligence advisory board pushed for permanent and institutionalized collaboration between the CIA and Air Force.  After the Kennedy administration took office the push to establish a permanent reconnaissance organization took on additional life.  There was a strong feeling in the new administration, particularly by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and his deputy, Roswell Gilpatric, that a better, more formalized relationship was required.7

    On July 24, 1961, Air Force Undersecretary Joseph Charyk sent a memorandum to McNamara attaching two possible memoranda of agreement for creation of a National Reconnaissance Program, along with some additional material.

Document 2
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/02-01.htm
Memorandum of Understanding
Management of the National Reconnaissance Program (Draft)
20 July 1961
Top Secret
5 pp.

This memo specified establishment of a National Reconnaissance Program (NRP) consisting of "all satellite and overflight reconnaissance projects whether overt or covert," and including "all photographic projects for intelligence, geodesy and mapping purposes, and electronic signal collection projects for electronic signal intelligence and communications intelligence."

    To manage the NRP, a National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) would be established on a covert basis. The NRO director (DNRO) would be the Deputy Director for Plans, CIA (at the time, Richard Bissell) while the Under Secretary of the Air Force would serve as Deputy Director (DDNRO). The DNRO would be responsible for the management of CIA activities, the DDNRO and the Air Force for Defense Department activities.  The DoD, specifically the Air Force acting as executive agent, would be primarily responsible for technical program management, scheduling, vehicle operations, financial management and overt contract administration, while the CIA would be primarily responsible for targeting each satellite.  The office would operate under streamlined management procedures similar to those established in August 1960 for SAMOS.

Document 3
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/03-01.htm
Memorandum of Understanding
Management of the National Reconnaissance Program (Draft)
21 July 1961
Top Secret
4 pp.

This secondary memorandum was prepared at the suggestion of Defense Department General Counsel Cyrus Vance.  It offered a quite different solution to the problem.  As with the primary memo, it established a NRP covering both satellite and aerial reconnaissance operations.  But rather than a jointly run program, it placed responsibility for management solely in the hands of a covertly appointed Special Assistant for Reconnaissance, to be selected by the Secretary of Defense.  The office of the Special Assistant would handle the responsibilities assigned to the NRO in the other MOU.  The CIA would "assist the Department of Defense by providing support as required in areas of program security, communications, and covert contract administration."

Document 4
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/04-01.htm
Memorandum
Pros and Cons of Each Solution
Not dated
Top Secret
2 pp.

The assessment of pros and cons favored the July 20 memorandum, listing five pros for the first solution and only two for the second.  The first solution would consolidate responsibilities into a single program with relatively little disruption of established management, represented a proven solution, would require no overt organizational changes, would allow both agencies to retain authoritative voices in their areas of expertise, and provided a simplified management structure.  The two cons noted were the division of program responsibility between two people, and that "successful program management depends upon mutual understanding and trust of the two people in charge of the NRO."  It would not be too long before that later observation would take on great significance.

    In contrast, there were more cons than pros specified for the second solution.  The only two points in its favor were the consolidation of reconnaissance activities into a single program managed by a single individual and the assignment of complete responsibility to the agency (DoD) with the most resources.  Foremost of the six cons was the need for DoD to control and conduct large-scale covert operations, in as much as it was an entity "whose normal methods are completely foreign to this task."

Document 5
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/05-01.htm
Roswell Gilpatric, Letter to Allen Dulles
Management of the National Reconnaissance Program
6 September 1961
Top Secret
4 pp.

On July 28, 1961, four days after receiving Charyk's memorandum and draft memoranda of understanding, McNamara instructed Air Force Undersecretary Joseph Charyk to continue discussions with the key officials and advisers in order to resolve any organizational difficulties that threatened to impede the satellite reconnaissance effort.  The ultimate result was this letter from Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric to Dulles, which confirmed "our agreement with respect to the setting up of the National Reconnaissance Program."

    The letter specified the creation of a NRP.  It also established the NRO, a uniform security control system, and specified that the NRO would be directly responsive to the intelligence requirements and priorities specified by the United States Intelligence Board.  It specified implementation of NRP programs assigned to the CIA through the Deputy Director for Plans.  It designated the Undersecretary of the Air Force as the Defense Secretary's Special Assistant for Reconnaissance, with full authority in DoD reconnaissance matters.

    The letter contained no specific assignment of responsibilities to either the CIA or Defense Department, stating only that "The Directors of the National Reconnaissance Office will ... insure that the particular talents, experience and capabilities within the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency are fully and most effectively utilized in this program."

    The letter provided for the NRO to be managed jointly by the Under Secretary of the Air Force and the CIA Deputy Director for Plans (at the time, still Richard Bissell).  A May 1962 agreement between the CIA and Defense Department established a single NRO director.  Joseph Charyk was named to the directorship shortly afterward.

Document 6
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/06-01.htm
Joseph Charyk
Memorandum for NRO Program Directors/Director, NRO Staff
Organization and Functions of the NRO
23 July 1962
Top Secret
11 pp.

This memorandum represents the fundamental directive on the organization and functions of the NRO.  In addition to the Director (there was no provision for a deputy director), there were four major elements to the NRO--the NRO staff and three program elements, designated A, B, and C.  The staff's functions included assisting the director in dealing with the USIB and the principal consumers of the intelligence collected.

    The Air Force Office of Special Projects (the successor to the SAMOS project office) became NRO's Program A.  The CIA reconnaissance effort was designated Program B, while the Navy's space reconnaissance effort, at the time consisting of the Galactic Radiation and Background (GRAB) satellite, whose radar ferret mission involved the collection of Soviet radar signals, became Program C.  Although the GRAB effort was carried out by the Naval Research Laboratory, the director of the Office of Naval Intelligence would serve as Program C director until 1971.8

Document 7
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/07-01.htm
Agreement between the Secretary of Defense and the Director of Central Intelligence
on Management of the National Reconnaissance Program
13 March 1963
Top Secret
6 pp.

In December 1962, Joseph Charyk decided to leave government to become president of the COMSAT Corporation.  By that time a number of disputes between the CIA and NRO had contributed to Charyk's view that the position of the NRO and its director should be strengthened.  During the last week of February 1963, his last week in office, he completed a revision of a CIA draft of a new reconnaissance agreement to replace the May 1962 agreement (which had replaced the September 6, 1961 agreement).  Charyk took the revision to Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric.  It appears that some CIA-suggested changes were incorporated sometime after Charyk left office.  On March 13, Gilpatric signed the slightly modified version on behalf of DoD.  It was sent to the CIA that day and immediately approved by DCI John McCone, who had replaced Allen Dulles in November 1961.9

    The new agreement, while it did not include all the elements Charyk considered important, did substantially strengthen the authority of the NRO and its director.  It named the Secretary of Defense as the Executive Agent for the NRP.  The program would be "developed, managed, and conducted in accordance with policies and guidance jointly agreed to by the Secretary of Defense and the Director of Central Intelligence."

    The NRO would manage the NRP "under the direction, authority, and control of the Secretary of Defense."  The NRO's director would be selected by the Defense Secretary with the concurrence of the DCI, and report to the Defense Secretary.  The NRO director was charged with presenting to the Secretary of Defense "all projects" for intelligence collection and mapping and geodetic information via overflights and the associated budgets, scheduling all overflight missions in the NRP, as well as engineering analysis to correct problems with collection systems.  With regard to technical management, the DNRO was to "assign all project tasks such as technical management, contracting etc., to appropriate elements of the DoD and CIA, changing such assignments, and taking any such steps he may determine necessary to the efficient management of the NRP."

Document 8
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/08-01.htm
Department of Defense Directive Number TS 5105.23
Subject: National Reconnaissance Office
27 March 1964
Top Secret
4 pp.

This directive replaced the original June 1962 DoD Directive on the NRO, and remains in force today. The directive specifies the role of the Director of the NRO, the relationships between the NRO and other organizations, the director's authorities, and security. It specified that documents or other material concerning National Reconnaissance Program matters would be handled within a special security system (known as the BYEMAN Control System).

Document 9
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/09-01.htm
President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
Memorandum for the President
Subject: National Reconnaissance Program
2 May 1964
Top Secret
11 pp.

The 1963 CIA-DoD agreement on the NRP did not end the battles between the CIA and NRO--as some key CIA officials, including ultimately DCI John McCone, sought to reestablish a major role for the CIA in the satellite reconnaissance effort.  The continuing conflict was examined by the PFIAB.

    The board concluded that "the National Reconnaissance Program despite its achievements, has not yet reached its full potential."  The fundamental cause for the NRP's shortcomings was "inadequacies in organizational structure."  In addition, there was no clear division of responsibilities and roles between the Defense Department, CIA, and the DCI.

    The recommendations of the board represented a clear victory for the NRO and its director.  The DCI should have a "large and important role" in establishing intelligence collection requirements and in ensuring that the data collected was effectively exploited, according to the board.  In addition, his leadership would be a key factor in the work of the United States Intelligence Board relating to the scheduling of space and airborne reconnaissance missions.

    But the board also recommended that President Johnson sign a directive which would assign to NRO’s Air Force component (the Air Force Office of Special Projects) systems engineering, procurement, and operation of all satellite reconnaissance systems. [/b]

Document 10
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/10-01.htm
Agreement for Reorganization of the National Reconnaissance Program
13 August 1965
Top Secret
6 pp.

Despite the recommendations of the May 2, 1964 PFIAB report, which were challenged by DCI John McCone, no action was taken to solidify the position of the NRO and its director.  Instead prolonged discussions over a new agreement continued into the summer of 1965.  During this period the CIA continued work on what would become two key satellite programs--the HEXAGON/KH-9 imaging and RHYOLITE signals intelligence satellites.

    In early August, Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance and CIA official John Bross reached an understanding on a new agreement, and it was signed by Vice Adm. William F. Raborn (McCone's successor) and Vance on August 13, 1965.  It represented a significant victory for the CIA, assigning key decision-making authority to an executive committee, authority that was previously the prerogative of the NRO director as the agent of the Secretary of Defense.

    The Secretary of Defense was to have "the ultimate responsibility for the management and operation of the NRO and the NRP," and have the final power to approve the NRP budget.  The Secretary also was empowered to make decisions when the executive committee could not reach agreement.

    The DCI was to establish collection priorities and requirements for targeting NRP operations, as well as establish frequency of coverage, review the results obtained by the NRP and recommend steps for improving its results if necessary, serve on the executive committee, review and approve the NRP budget, and provide security policy guidance.

    The NRP Executive Committee established by the agreement would consist of the DCI, Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology.  The committee was to recommend to the Secretary of Defense the "appropriate level of effort for the NRP," approve or modify the consolidated NRP and its budget, approve the allocation of responsibility and the corresponding funds for research and exploratory development for new systems.  It was instructed to insure that funds would be adequate to pursue a vigorous research and development program, involving both CIA and DoD.  The executive committee was to assign development of sensors to the agency best equipped to handle the task.

    The Director of the NRO would manage the NRO and execute the NRP "subject to the direction and control of the Secretary of Defense and the guidance of the Executive Committee."  His authority to initiate, improve, modify, redirect or terminate all research and development programs in the NRP, would be subject to review by the executive committee.  He could demand that all agencies keep him informed about all programs undertaken as part of the NRP.

Document 11
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/11-01.htm
Analysis of "A $1.5 Billion Secret in Sky"
Washington Post, December 9, 1973
Not dated
Top Secret
33 pp.

Throughout the 1960s, the United States operation of reconnaissance satellites was officially classified, but well known among specialists and the press.  However, it was not until January 1971 that the NRO's existence was first disclosed by the media, when it was briefly mentioned in a New York Times article on intelligence and foreign policy.

    A much more extensive discussion of the NRO appeared in the December 9, 1973 Washington Post as a result of the inadvertent mention of the reconnaissance office in a Congressional report.  The NRO prepared this set of classified responses to the article, clearly intended for those in Congress who might be concerned about the article's purported revelations about the NRO's cost overruns and avoidance of Congressional oversight.

Document 12
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/12-01.htm
E.C. Aldridge, Jr. (Director, NRO)
Letter to David L. Boren, Chairman,
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
21 November 1988
Secret
3 pp.

The late 1980s saw the beginning of what eventually would be a wide-ranging restructuring of the NRO.  In November 1988 NRO director Edward "Pete" Aldridge wrote to Senator David Boren, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, concerning the findings of an extensive study (the NRO Restructure Study) of the organizational structure of the NRO.

    Aldridge proceeded to report that, after having discussed the study's recommendations with Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci and Director of Central Intelligence William Webster, he was directing the development of plans to implement the recommendations.  Specific changes would include the creation of a centralized systems analysis function "to conduct cross-system trades and simulations within the NRO," creation of a "User Support" function to improve NRO support to intelligence community users as well as to the growing number of operational military users, and the dispersal of the NRO Staff to the new units, with the staff being replaced by a group of policy advisers.  In addition, Aldridge foresaw the establishment of an interim facility "to house the buildup of the new functions and senior management."  The ultimate goal, projected for the 1991-92 period, would be the "collocation of all NRO elements [including the Los Angeles-based Air Force Office of Special Projects] . . . in the Washington, D.C. area."

Document 13
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/13-01.htm
Memorandum of Agreement
Subject: Organizational Restructure of the National Reconnaissance Office
15 December 1988
Secret
2 pp.

This memorandum of agreement, signed by the Director of the NRO and the directors of the NRO's three programs commits them to the restructuring discussed in Edward Aldridge's November 21 letter to Senator Boren.

    Many changes recommended by Aldridge, who left office at the end of 1988, were considered by a 1989 NRO-sponsored review group and subsequently adopted.

Document 14
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/14-01.htm
Report to the Director of Central Intelligence
DCI Task Force on The National Reconnaissance Office, Final Report
April 1992
Secret
35 pp.

This report was produced by a panel chaired by former Lockheed Corporation CEO Robert Fuhrman, whose members included both former and serving intelligence officials.  It focused on a variety of issues other than current and possible future NRO reconnaissance systems.  Among the issues it examined were mission, organizational structure, security and classification.

    One of its most significant conclusions was that the Program A,B,C structure that had been instituted in 1962 (see Document 6) "does not enhance mission effectiveness" but "leads to counterproductive competition and makes it more difficult to foster loyalty and to maintain focus on the NRO mission."  As a result, the panel recommended that the NRO be restructured along functional lines with imagery and SIGINT directorates.  This change was made even before the final version of the report was issued.

    The report also noted that while the NRO's existence was officially classified it was an "open secret" and that seeking to attempt to maintain such "open secrets ... weakens the case for preserving 'real' secrets."  In addition, such secrecy limited the NRO's ability to interact with customers and users.  The group recommended declassifying the "fact of" the NRO, as well as providing information about the NRO's mission, the identities of senior officials, headquarters locations, and the NRO as a joint Intelligence Community-Defense Department activity.

Document 15
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/15-01.htm
National Security Directive 67
Subject: Intelligence Capabilities: 1992-2005
30 March 1992
Secret
2 pp.

NSD 67 directed a number of changes in U.S. intelligence organization and operations.  Among those was implementation of the plan to restructure the NRO along functional lines--eliminating the decades old Program A (Air Force), B (CIA), and C (Navy) structure and replacing it with directorates for imaging, signals intelligence, and communication systems acquisition and operations--as recommended by the Fuhrman panel.  As a result, Air Force, CIA, and Navy personnel involved in such activities would now work together rather than as part of distinct NRO components.

Document 16
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/16-01.htm
Email message
Subject: Overt-Covert-DOS-REP-INPUT
27 July 1992
Secret
1 p.

In addition to the internal restructuring of the NRO, 1992 saw the declassification of the organization, as recommended by the Fuhrman report (Document 14), for a number of reasons--to facilitate interaction with other parts of the government, to make it easier for the NRO to support military operations, and in response to Congressional pressure to acknowledge the obvious.  As part of the process of considering declassification NRO consulted Richard Curl, head of the Office of Intelligence Resources of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research--the office which provides INR with expertise and support concerning technical collection systems.  Curl recommended a low-key approach to declassification.

Document 17
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/17-01.htm
Memorandum for Secretary of Defense, Director of Central Intelligence
Subject: Changing the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to an Overt Organization
30 July 1992
Secret
3 pp.

w/ attachments:
Document 17a: Mission of the NRO, 1 p.

Document 17b:  Implications of Proposed Changes, 4 pp. (Two versions)
 Version One
 Version Two

    These memos, from Director of the NRO Martin Faga, represent key documents in the declassification of the NRO. The memo noted Congressional pressure for declassification and that Presidential certification that declassification would result in "grave damage to the nation ... would be difficult in this case."

    Faga reported that as a result of an NRO review he recommended declassifying the fact of NRO's existence, issuing a brief mission statement, acknowledging the NRO as a joint DCI-Secretary of Defense endeavor, and identifying top level NRO officials. He also noted that his recommendations attempted to balance concerns about classifying information that realistically could not be protected, while maintaining an ability to protect matters believed to require continued protection.

    Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney, DCI Robert Gates, and President Bush approved the recommendations in September and a three-paragraph memorandum to correspondents acknowledging the NRO and NRP was issued on September 18, 1992.

    Document 17b comes in two versions, representing different security reviews.  Material redacted from the first version includes provisions of National Security Directive 30 on space policy, expression of concern over "derived disclosures," and the assessment that the "high degree of foreign acceptance of satellite reconnaissance, and the fact that we are not disclosing significant new data," would not lead to any significant foreign reaction.  Another redacted statement stated that "legislation . . . exempting all NRO operational files from [Freedom of Information Act] searches" was required.

Document 18
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/18-01.htm
Final Report: National Reconnaissance Program Task Force
for the Director of Central Intelligence
September 1992
Top Secret
15 pp.

The end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union required the U.S. intelligence community and NRO to reconsider how U.S. overhead reconnaissance systems were employed and what capabilities future systems should possess.  To consider these questions DCI Robert Gates appointed a task force, chaired by his eventual successor, R. James Woolsey.

    The final report considers future needs and collection methods, industrial base considerations, procurement policy considerations, international industrial issues, and transition considerations.  Its recommendations included elimination of both some collection tasks as well as some entire types of present and planned collection systems.

Document 19
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/19-01.htm
NRO Protection Review, "What is [BYEMAN]?"
6 November 1992
Top Secret
18 pp.

Traditionally, the designations of Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) compartments--such as UMBRA to indicate particularly sensitive communications intelligence and RUFF to intelligence based on satellite imagery--have themselves been classified.  In recent years, however, the NSA and CIA have declassified a number of such terms and their meaning. One exception has been the term "BYEMAN"-- the BYEMAN Control System being the security system used to protect information related to NRO collection systems (in contrast to their products) and other aspects of NRO activities, including budget and structure.  Thus, the term BYEMAN has been deleted in the title of the document and throughout the study--although the term and its meaning has become known by specialists and conveys no information beyond the text of any particular document.

    This study addresses the use of the BYEMAN classification within the NRO, its impact on contractors and other government personnel, and the consequences of the current application of the BYEMAN system.  The study concludes that placing information in the highly restrictive BYEMAN channels (in contrast to classifying the information at a lower level) may unduly restrict its dissemination to individuals who have a legitimate need to know.

Document 20
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/20-01.htm
NRO Strategic Plan
18 January 1993
Secret
19 pp.

A study headed by James Woolsey (Document 18), President Clinton's first DCI, heavily influenced the contents of this early 1993 document.  The plan's introduction notes that while some collection tasks will no longer be handled by overhead reconnaissance the "uncertain nature of the world that is emerging from the end of the 'cold war' places a heavy premium on overhead reconnaissance."  At the same time, "this overhead reconnaissance challenge must be met in an era of a likely reduced national security budget."

    The strategic plan is described in the introduction, as "the 'game plan' to transition current overhead collection architectures into a more integrated, end-to-end architecture for improved global access and tasking flexibility."

    The document goes on to examine the strategic context for future NRO operations, NRO strategy, strategic objectives, and approaches to implementation.  Strategic objectives include improving the responsiveness of NRO systems by developing an architecture that spans the entire collection and dissemination process, from the identification of requirements to dissemination of the data collected.

Document 21
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/21-01.htm
National Reconnaissance Office:
Collocation Construction Project, Joint DOD and CIA Review Report
November 1994
Unclassified
28 pp.

In an August 8, 1994 press conference, Senators Dennis DeConcini (D-Az.) and John Warner (R-Va.), the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence accused the NRO of concealing from Congress the cost involved in building a new headquarters to house government and contractor employees.  Previously NRO activities in the Washington area were conducted from the Pentagon and rented space in the Washington metropolitan area.  The collocation and restructuring decisions of the late 1980s and early 1990s had resulted in a requirement for a new headquarters facility.10

    The accusations were followed by hearings before both the Senate and House intelligence oversight committees--with House committee members defending the NRO and criticizing their Senate colleagues.  While they noted that some of the documents presented by the NRO covering total costs were not presented with desirable clarity, the House members were more critical of the Senate committee for inattention to their committee work.11

    This joint DoD and CIA review of the project, found "no intent to mislead Congress" but that "the NRO failed to follow Intelligence Community budgeting guidelines, applicable to all the intelligence agencies," that would have caused the project to be presented as a "New Initiative," and that the cost data provided by the NRO "were not presented in a consistent fashion and did not include a level of detail comparable to submissions for . . . intelligence community construction."

Document 22
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/22-01.htm
Memorandum for Director of Central Intelligence
Subject: Small Satellite Review Panel
Unclassified
July 1996

The concept of employing significantly smaller satellites for imagery collection was strongly advocated by Rep. Larry Combest during his tenure (1995-97) as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.  As a result the DCI was instructed to appoint a panel of experts to review the issue.12

    Panel members included former NRO directors Robert Hermann and Martin Faga; former NRO official and NSA director Lew Allen; scientist Sidney Drell and four others.  The panel's report supported a radical reduction in the size of most U.S. imagery satellites.  The panel concluded that "now is an appropriate time to make a qualitative change in the systems architecture of the nation's reconnaissance assets," in part because "the technology and industrial capabilities of the country permit the creation of effective space systems that are substantially smaller and less costly than current systems."  Thus, the panel saw "the opportunity to move towards an operational capability for . . . imagery systems, that consists of an array of smaller, cheaper spacecraft in larger number with a total capacity which is at least as useful as those currently planned and to transport them to space with substantially smaller and less costly launch vehicles."13

    The extent to which those recommendations have influenced NRO's Future Imagery Architecture plan is uncertain--although plans for large constellations of small satellites have not usually survived the budgetary process.

Document 23
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB35/23-01.htm
Defining the Future of the NRO for the 21st Century,
Final Report, Executive Summary
August 26, 1996
Unclassified
30 pp.

This report was apparently the first major outside review of the NRO conducted during the Clinton administration, and the first conducted after the NRO's transformation to an overt institution and its restructuring were firmly in place.

    Among those conducting the review were former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. David E. Jeremiah, former NRO director Martin Faga, and former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence John McMahon.  Issues studied by the panel included, inter alia, the existence of a possible alternative to the NRO, NRO's mission in the 21st Century, support to military operations, security, internal organization, and the relationship with NRO's customers.

    After reviewing a number of alternatives, the panel concluded that no other arrangement was superior for carrying out the NRO mission.  It did, however, recommend, changes with regards to NRO's mission and internal organization.  The panel concluded that where the NRO's current mission is "worldwide intelligence," its future mission should be "global information superiority," which "demands intelligence capabilities unimaginable just a few years ago."  The panel also recommended creation of a fourth NRO directorate, which was subsequently established, to focus solely on the development of advanced systems, in order to "increase the visibility and stature of technology innovation in the NRO."
 
 

[Dig]

Read the declassified NRO papers before they disappear!

[Dig]

Hey look at the organizational chart.

Why is someone above the president?

And why is that person blacked out?

[Anti_Illuminati]

Hey look at the organizational chart.

Why is someone above the president?

And why is that person blacked out?

It's probably the "President" at Mount Weather.  Also notice the bidirectional arrow across from that individual who is above the President--so there are 2 "official" positions superior to him, one "lateral", not to mention an unelected, lateral executive (DHS, but obviously others that are secret). 

[Dig]

United States Space Management and
Organization: Evaluating Organizational Options
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/library/report/2001/nssmo/article04.html
Keith Kruse
Charles B. Cushman, Jr.
Darcy M.E. Noricks
DFI International
And
Craig Baker
Space Commission Staff Member
Prepared for the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization

The information presented in this paper is based on research done by the authors. Although it was prepared for the Commission in conjunction with its deliberations, the opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author alone and do not represent those of the Commission or any of the Commissioners.


Preface

I. Introduction

II. Construct for Evaluation

A. Organizational Management Functions
B. Methodology
C. Assumptions
D. Criteria

III. Baseline

A. High-Level Guidance

1. Executive Office of the President
2. Interagency/Inter-sector Cooperation (DoD-Civil)
3. Interagency/Inter-sector Cooperation (DoD-Commercial)
4. Interagency/Inter-sector Cooperation (DoD-IC)
5. Congress

B. Implementation Guidance, Policy and Oversight

1. Intelligence Community
2. Office of the Secretary of Defense
3. Joint Chiefs of Staff
4. Military Services
5. Programming and Budgeting

C. Requirements Determination

1. Intelligence Community
2. OSD
3. Joint Chiefs of Staff
4. CINCs/Services

D. Research, Development and Acquisition

1. Intelligence Community
2. Office of the Secretary of Defense
3. Military Services
4. CINCs

E. Operations, Use, Training and Education

1. Intelligence Community
2. CINCs
3. Military Services
4. Training and Education

IV. Desired Outcomes and the Limitations of the Baseline

A. High-Level Guidance
B. Implementing Guidance, Policy and Oversight
C. Requirements Determination
D. Research, Development and Acquisition
E. Operations, Use, Training and Education

V. Options for Space Management and Organization

A. Congressionally Mandated Options

1. An Independent Military Department and Service
2. A Space Corps within the Air Force
3. An Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space
4. A Space Major Force Program

B. Other Suggested Options

1. Centralized Space Management and Operations Option
2. Under Secretary of Defense for Space, Information and Intelligence Option
3. Improved DoD/IC Cooperation Option
4. "Nuclear Navy" Option
5. Air Force's Recommended Changes

C. Synthesized Options

1. Transition/Executive Agent Option
2. National Security Space Organization Option
3. Joint Option

VI. Summary of Organizational Options

A. High-Level Guidance
B. Implementing Guidance, Policy and Oversight

1. OSD-DCI cooperation options
2. Policy guidance options
3. Budget-Programming guidance options

C. Requirements Determination
D. Research, Development & Acquisition
E. Operations, Use, Training and Education

Preface

This document is not intended to be exhaustive, although it is intended to be sufficiently comprehensive to support those topics the Commissioners discussed during the course of their deliberations. In several cases, this paper touches on topics but does not completely detail those topics. This occurs where the Commissioners did not delve too deeply into issues not considered vital to the execution of their charge. Readers desiring more information on specific units or agencies not covered here should contact those agencies directly. The information is only as accurate and as current as could be obtained from published sources describing some of the organizations, since the authors did not specifically contact every organization addressed herein to verify the accuracy and currency of the information presented. The materials collected and the analyses provided to the Commissioners are reflected in the background paper that follows.

[Dig]

Imagery Intelligence (IMINT)

Signals Intelligence (SIGINT)

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/army/mi.htm

Thanks, cool stuff.  I guess they are taking space pretty seriously...

Military Intelligence  Always Out Front

Military Intelligence provides timely, relevant, accurate and synchronized Intelligence and Electronic Warfare (IEW) support to leaders at all levels (tactical warfighting commander to strategic policy makers and the President) across the range of military operations. In war, IEW operations support the winning of battles and campaigns. In Low Intensity Conflicts, IEW operations support the promotion of peace, the resolution of conflict, and the deterrence of war. These operatins reduce uncertainty and risk to US Forces and permit the effective application of force.

Intelligence has been an essential element of Army operations during war as well as during periods of peace. In the past, requirements were met by personnel from the Army Intelligence and Army Security Reserve branches, two-year obligated tour officers, one-tour levies on the various branches, and Regular Army officers in the specialization programs. To meet the Army's increased requirement for national and tactical intelligence, an Intelligence and Security Branch was established in the Army effective July 1, 1962, by General Orders No. 38, July 3, 1962. On July 1, 1967, the branch was redesignated as Military Intelligence.

Strategic Intelligence encompasses all intelligence collection activities conducted at Echelons Above Corps (EAC). Strategic Intelligence analysts work at places like the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Agency, and at theater level commands like European Command (EUCOM) or Central Command (CENTCOM).The Strategic Intelligence analyst does both long-term and short-term analysis that can be in a number of different areas: Biographic Intelligence (getting the scoop on military leaders throughout the world); Economic Intelligence (analysis of the economic capabilities of other countries); Scientific and Technical Intelligence (analysis of the scientific and technical capabilities of other countries); Armed Forces Intelligences (analysis of the capabilities, limitations, structure, equipment, doctrine, tactics, future capabilities, etc. of other military forces); Political Intelligence (analysis of the political leadership, goals, policies, etc. of other countries); Sociological Intelligence (analysis of the societies and cultures of other countries). There are other components of Strategic Intelligence, but these give you an idea of some of the things it encompasses. MI officers generally don't begin to work in Strategic Intelligence assignments until they've reached the rank of captain and have successfully completed company command and S2 time.

All-Source Intelligence is what every intelligence officer starts off with. Graduates from OBC, you graduate as a 35D All-Source Intelligence Officer. OBC develops a strong foundational knowledge of all the intelligence disciplines, what their capabilities and limitations are, and how to use them to support the commander's intelligence needs. An All-Source Intelligence Officer can be considered the "Jack of all trades," with a good working knowledge of all the disciplines. An All-Source Intelligence Officer orchestrates multi-discipline collection management of intelligence assets; coordinates surevillance activities; you conduct Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB); analyzes the enemy's capabilities and their impact on the maneuver commander's plan; and ultimately understands the maneuver commander's intelligence requirements and know how to get the answers to the questions that need to be answered so that the commander's plan can be executed successfully. Many MI officers remain 35D All-Source Intelligence Officers, and don't specialize in any one particular intelligence discipline. 35D's have a solid understanding of all of the disciplines, and understand how to use them in support of the commander's intelligence needs.

Since the earliest wars, military commanders have always wanted to be able to "see over the next hill." Those who held the high ground, the commanding position, could see with their own eyes what the opposing army was doing and could concentrate forces at the enemy's weak points and often order a decisive attack. Imagery Intelligence (IMINT) is the intelligence discipline that lets commanders "see over the next hill." Satellites, spy planes, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), and even cameras are all tools of the trade in IMINT. IMINT allows us to take "pictures" of enemy formations, equipment, bases, people, etc., that we can then analyze to determine enemy intent and capability. The National Imagery and Mapping Association (NIMA) is the head proponent for IMINT, and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is another key player in the IMINT arena.

The essence of the Army's Counterintelligence mission is to support force protection. In general, the CI mission is focused on preventing the enemy from gaining intelligence on our own forces. CI does this in a number of ways. By its nature, CI is a multidiscipline function designed to defeat or degrade threat intelligence and targeting capabilities. CI operations support force protection through support to operations security (OPSEC), deception, and rear area operations across the range of military operations. CI personnel generally work in small teams, and play a key role in helping the commander successfully execute his mission. CI personnel play an integral role in developing and implementing deception plans that confuse and hinder the enemy's ability to determine friendly courses of action. CI personnel also play an extremely critical role in the acquisition of first-hand, primary source intelligence. CI personnel do this through interrogation of enemy prisoners, through surveillance operations, and through establishing and maintaining relationships with various people (known as sources) who provide intelligence on enemy capabilities and intent. Counterintelligence is one of the smaller intel disciplines, but certainly an important one.

Human Intelligence (HUMINT) is the oldest of the intelligence disciplines. HUMINT is particularly important because it can confirm, refute, or augment intelligence derived through other disciplines. HUMINT is a key contributor to the all-source picture of the battlefield. HUMINT is the intelligence derived from information collected from people and related documents, using passively and actively acquired human sources to gather information to answer intelligence requirements and to cross-cue other intelligence disciplines. HUMINT tasks include but are not limited to: Source operations using tactical and other developed sources; Liaison with host nation officials and allied counterparts Debriefing of civilian populace; Interrogation of enemy prisoners of war and detainees; and Exploitation of adversary and open-source documents, media, and material. The CIA is the overall manager of the national HUMINT collection program. Selection for HUMINT in MI is highly competitive, and only senior captains and majors are considered.

Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) results from collecting, locating, processing, analyzing, and reporting intercepted communications and noncommunications emitters. What does that mean? Basically, SIGINT is the intelligence derived from intercepting and analyzing either voice communications (like radio comms, phone comms, or any communications that involves the voice transmission), or electronics communications. Electronic comms can be radar transmissions or any type of communication that is non-voice. SIGINT is a powerful intelligence discipline, because it can provide near real time intelligence for the commander. Imagine if you could listen in on enemy radio traffic and hear the enemy discuss his operational plan as he's talking about it...you would be able to develop a clear picture of the enemy's intent pretty quickly, right? Well, that's what SIGINT can provide!

[Dig]

THE WORLD OF 2020

AND ALTERNATIVE FUTURES

 

Air University Air Education and Training Command United States Air Force

Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama

SPACECAST 2020 was a chief of staff of the Air Force directed space study, challenged to identify and conceptually develop high-leverage space technologies and systems that will best support the war fighter in the twenty-first century. The study was composed of officers, airmen, and civilians from institutions within Air University and assisted by outside advisory groups made up of the Air Force major command vice commanders, senior retired military officers and distinguished civilians, and technical experts throughout the Department of Defense and civil/commercial laboratories. This is the third of four monographs: Executive Summary, The SPACECAST 2020 Process, The World of 2020 and Alternative Futures, and Operational Analysis.

DISCLAIMER

SPACECAST 2020 was a study done in compliance with a directive from the chief of staff, Air Force to examine the capabilities and technologies for 2020 and beyond to preserve the security of the US. Presented on 22 June 1994, this report was produced in the Department of Defense school environment in the interest of academic freedom and the advancement of national defense-related concepts. The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Air Force, Department of Defense, or the United States government.

The World of 2020

and Alternative Futures

If a man does not give thought to problems which are still

distant, he will be worried by them when they come nearer.

-Confucius

Defining the distant future is a hazardous enterprise. One is invariably wrong on many counts. Failing to consider the future is even more hazardous. It leads you to engage in the wrong enterprise with invalid or irrelevant objectives, only to fail to achieve your desired results while continually being buffeted by unanticipated events and unintended consequences. What follows is a look into the distant future constructed by military officers as a backdrop for their exploration of ideas about the United States space activity circa 2020.

SPACECAST 2020 is the name of the study. One hundred fourteen officers and civilians attending the Air Command and Staff College and the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, during the 1993-1994 academic year conducted the study. Gen Merrill A. McPeak, the chief of staff of the Air Force, requested the study. The study chair was the commander of Air University, Lt Gen Jay W. Kelley. Under General Kelleys supervision, Air University personnel devised the process to produce new ideas and executed the study to produce and validate those ideas.1 All this had to be accomplished within the confines of the Air University academic year and be completed by June 1994. The guidance required that the study: (1) be characterized by unconstrained creativity, (2) remain detached from redefining service organizational structures or redefining the assigned roles and missions of the armed forces, (3) be centered on generating a vision of the military space capabilities our country would require in the far future, and (4) not interfere with the core curricula of any of the Air University colleges. Although not part of the study's original mandate, General Kelley created two oversight groups apart from the Air University to advise the study participants and evaluate their progress and findings. General Kelley defined a key requirement of his role as study chair as being the only person involved in the study with the power to say no.

As the study group began exploring new ideas and learning about creativity, space, and the future, they quickly concluded that a clear consensus about the future environment was critical to the realistic evaluation of new concepts and technologies. Assumptions about the SPACECAST 2020 world needed to be explicit for effective planning. As the study group set about forging a consensus about the future, some participants raised concerns about the potential for stifling creativity and increasing the risk of being wrong by planning around a single view of the future. To reduce the risks of either being fuzzy or being wrong, the study group developed multiple visions and sets of crystallized assumptions. The study group developed a most likely future, the SPACECAST world view, and several alternate futures.

Creating Views of the Future

The SPACECAST 2020 method of creating a realistic set of planning horizons blended expert opinion with unbiased, critical analysis and synthesis. While a few of the participants had graduate education in strategic planning and corporate-level experience, most were bright operators -- technical experts in the application of military power. These operators needed to be educated about the future. SPACECAST 2020 exposed the participants to futurists, scientists, science fiction writers, Hollywood screen writers, as well as political, economic, social, and technology experts. Since the visions, projections, and data from these experts often conflicted, the participants were empowered to extract the most persuasive insights.

To synthesize the complex and discordant perspectives on 2020 and beyond, participant groups constructed independent glimpses of the world of 2020 from which common salient features were extracted. Fourteen groups sifted through the data and developed brief presentations depicting their ideas about the operating environment of 2020. A senior group of participants evaluated the substantive merits of each projection and elicited the common, highly likely assumptions. The group then forged a consensus world view, which was presented to all participants and iterated several times. The SPACECAST 2020 world view captured the most likely environment for US activity related to space in the future and became the planning basis for the study's concept and technology generation and assessment.

While the SPACECAST 2020 world view captured the dominant features of the expected future, the SPACECAST 2020 assumptions omitted some highly stressful potential events and circumstances. The participants referred to some of these variant disasters and contrasting frames of reference as the rogue set. Most agreed that the events in the rogue set were too improbable to form the basis for the study or US policy, yet they were too interesting to ignore. Fascination with the rogue set and some of its potential consequences sparked recognition that unusual, high impact events could be so disruptive that they warranted further consideration. The participants decided that alternate future worlds were needed to bound the risk associated with concentrating on a single or unitary view of the more likely future events. Alternate future scenarios also held promise as a tool for judging the robustness of new concepts and technologies generated in the study.

Developing Alternate Future Worlds

To supplement the SPACECAST 2020 assumptions about the future, eight participants and two consultants from The Futures Group developed a series of alternative futures.2 Alternate futures, alternate worlds, or scenarios are terms used interchangeably in strategic planning in this study. Scenarios, intended for use as background for planning and assessing alternate strategic courses of action, are descriptions of future conditions. To be effective, scenarios or alternate futures must have several key ingredients (fig. 1). EFFECTIVE SCENARIOS
1. Capture Key Variables for Your Organization
2. Span All Critical Future Events
3. Are Internally Consistent
4. Are Named
5. Have a Plausible History

[Dig]

Does this guy have unchecked power?  First time I heard of him. At the least he represents a serious conflict of interest.

Mike  Munson


Career Summary

Extensive senior leadership experience in the Intelligence Community and Department of Defense. Expertise includes general management, planning, programming and budgeting, Congressional relations, and intelligence collection. Broad knowledge of intelligence agencies and operations.

May 2004-May 2005 Executive Office of the President
Deputy Director for Plans, Presidential Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction responsible for determining whether the United States Intelligence Community is properly organized, resourced and equipped to meet the threats of the 21 st century. Managed all studies on intelligence technical and human collection , counterintelligence, covert action, domestic intelligence, information sharing and overall intelligence community organization and structure. Made significant number of recommendations for improvement almost all accepted by the President.

January 1999-May 2004 Munson Enterprises, Inc.
Consulting and training services for the Intelligence Community and Defense Industry. Consults on intelligence community contracts, specifically dealing with intelligence analysis and collection. Training includes basic and advanced courses on intelligence systems and processes and Intelligence Community planning, programming and budgeting. Customers include NGA, DIA, NRO, CIA and senior intelligence and defense related corporations.

March 1996-December 1998 National Reconnaissance Office (NRO)
Deputy Director for National Support responsible for providing space-based reconnaissance intelligence collection in support of national agency customers (including State Department, Defense, CIA, FBI, DEA, etc.)
•  Established office to improve intelligence support to all national agency customers.
•  Established process allowing national customers to understand and influence multi-billion dollar decisions regarding space-based reconnaissance intelligence.
•  Directed International Space Cooperation Program with allied nations.
•  Implemented program for NRO management of all Measurement and Signature Intelligence (MASINT) Special Communications activities.
 
Study Director for Jeremiah Panel responsible for defining the mission and responsibilities of the NRO for the future.
•  Reviewed NRO mission, organization, management, technology development program and business practices. Recommendations for improvements approved by the Secretary of Defense and the Director of Central Intelligence.

May 1997-December 1997 National Defense Panel
Study Director for seven-month congressionally mandated study on determining the mission and objectives of the US Armed Forces for the 21 st century.
•  Reviewed existing mission, budget and force structure of the Armed Forces.
•  Developed priorities for Defense five-year plans and programs.
•  Recommendations were supported by the Secretary of Defense and US Congress.
 
January 1995-March 1996 Defense Intelligence Agency
Deputy Director , Chief Operating Officer responsible for management of day-to-day operations of large scale Defense Agency with several thousand employees and a budget in the hundreds of millions. Deputy Program Manager of billion dollar program for the production, collection and support of Defense-wide military intelligence.
•  Conducted review of all agency resources. Adjusted agency priorities; reallocated resources based on new priorities; developed and implemented successful legislative proposal for resource augmentation; and initiated agency quality program and outsourcing review.
•  Established agencies information system program and priorities.
•  Reoriented and restructured Defense-wide Intelligence production program.
•  Provided guidance and direction for Defense Measurement and Signature and the Defense Human Intelligence Program.
•  Developed and implemented agencies senior executive service program and served as senior procurement executive. Assigned 70 senior executives and evaluated performance.
 
July 1991-January 1996 Office of the Secretary of Defense
Director, Intelligence Program Support Group (IPSG) established for oversight of all Defense Intelligence resources and the functional, technical and programmatic
evaluations of intelligence programs.
•  Implemented National foreign Intelligence Program (NFIP) and Tactical Intelligence and Related Activities (TIARA) cross-program reviews;
•  Established the Counterintelligence and Security and related activities program; managed development of the Joint Military Intelligence Program (JMIP).
•  Chaired DCI-directed community wide review on intelligence infrastructure.
•  Established Intelligence Systems Council to address intelligence community-wide systems issues relating to interoperability, programmatics and architectures.
•  Developed program for successfully gaining Congressional support for initiatives.
 
July 1987-July 1991 Defense Intelligence Agency
Deputy Director for Resources serving at corporate vice-president level position responsible for Agency's day-to-day administrative operations. Daily supervision of 800 employees and annual budget in excess of 100 million.
 
EDUCATION
University of Wisconsin , BS History, 1967
American University, MS Information Systems, 1975
Industrial College of the Armed Forces, 1981
Harvard University , Senior Executives in National Security, 1990

--------------------------------------

Check out this line:

"Deputy Director for National Support responsible for providing space-based reconnaissance intelligence collection in support of national agency customers (including State Department, Defense, CIA, FBI, DEA, etc.) "

We now have a government department calling other government department customers.

Well what do you do with customers?

Try and grab all the market share?

Increase profit?

Decrease costs?

Manipulate the market to change it and create a bigger pie to eat from (create threats that do not exist to get greater funding)?

So the NRO regards all the subservient intelligence agencies (State Department, Defense, CIA, FBI, DEA, etc.) as customers.

The NRO has all the f**king intelligence in this country!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Dig]

http://www.nro.gov/PressReleases/prs_rel3.html
Acting NRO Director Appoints External Review Panel

17 April 1996

Washington, DC -- Keith R. Hall, the deputy director and acting director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), has commissioned a panel to review the NRO's current organizational structure and make recommendations regarding its role in the 21st century.

Retired U.S. Navy Admiral David Jeremiah, former Vice Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff and now President of Technology Strategies and Alliances, will head the panel.

The panel's Executive Secretary will be Mr. Mike Munson, former Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.



Other panel members are:
Mr. Stephen Friedman, a member of the Aspin-Brown Commission on the U.S. Intelligence Community and Senior Chairman and Limited Partner of Goldman, Sachs, & Co.
Mr. Tony Iorillo, Chairman of the American Mobile Satellite Corporation Board of Directors and former Senior Vice President of Hughes Aircraft Company
Mr. John McMahon, former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence and retired President and CEO of Lockheed Missiles and Space Company
General Larry Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Institute for Defense Analysis and former Air Force Chief of Staff
Mr. Martin Faga, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Center for Integrated Intelligence Systems, MITRE Corporation and Director of the NRO from 1989 - 1993.

In chartering the panel, Hall asked its members to review several major issues facing the NRO, the first one being to review the NRO's mission and strategic vision into the 21st century. In addition, the panel will address how the NRO can improve customer satisfaction, how the NRO should be organized and structured for its future mission and what existing and reengineered business practices and processes will be necessary to meet additional challenges.

"The NRO's technical program is on track and the consolidation of assets [in other words, centralized power, NWO!] in space and on the ground is clearly beneficial for the nation's intelligence requirements," Mr. Hall recently stated in a town meeting to NRO employees.

"The way the NRO has been conducting its business, however, needs a thorough review after nearly 30 years of evolution," he continued.

"We want to retain the elements of the NRO that make it a dynamic space agency. At the same time, we need a candid look by outsiders to ensure the next director of the NRO has an organizational structure that meets the need of the customers, answers to increased executive and legislative oversight, and is responsive to new fiscal management policies."
   

 

[Dig]

http://www.intellacademy.com/index.php

The Intelligence & Security Academy, LLC

WELCOME

The Intelligence & Security Academy, LLC  offers education, training and consulting in national security issues and the more general area of analytic training. The Academy was created in 2005, succeeding its predecessor company, Munson Enterprises, which had been in operation since 1999.

Our clients include both government agencies involved in a broad range of national security issues (intelligence, defense, homeland security) and private sector corporations who either work in these same fields or who are interested in improving the capabilities of their analysts in general.

The Intelligence & Security Academy brings to bear decades of senior executive experience in intelligence, national security and policy analysis that our clients can apply to their programs and processes.

----------------------------------------

ABOUT THE ACADEMY

The Academy faculty consists of former senior executives from several national security agencies, including the major intelligence agencies: CIA, DIA, NSA, NRO and State/INR. Each faculty member brings a wealth of detailed personal experience in dealing with the issues shared with our clients.

Mark Lowenthal has held a wide array of senior positions: Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production; Vice Chairman for Evaluation of the National Intelligence Council; Staff Director of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence. He is the author of the standard college and graduate school textbook on intelligence, Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy (CQ Press), now in its 3rd edition. Dr. Lowenthal is an adjunct faculty member of Columbia University. He was also the 1988 Grand Champion on Jeopardy!

Mike Munson has served as the Deputy Director, Defense Intelligence Agency; and Deputy Director for National Support, National Reconnaissance Office. He also served as Director of Intelligence Program Review for DOD and as study director for the National Defense Panel and the recently released report from the President’s Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Marge Munson has served as Director of the Defense Investigative Service and as Deputy Director for Administration, Defense Intelligence Agency. She has also served as the Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Counterintelligence and Security and as Study Director for Defense studies on the use of Chemical Weapons during Desert Shield/Storm and the recently released study in support of the Secretary of Defense on detention operations at Guantanamo, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Robert M. Clark served in the Air Force, including a tour in Vietnam, and the CIA, where his focus included Soviet space programs, and technical collection issues.  He continued to work on these issues in the private sector in senior positions at STAC and BTG.  Dr. Clark's writings include a special National Intelligence Estimate on denial and deception; Intelligence Analysis: Estimation and Prediction; and Intelligence Analysis: A Target-centric Approach, now in its second edition. 

Lee Hanna has over thirty years of senior management experience at NSA, including management of its largest analytical component as Chief of SIGINT (signals intelligence) production for worldwide targets; Director of the National SIGINT Operations Center (NSOC); and Chief of Management Services. Ms. Hanna also developed NSA’s Instructor Training Program. Since leaving government service, Ms. Hanna has consulted for government agencies and private sector companies.

Jennie Liston spent 20 years at CIA, concentrating on European political and security issues.  She has also created and taught courses at CIA's Sherman Kent School, included advanced courses on analytical writing and briefing.

Anne Miles is a retired Air force officer and has extensive teaching experience at the Air Force Academy, the Joint Military Intelligence College and St. Mary's College, Maryland.  Dr. Miles has written several articles about U.S. government structure and policy process in national security.

John L. Moore is a specialist on the Middle East, with over 30 years of analytic intelligence experience in that region, including service as DIA's senior expert on the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism. Mr. Moore served with the 18th Airborne Corps and the 5th Special Forces Group in Vietnam during 1960s.  In addition to being a faculty member of the Intelligence & Security Academy, Mr. Moore works as an independent consultant on the Middle East for the US Government, private firms and international organizations. Mr. Moore was a witness at the International Court of Justice testifying for the United States against the Islamic Republic of Iran in 2003.  He has also written and lectured on the region for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Middle East Institute and also serves on the Board of Advisory Editors of the Middle East Journal.

Anthony C. Nelson has wide ranging national security experience. He spent 20 years as an Army artillery officer, including two tours in Viet Nam and service as a Foreign Area Officer for South Asia. He then joined DIA, where he established the Counterterrorist analytic element and the Global Analysis Division focusing on transnational issues (terrorism, narcotics, weapons and money transfers). [He is the cleaner!] Mr. Nelson managed DIA’s imagery analysis office, served as DIA Representative to US Central Command, and served as the Deputy to the Director of Intelligence Production, Defense Intelligence Agency. His long experience as an intelligence officer includes counter-terrorism and regional specialties in Asia and the Middle East.

Dan Spohn spent 20 years in the intelligence community directing strategic targeting activities and supporting the weapons development and policy offices in the Defense Department, particularly those related to nuclear activities and counterproliferation. Mr. Spohn is a physicist specializing in nuclear weapons effects. He has extensive experience in the laboratory environment simulating the effects of nuclear weapons and hardening military equipment. Before retiring from the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2000 he held the position of Deputy Director for Policy Support, with responsibility for intelligence support to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, DIA participation in National Intelligence Estimates, foreign intelligence exchanges and special access programs.
In addition to Mark Lowenthal, who serves as President and CEO of the Academy, and Marge and Mike Munson, our board of directors includes:
Harold Rosenbaum, President of Centra Technology

James Simon is Director of The Microsoft Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments.  Before joining Microsoft, he was President and CEO of IntelligenceEnterprises, LLC.  A career CIA officer, he was appointed by President Clinton and confirmed by the Senate as the first, and last, Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Administration. After September 11th, he was designated as the senior intelligence official for homeland security.   

Aris Pappas, Senior Director of the Microsoft Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments.   Prior to joining Microsoft, Mr. Pappas was co-founder and vice-president of IntelligenceEnterprises, LLC, a consulting firm supporting a broad range of customers ranging from the space-based imagery industry to the Department of Homeland Security.  Mr. Pappas was a career CIA analyst, holding positions in both the Intelligence (analytic) and Operations Directorates.  He was an Assistant National Intelligence Officer during the first Gulf War, and later Executive Secretary of the Director of Central Intelligence's (DCI) Intelligence Science Board. After a year-long tour at the FBI, Mr. Pappas established the DCI’s Homeland Security Staff.

Office Location
4121 Wilson Boulevard
Suite 800
Arlington, VA 22203

Phone: 703-528-9040
Fax: 703-528-9047
info@intellacademy.com

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COURSE OFFERINGS

The Academy offers a range of courses, each of which is built to meet the client’s specific needs, combining a variety of individual modules. The complexity and length of the courses depend on the client’s needs, the modules that are selected and the level of the course: basic or advanced. The flexibility of our curriculum allows us to serve each of our clients very precisely. Many of our courses include hands-on exercises.

Our current course offerings include:
The U.S. Intelligence Community: Key Structures, Roles and Current Issues (Basic or Advanced)
Planning, Programming and Budgeting
The New Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Structure: Prospects, Problems and Opportunities
Analyst Training: Writing Analyses and Briefings
Analyst Management
National Security Issues: Regional and Functional
The U.S. Intelligence Community:  Heritage and History
Depending on the course, some of the following modules typically are taught:
Legal Basis & Origin of the US Intelligence community
Intelligence Community Roles and Functions
The Intelligence Community Budget Process
Intelligence Collection
The Role of Congress in Intelligence
The Current International Security Environment
Issues in Analysis & Production
We usually conduct our courses at the client’s location. Courses can be conducted at the classified or unclassified level. The Academy’s management and faculty all have current TS/SCI clearances. We work throughout the Washington, DC area and beyond. We regularly teach courses in St. Louis, the Boston area, San Diego, Colorado and Germany.

Our courses are competitively priced.[Who the f**k is competing?  How many spooks are there?] Prices vary depending on location, length, duration (typically one or two days) and any other specific needs.  Most courses include hands-on exercises and are enhanced by senior guest lecturers.  References are available upon request.

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CONSULTING SERVICES

The Intelligence & Security Academy consults with both government and private sector clients across a wide range of issues, including:
Internal education and training programs, including curriculum evaluation and development.
Advice on product development, demonstrations and presentations, and strategic marketing advice, especially for use with the U.S. Intelligence Community.
Congressional strategies for the budget and legislative processes.
Teaming with other companies in support of government contracts.

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[Dig]

http://www.iafie.org/

Welcome to the International Association for Intelligence Education. IAFIE was formed in June 2004 as a result of a gathering of sixty plus intelligence studies trainers and educators at the Sixth Annual International Colloquium on Intelligence at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania. This group, from various intelligence disciplines including national security, law enforcement and competitive intelligence, recognized the need for a professional association that would span their diverse disciplines and provide a catalyst and resources for their development and that of Intelligence Studies.


Purposes
Expanding research, knowledge, and professional development in intelligence education;
Providing a forum for the exchange of ideas and information for those interested in and concerned with intelligence education;
Advancing the intelligence profession by setting standards, building resources, and sharing knowledge in intelligence studies;
Fostering relationships and cultivating cooperation among intelligence professionals in academia, business, and government;
Developing, disseminating, and promoting theory, curricula, methodologies, techniques, and best practices for pure and applied intelligence;
Serving as a liaison between other professional organizations and centers of excellence.

Members Include [You pay for connections]
Members of IAFIE are drawn from academia and the various disciplines of intelligence including national security, law enforcement and the private sector. Individuals with a general interest in the subject of intelligence are also encouraged to join.

See complete list of member organizations here. http://www.iafie.org/organizations.php

Announcements

Announcing the 4th Annual IAFIE Conference
IAFIE will convene its fourth annual conference June 23-25, 2008, at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. The theme will be “Creating Intelligence Studies Education Programs and Academic Standards.” Lockheed Martin will sponsor the event, which is expected to attract 150 attendees.  The conference will be built around internationally respected keynote speakers, including Richards Heuer and author Joe Finder, and two breakout groups, each related to an aspect of the conference theme. For more details download the brochure. http://www.iafie.org/documents/IAFIE%202008%20Conference%20brochure.pdf

__________________________________________

The Washington Area Chapter of IAFIE is having the first in a series of interviews with noted Intelligence Authors and Practitioners.
Join them for :  A Conversation with Robert Clark, author of “Intelligence Analysis:  A Target-Centric Approach”
Thursday, March 13, 2008  3 p.m. The Forum, 1892 Preston White Dr. Reston, Virginia 20191

Non-members welcome!
For more information and registration information, download this brochure. http://www.iafie.org/documents/0308%20mtg.pdf

[websuspect]

Anybody know what

IMINT

and

SIGINT

are?

SIGINT is NSA it refers to Signal Intelligence and intelligence gathering.

[rphope]

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/02/operation-rogue.html

Giant golf ball deployed.  CNN says that "a floating X-band radar has to be modified to track the satellite's trajectory."  That would be the massive -- and massively controversial -- Sea-Based X-Band Radar.  The $815 million, 28-story, orb-like contraption has the ability, in theory, to tell which way a baseball is spinning -- from 3,000 miles away.  But it's also proven to susceptible to the elements and high seas.  The thing has been in and out of the repair shop for years.

Big bucks.  "The attempt by the U.S. Navy to use an anti-missile missile to shoot down a potentially hazardous satellite will cost between $40 million and $60 million, Pentagon officials told CNN. "The missile alone costs almost $10 million."

Your chances of being hit by the falling satellite: one in a trillion.  "Compared with, for example, a one in 1.4 million chance of being hit by lightning in the United States," the Discovery Channel notes.

FEMA to the rescue?  "With an eye to the possibility that the missile effort will fail, the government has placed six rescue teams across the country to be prepared to act if the satellite hits the United States," according to the AP.

The spacecraft contains 1,000 pounds of hydrazine in a tank that is expected to survive re-entry and a fuel tank liner made of beryllium.

FEMA has prepared a guide for emergency responders that includes information about hydrazine and beryllium. The agency warns officials not to pick up any debris or provide mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to anyone who has inhaled hydrazine or beryllium.

Old news for NASA chief? Some were surprised to see NASA head honcho Michael Griffin helping plan this operation.  They shouldn't be.  Not only does he have to worry about what happens to the Shuttle and the Space Station.  But he was "deputy for technology at the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization and worked on missile defense systems from 1986 to 1991."

Diplomatic action.  According to the Washington Post, "the State Department sent cables to all embassies yesterday instructing diplomats to explain to foreign governments how the upcoming attempt to shoot down an out-of-control spy satellite is different from China's destruction of one of its orbiting satellites early last year."

Do or die for missile defense?  The shootdown "carries opportunity, but also potential embarrassment, for the administration and advocates of its missile defense program," notes the NYT.
________________________________________

They are pulling out all the stops on this. Watch out.

[rphope]

This looks like something out of Austin Powers. Where is Doctor Evil?

[Dig]

This looks like something out of Austin Powers. Where is Doctor Evil?

WTF?!?!?!?!?!


No wonder we are in a depression!

We have no body armour for our soldiers, but we have mobile "Planetary Spanning Radar Systems" that can be deployed at the push of a button.

[StemCell]

This looks like something out of Austin Powers. Where is Doctor Evil?

Don't forget they just started planning this in late January.

[Dig]

How did we ever let the National Reconnaissance Office take over every single bit of data being transfered to, from, and/or within this country? 

All those street cameras you see, where do you think they go? ... NRO

Every piece of data on the "climate change"...NRO

Every piece of information on meteors coming to kill us ... NRO

Every text message, every phone call, every image downloaded, every email, etc. ... NRO

They own the data, the other intelligence departments are their "customers"

THEY ARE THE EVIL FU**ING EYE IN THE SKY!

[Dig]

Dark World, Dark Signs
http://www.urbanhonking.com/universe/archives/2007/02/dark_world.html
Archived From February 13, 2007 (1) Comments

The most recent issue of Cabinet Magazine has a really good article by artist and CIA expert Trevor Palgen about the iconography of military insignia, particularly of those branches of the military that "don't exist." How do you celebrate your work with traditional military regalia, Palgen asks, while retaining the secrecy which defines it? It's an interesting question.

Well, sometimes you don't. Take for example this embroidered patch, distributed by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the US "black" space agency primarily responsible for the operation of military reconnaissance satellites (and God-knows-what-else). The patch was released by the NRO to commemorate the launch of a Titan 4B from Vandenberg Air Force Base -- one that boosted, according to the Air Force, a classified payload into orbit.

"We Own The Night"??!?

Classified, that is, unless you can read into the NRO's weird symbolism. Apparently, the patch -- right down to the angles of those boomerang shapes -- is a dead giveaway about the launch payload, that, it has now been confirmed, were four "Lacrosse" recon-satellittes, which give the U.S. military the ability to monitor problem spots around the world and accurately target weapons in almost real time. Yikes, that is a whole other ball of yarn entirely that I am not going to tangle with now.

On a more abstract level, these kinds of patches betray the U.S. military's deep-rooted love of insignia and symbolism. So profound was their desire to reduce, stylize, and graphically compartmentalize the event that they couldn't contain themselves from nearly giving away really classified information. It's baffling, though. Who is this highly-coded symbolism, this "formal doctrine of signs," as Charles Sanders Pierce had it, for? The people that fly the covert experimental CIA jet-planes? Most of the time, the visual rhetoric is so obscure, and yet so clearly steeped in a formal methodology of signifiers, that it's hard to see who might have the pleasure of "getting" it.

The Cabinet article has nice, full-color reproductions of some particularly oblique NRO patches, one depicting the planet wrapped up in three giant, venemous snakes flanked by the latin phrase "Nunquam Ante, Nunquam Iterum," which literally means, "Never Before, Never Again." It's enough to make me think that there's something to the whole reptoids thing.

You can also buy a slightly modded reproduction of an Air Force patch commemorating a flight test of a B-2 stealth bomber. This one boasts a classic "grey" ET and the slogan "tastes like chicken," in Latin.

Trevor Palgen, who is incidentally a really interesting artist that leads camping trips to view clandestine military bases and tracks unmarked CIA aircraft, has made an entire installation called "Symbology" addressing this issue. From his website:

"The symbols and insignia shown in the Symbology series provide a glimpse into how contemporary military units answer questions that have historically been the purview of mystery cults, secret societies, religions, and mystics: How does one represent that which, by definition, must not be represented?"

[Dig]

I COULD TELL YOU BUT THEN YOU WOULD HAVE TO BE DESTROYED BY ME
http://www.paglen.com/tellyou/new_patches.html
NEW PATCHES

Look here for patches that didn't make it into the book and patches that I've obtained since the manuscript went to press. If you have something to add, please get in touch.

Desert Prowler
Looks like whoever's in charge of the Desert Prowler program is spending as much time making patches as they are on the project! Here are a few more patches from this project (there are two in the book).


The patch on the left says "Flight Test" on it, which is unlike other versions of the patch. The one on the right has lots of symbols on it. If you've read the book, you should be able to decode them!


B-12 - The Cat's Out of the Bag
This is a patch from an exceptionally interesting satellite launch: USA 144. Supposedly, USA 144 is the second MISTY "stealth" satellite. It's a crazy story. My next book has a whole chapter about it.




AVIS IN SPECULIS
This patch comes from some sort of UAV that was/is funded through the BIG SAFARI program. The patch has the BIG SAFARI shield above the eyes. There are a couple of BIG SAFARI patches in the book.

[Dig]

HAVE TO BE DESTROYED BY ME
http://www.paglen.com/tellyou/corrections.html
CORRECTIONS TO THE PUBLISHED TEXT

NRO DRAGON PATCH


This is one of my all-time favorite patches: the green dragon holding the world in its clutches, American flag wings, and its tail wrapped around a diamond. I didn't know what this was for a long time, although I knew that it was from the National Reconnaissance Office and had to do with a classified satellite. When I stumbled on an information compartment called BYEMAN/IMPROVED CRYSTAL/DRAGON, which had to do with the infrared imaging capabilities on advanced KH-11 imaging satellites, I assumed that I'd found the source of the patch's imagery. I was wrong. Aerospace researcher Dwayne Day has the whole story in an excellent article at the Space Review.

According to Day, the patch comes from the B-36 Titan IV launch from Cape Canaveral on September 8, 2003. The payload apparently went into a geosynchronous orbit, which means that it wasn't an imaging satellite. The satellite is probably a signals-intelligence satellite descended from the Rhyolite spacecraft. The more recent code names of these SIGINT birds are reportedly ORION, MAGNUM, and MENTOR. The dragon image shows up on several patches associated with these types of payload. And what does the diamond/crystal on the patch refer to? I wish I knew.
(Added 01/16/2008)

 

[Dig]

I COULD TELL YOU BUT THEN YOU WOULD HAVE TO BE DESTROYED BY ME
http://www.paglen.com/tellyou/additional_texts.html
ADDITIONS TO THE TEXT

One of the things interests me about patches from black projects has to do with artistic traditions that try to represent things that cannot, or must not, be represented. Here's a short text about that question that didn't make it into the book's final edit.

Symbology

The visual language of patches and symbols from black projects— its symbology—recalls other symbolic systems that have surprisingly long traditions. For millennia, artists and mystics have pondered the question of how to represent that, which by definition, cannot or must not be represented.

Religions have always adopted rich symbolic languages to signify the different aspects of their respective forms of faith and mythology. In religion, symbols have always played a iconographic and ritualistic role. Different symbols might represent different theological ideas. In Christianity, the symbol of the lamb represents Jesus Christ, whose death is seen as being akin to a sacrificial lamb. In Buddhism, the Lotus flower represents the growth and blossoming of spiritual enlightenment. For adherents of these religions, an understanding of symbols goes hand-in-hand with an understanding of the faith’s theological tenets, and a deeper understanding of its “mysteries.”



Before Christianity became the Roman Empire’s official religion in the 4th Century, “mystery religions” organized around a central canon of secret knowledge were widespread. Membership in such religions was limited to people who had passed through secret initiation rituals, and had begun to learn a body of hidden knowledge. Because they were forbidden to speak to outsiders about the religion’s secrets, initiates of these religions were called mysteria, meaning “initiate” or “to keep silent.” The Greco- Roman world was home to numerous mystery religions: Eleusinian Mysteries, Orphism, the Cult of Isis, Orphism, Manichaeism, the Cult of Dionysys, the Cult of Tammuz, and Mithraism. All were surrounded by an intricate symbolic language that spoke to a respective mystery.

Take Mithraism, whose symbolic language was organized around the figure of Mithras slitting a bull’s throat —called a tauroctony—and accompanied by various figures from the zodiac. Today we have almost no information about Mithraic theology, or its tenets. Its secrets seem to have died with the religion itself. But we do have a wealth of visual culture surviving from the religion, whose shrines, frescoes, and artifacts remain littered throughout the former Roman Empire. As one scholar lamented, the legacy of Mithraism is “like a book of pictures with the text missing.”


Mithraic tauroctony

Nonetheless, the symbolic language of Mithraism holds enormous clues about the secret knowledge at the religion’s core. According to religious studies scholar David Ulansay, Mithraic symbolism represented an elaborate system of star charts, whose arrangement seems to suggest that the Mithraists had discovered a very powerful secret indeed. By projecting Mithraic symbolism onto the night sky, then taking into account the changes in the night sky over thousands of years, Ulansay showed that the Mithraists had discovered the precession of the equinoxes. By decoding Mithraisms symbols, Ulansay showed that the tauroctony represents the god Mithras (based on the constellation Perseus) ending the astrological age of Taurus by slitting the bull’s throat, thereby inaugurating the Age of Aries (which began around 1658 BC and lasted until the Sixth Century AD). In an ancient world where people believed that destiny was written into the stars, a God capable of shifting the stars’ axis held tremendous power, and was indeed worthy of worship. Although it took Ulansay many years to decode the Mithraic symbols, the key to understanding its mysteries had been hidden in plain sight all along.

Mithraism was far from alone in its use of a symbolic language that both revealed and protected its mysteries. Early Christians had a similarly complicated and secret visual language that meant something to the initiated, but remained obscure to outsiders. Take the image of the fish. In Greek, the word ΙΧΘΥΣ (Ichthys), was an acronym for Iesous Christos Theou Yios Soter, meaning Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior. Legend holds that in the early days of the religion (when being a Christian was illegal) if a devotee encountered someone they suspected of sharing the faith, they would draw the top half of the fish. If the other person completed the image, they both knew that they had a spiritual kinship. Of course, the fish symbol also resonated with a number of stories in the New Testament. The Christian religion used other symbols to connote that various aspects of its “mysteries” (and Christianity was very much influenced by the mystery religions surrounding it) that have been handed down to us: the chalice and host signifying the communion; the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) representing Jesus’ role as a sacrificial lamb; and the trefoil representing the Trinity.



One can turn today to the rich visual language of Freemasonry, or to Scientology (whose symbols are trademarked and therefore cannot be reproduced here). One need look no further than a dollar bill (particularly the back side) to see the use of esoteric symbols in everyday life.

[Dig]

Limit Telephotography

http://www.paglen.com/pages/projects/nowhere/photos_images.htm

A number of military bases and installations exist in some of the remotest parts of the United States, hidden deep in western deserts and buffered by dozens of miles of restricted land. Many of these sites are so remote, in fact, that there is nowhere on Earth where a civilian might be able to see them with an unaided eye. In order to produce images of these remote and hidden landscapes, therefore, some unorthodox viewing and imaging techniques are required.

Limit-telephotography involves photographing landscapes that cannot be seen with the unaided eye. The technique employs high powered telescopes whose focal lengths range between 1300mm and 7000mm. At this level of magnification, hidden aspects of the landscape become apparent.

Limit-telephotography most closely resembles astrophotography, a technique that astronomers use to photograph objects that might be trillions of miles from Earth. In some ways, however, it is easier to photograph the depths of the solar system than it is to photograph the recesses of the military industrial complex. Between Earth and Jupiter (500 million miles away), for example, there are about five miles of thick, breathable atmosphere. In contrast, there are upwards of forty miles of thick atmosphere between an observer and the sites depicted in this series.

[Anti_Illuminati]

Source

UNCLASSIFIED



Report to the Director
National Reconnaissance Office

Defining the Future of the NRO
for the 21st Century

Final Report
Executive Summary

26 AUGUST 1996

CL BY: 125166
CL REASON: 1.5 (c)
DECL ON: S1
DRV FROM: PRO SCO 4.O
14 October 1995







FOREWORD

The objective of the Panel review was to define the NRO of the Twenty-first Century. The NRO is a unique institution, critical to our national security. The NRO of the Twenty-first Century should continue to serve the country in the same capacity using the results of our study to clarify its mission and continue the improvement of its overall institutional performance.

On behalf of the entire Panel, I would like to thank all those who have contributed their time supporting us during the course of the study. A special thanks goes to those in government and private industry who responded to our surveys and questionnaires and our requests for interviews. Their candid responses allow us to fully understand the strengths of the NRO as well as opportunities for improvement.

We are particularly grateful to those government and private industry officials who spent many hours on one or more of our working groups, understanding the organisation, identifying the issues, and drafting recommendations. A special thanks goes out to the working group chairman and administrative staff supporting our effort.

Finally, I want to personally thank Acting Director Keith R. Hall for all the support he and his organization provided the panel and its activities. We hope the recommendations will help guide the NRO into the Twenty-first Century.

David E. Jeremiah
Admiral, USN (Ret.)
Panel Chairman



TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword

I. Executive Summary

1. Introduction and Purpose
2. Principal Study Findings
3. Findings and Recommendations

Issue 1: Is there an alternative to the NRO?
Issue 2: What should be the mission of the NRO in the 21st Century?
Issue 3: Is the customer relationship satisfactory?
Issue 4: Is support to military operations satisfactory?
Issue 5: How should the NRO interact with DoD space organizations?
Issue 6: Are business practices of the NRO still appropriate?
Issue 7: Is the NRO still an innovative organization?
Issue 8: Should NRO systems engineering be strengthened?
Issue 9: What security system is appropriate?
Issue 10: Should NRO contractor relationships continue to be classified?
Issue 11: Do current military and civilian personnel practices adequately support the NRO?
Issue 12: Is the current NRO internal organization well matched to the future?

4. Conclusion

Appendix I-1: Jeremiah Panel Interviewees






I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY


1. INTRODUCTION AND PURPOSE

This report summarizes the results of an extensive study of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and makes recommendations for the NRO of the 21st Century. The study was directed by the Acting Director of the NRO. Admiral David Jeremiah (USN, Ret), former Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff and currently Partner and President of Technology Strategies & Alliances Corp, served as study chairman. Other members of the Panel included: General Larry Welch (USAF, Ret), former United States Air Force Chief of Staff and currently President and CEO of The Institute for Defense Analyses; Mr. John McMahon, former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI) and former President and CEO, Lockheed Missiles and Space Company; Mr. Martin Faga, former Director, NRO and currently Senior Vice President and General Manager, Center for Integrated Intelligence Systems at the Mitre Corporation; Mr. Stephen Friedman, Senior Chairman and Limited Partner of Goldman, Sachs & Co. who recently served on the Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the U.S. Intelligence Community (also known as the Brown Commission); and Mr. Anthony Iorillo, former Senior Vice President, Hughes Aircraft and currently Chairman of the Board of Directors, American Mobile Satellite Corporation.

The study is timely. With the end of the Cold War, the nation is confronted with a series of new challenges that include dealing with both new and failing nation states; proliferation of nuclear, missile, chemical, and biological materials; and terrorism. The nation's intelligence assets must be developed to cope with the highest priority concerns including support to coalition partners. In addition, the U.S. Intelligence Community itself is undergoing great change. Both Houses of Congress have made recommendations for a sweeping Intelligence Community reorganization. The Clinton Administration also has proposals. The Intelligence Community must also adjust to new intelligence priorities and rapidly changing technology.

In addition to these issues, the NRO is in transition. Its budget is under greater pressure in both the Legislative and Executive branches. There is a desire for greater openness about NRO activities. The major transition to integrated systems has increased the complexity of NRO development, launch, and operations. Finally, the industrial base supporting the NRO is downsizing and is in a period of consolidation and transition.

It is against this backdrop that the Jeremiah Panel was established to look at such major issues as:

    * Is there a need for an NRO?
    * What should be the mission of the NRO in the 21st Century?
    * How should the NRO relate to new and changing organizations?
    * In what ways should the NRO structure and processes change?

The Panel did not address programmatics, financial accounting and management, specific discipline architectures, ground station operations, nor the organization of the DoD and Intelligence Communities beyond their relationship with the NRO.

In an effort to comprehensively address the major issues, the Panel formed nine Working Groups:

    * Mission and Strategic Vision
    * Customers
    * Relationships with New Organizations
    * Business Practices
    * Benchmarking
    * Internal Organizational Structure
    * Infrastructure
    * Security
    * Personnel and Career Development

The Working Groups were comprised of experts from both public and private sectors. To complement their expertise, data were gathered through interviews, questionnaires, facility visits, and briefings.

In addition to Working Group deliberations and recommendations, the Jeremiah Panel itself met weekly for three months and conducted approximately 20 interviews with various experts and authorities (see Appendix I-2).

This Executive Summary presents principal study findings and a set of major issues, each containing specific recommendations. The full report provides greater detail addressing the complete findings and recommendations of the Panel.

2. PRINCIPAL STUDY FINDINGS

Three principal assets define the United States as the preeminent World Power: economic prowess, military power, and intelligence capability. Each is underpinned by two assets: highly skilled and motivated people, and leading edge technology development.

Within this context, the Panel was of one mind in its belief that the future security of the nation depends on its ability to conduct surveillance from space. The NRO is truly a unique organization which is, simultaneously, an intelligence organization, a defense organization, and a space organization. The Venn diagram in Figure 1 depicts the NRO at the intersection of the realms of intelligence, defense, and space. It reports to two bosses, the Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) and the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), each of whom is vitally interested in its success, and each of whom makes major contributions of people, funds, infrastructure and other support necessary to the continued success of the NRO. The SECDEF-DCI partnership to manage, fund, and man an organization for space-based reconnaissance to provide a major part of the collection front-end of the intelligence process for national and operational military users is the raisond'etre of the NRO. After thoroughly examining a wide variety of alternatives, the Panel found that the NRO continues to be the right organizational answer to the nation's space reconnaissance needs in the future because it serves the national and military equities represented by the SECDEF and DCI.



Figure 1. The NRO Joint Venture

The NRO today provides the U.S. with a preeminent national security advantage with its ability to conduct space surveillance and must continue to do so in the future. It has achieved its success through innovative technical achievements and generally efficient and effective management practices. Since the end of the Cold War, the NRO has continued to respond to the demands of the time. Changes dictated by an evolving world have required the NRO to modify its relationship with customers, to support military operations involving new coalition partners, to develop new integrated collection architectures, and to adjust its internal organization. The NRO continues to have an outstanding team of people from the Intelligence Community, the Department of Defense, and technical expertise and knowledge from the private sector. It should be maintained, as this capability will continue to be critical to the future of the United States.

While the Panel unanimously agreed on the importance of continuing the NRO, it nonetheless identified other major issues and provided recommendations for improvement. Taken in total, the Panel believes that these recommendations would lead to a streamlined and more effective NRO, enhancing its capability to support U.S. national security, foreign policy, and intelligence objectives in the 21st Century.

3. FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

In the context of a constantly evolving and changing world in which the NRO must actively participate with, Figure 2 briefly summarizes the historical and future trends of NRO functional areas.



Figure 2. NRO Changing World

Twelve issues are discussed in the Executive Summary. Five deal with the future mission of the NRO and how the organization deals with its customers, three deal with NRO business practices and how the NRO interacts with industry, two address internal NRO issues, and two are cross-cutting security proposals affecting the NRO's customers as well as private industry. Each is briefly addressed, along with appropriate findings and recommendations.

Issue 1: Is there an alternative to the NRO?

Findings: The Panel reviewed a wide range of alternative constructs for satisfying the current NRO mission. No other construct satisfied the political, organizational, functional or mission considerations as well as the joint venture relationship currently existing between the SECDEF and the DCI. Space reconnaissance will remain a vital component of U.S. foreign policy and intelligence activities because of the inherent and unique attributes of space-based collection. These attributes include, but are not limited to, real-time collection and reporting, denied area access, synoptic global coverage, and unintrusive access. As the nation continues to emphasize support to military operations, sensor-to-shooter applications will require unique space-based intelligence capabilities. At the same time, space reconnaissance will remain critical to national customers. The NRO's traditional performance in achieving system and architecture solutions that satisfy both national and military customers will remain an important national need for the future. After careful review and analysis, the Panel is convinced that, for both organizational and practical reasons, there is an imperative for an NRO of the future, but that the existing organization should be internally modified to continue to meet this need.

Recommendation: Although alternatives exist, none offer the same advantages as the current SECDEF-DCI arrangement. Continue the SECDEF-DCI NRO joint venture.


Issue 2: What should be the mission of the NRO in the 21st Century?

Findings: The future mission of the NRO is to revolutionize space reconnaissance for a new level of intelligence support to enhance national security in the information age.

National security in the information age demands that the nation achieve and maintain global information superiority. Global information superiority will provide the strategic opportunity for better informed policy-making and for improved command and control of military operations. Information superiority can create opportunities for crisis avoidance by preemptive policy initiatives, as well as for decisive action up to and including combat operations, if conflict deterrence fails. Global information superiority demands intelligence capabilities unimaginable just a few years ago. It will exist when there is nearly constant U.S. awareness of the ongoing activities and intentions of foreign principals and other international actions, and unambiguous early warning of threatening worldwide developments. Such a level of U.S. intelligence presence is possible with information age advances in both collection and analytical intelligence processes. Revolutionary advances in space reconnaissance are needed and these developments will shape the nation's 21st Century space reconnaissance needs.

NRO intelligence partners are already planning changes in their own mission objectives and business practices in response to the information age. These organizations are making major commitments to revolutionary new capabilities. All-source analysts will have direct access to enormous amounts of data, raw intelligence, finished intelligence, and worldwide open source materials of all kinds. The role of intelligence collection will fundamentally change to supporting globally integrated intelligence "data nets and/or warehouses" with quick response collection for special time-sensitive needs.

To enable U.S. global information superiority, space-based reconnaissance must provide affordable, near-continuous global coverage. National space reconnaissance of this order would provide constant global awareness, often allowing preemptive action to contain threatening developments. It will also encompass the military needs for battlefield information dominance.

Recommendation: Adopt the following new mission statement for the NRO: Enable U.S. Government and military information superiority, during peace through war. The NRO is responsible for the unique technology, large scale systems engineering, development and acquisition, and operation of space reconnaissance systems and related intelligence activities needed to support global information superiority.

Issue 3: Is the customer relationship satisfactory?

Findings: NRO customers generally fall under two categories: discipline managers (CIO, NSA, CMO) and consumers/users (DCI, DIA, CIA, SECDEF, White House, State, Energy, Unified Commands, military services, etc.). As a result, NRO customers come from a variety of backgrounds so customer understanding of system capabilities is relatively elementary and often confused by security and technology associated with NRO systems. For the most part, customers regard NRO products as "free goods" so that they do not consider cost and systems trades. In addition, the Gulf War marked a fundamental paradigm shift to coalition warfare and coalition partners have emerged as a new class of users who must also be satisfied. Even though the NRO is customer oriented and attempts to satisfy all its customers, its approach is fragmented, uneven, and lacking discipline for an ever-expanding user base.

Several NRO organizations are chartered to satisfy specific discipline requirements. NRO line units market new capabilities across the user spectrum sometimes without coordination with the appropriate disciplines. Practices are not always consistent. Efforts to satisfy end users may be at the perceived disadvantage of discipline managers having equities at stake. The result is often confusion that sometimes causes erosion of customer relationships.

Recommendation: Design an NRO customer support process that is inclusive, balanced, accountable in partnership with others who have legitimate equities, and is practiced with consistency. The process should be flexible, allowing for centralized management planning and oversight and decentralized execution. This process should identify lead responsibilities for managing customer support for current tasking and dissemination as well as future customer needs for new system designs, requirements, and architectures. Lead responsibilities for supporting national and military customers should be identified and carried out in coordination with discipline managers. There should be a provision for requirements/capability analysis and a strong emphasis on innovative and cost effective technical solutions to requirements.

Issue 4: Is support to military operations satisfactory?

Findings: An expanded role for space reconnaissance in support to military operations (SMO) was accepted by the Panel as a major factor in deriving the 21st Century mission of the NRO. This acknowledges the steady and expanding role of NRO support to military operations. The expanding role is a result of several factors including improved accuracy and timeliness of data collected, an understanding of the role of space intelligence in support of the warfighter, and other advances in information and weapons system technologies.

The Gulf War highlighted the achievements as well as the short falls in intelligence support to military operations. The Intelligence Community has addressed, but not completely resolved, many of these shortfalls and agree that dissemination of intelligence data and classification of data require continuing effort.

Defense Planning Guidance and other defense documentation characterize future operational military intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) needs as battlespace information dominance. Two objectives are cited: dominant battlespace awareness with real-time, all-weather continuous coverage; and precision force capabilities with weaponry, situational awareness, knowledge (full-spectrum warfare), and sensor-to-shooter support. The exact implications of this vision of future military ISR needs for space reconnaissance are not totally clear because of uncertainties at this point over the relative roles of airborne reconnaissance systems, nonintelligence space surveillance systems, and space reconnaissance systems. Nevertheless, the space reconnaissance role will demand innovative technologies and robust architectures.

Recommendation: NRO SMO is satisfactory. However, the NRO must accommodate the functional needs of battlespace information dominance with near-continuous coverage architectures in partnerships with OSD, JCS, the Intelligence Community, and U.S. Space Command. With regard to security, the goal should be to downgrade classification and disseminate to SMO users the products essential to their operations. With respect to increasing an understanding of capabilities, the NRO should provide a DoD training program for Unified Commands on NRO systems capabilities and rate the CINCs on their use of NRO systems during exercises. Finally, in conjunction with other intelligence elements, the NRO should develop appropriate system simulations to support war fighting exercises.


Issue 5: How should the NRO interact with DoD space organizations?

Findings: The NRO is first and foremost an intelligence organization with responsibilities to national and DoD customers. The NRO must integrate its activities into overall intelligence architectures. At the same time, there are important interrelationships between the NRO and DoD space activities in areas such as launch, technology, industrial base, communications, and the NRO need to use DoD systems such as the Global Positioning System as well as the DoD need to use products from NRO systems. The interrelationships work well at the operational and technical levels, but issues remain unresolved at the policy, architecture, and oversight levels. These issues include the degree of OSD oversight over the NRO, architectural integration of NRO systems into an overall national security space architecture, and the degree to which the NRO receives policy guidance from the DoD and Intelligence Community.

Recommendations: Refine and clarify the relationships between the NRO and DoD space organizations. For now, the construct of one architecture with two architects (NRO, DoD) should be continued, however, there must be assurance that cross-functional issues are worked appropriately. Clarify the relationship between DUSD(Space) and the NRO. Policy issues and specific architectural issues that cannot be resolved by the functional organizations can be addressed to the Joint Space Management Board. Develop additional interfaces with Air Force Materiel Command/Space and Missile Systems Center and closer relations with U.S. Space Command.


Issue 6: Are business practices of the NRO still appropriate?

Findings: Since its inception, the NRO has used special business practices to increase the likelihood and speed of success. Those special business practices include:

    * Streamlined management
    * Empowered program manager
    * Adequate and stable funding
    * Flexible acquisition
    * Dedicated support
    * Internal competition
    * Acceptability of failure
    * Covertness
    * Government-Industry partnership
    * Top-quality personnel
    * Cradle-to-grave management
    * Objective specifications

These special business practices are not unique to the NRO.Other programs of extreme urgency and national importance, such as the Manhattan Project, Polaris, the F-117 Stealth Fighter, also used these special practices. While not unique, these practices have clearly been important to the success of the NRO.

In recent years, there has been an erosion of the benefits of special business practices. Management is far less stream lined with many new players in the process who can say "no" but not "yes." The program manager has far less latitude to make decisions. Funding priorities fluctuate markedly, and cancellation of at least a half dozen major programs in recent years testifies to a lack of long-term stability. To press on despite 11 failures before a first success--as the NRO did on the CORONA program--would be unthinkable today. Attracting and retaining the best people is very difficult if their home agencies view the NRO as out of their mainstream of personnel development.

The decrease in the use and effectiveness of special NRO business practices results, either directly or indirectly, in many of the shortcomings of the NRO evident today: reduced technical innovation, limitation to evolutionary vice revolutionary architectures, significant increase in staff and Contract Advisory and Assistance Services (CAAS), overly detailed specifications, proliferation of engineering change proposals (ECPs), increased costs, and erosion of confidence.

Business practices in the program specification phase tend to focus on "how" not "what." This focus generally leads to design refinement and constrains proposals to fit existing architectures. It also leads to increasingly detailed requirements and greater control of contractor reporting. Furthermore, this approach limits innovation by inhibiting competition. It often precludes the use of "best-of-breed" practices.

Erosion of business practices in the program development phase led to high costs and increased bureaucracy. The Government focus appears to be on contractor oversight and the configuration control process. Changing requirements have resulted in numerous ECPs instead of a focus on block changes. From a contractor perspective, the cumbersome oversight process has led to increased staff, slower reactions, and higher cost. Finally, contractors do not have an incentive to improve their processes or to reduce costs.

NRO products must interact with many more systems than in times past. This forces some degree of rigidity in systems specifications in order to comply with larger architectures. Nevertheless, the traditional business practices of the NRO are still appropriate today; they need to be strongly reinvigorated.

Recommendations: Reverse the decline in the PRO use of special business practices. Specifically:

    * Use succinct statement of objectives (not detailed specifications) to promote increased competition and foster innovation.
    * Reduce Government interfaces and increase contractor responsibility.
    * Establish and empower Integrated Product Teams (IPTs) toconduct incremental tabletop reviews.
    * Limit requirements for contractor-provided data and reports.
    * Give contractors incentive to identify value-added changes and cost reduction opportunities.

Finally, select a specific pilot program to be acquired under reinvigorated streamlined management practices. This pilot program should focus on a substantive intelligence need that meets the intent of the acquisition directives and is encumbered by only the bare minimum administrative, contracting, and oversight processes. Implement successes of the pilot program into mainline programs.


Issue 7: Is the NRO still an innovative organization?

Findings: The NRO has evolved from its beginnings in the 1960s, when everything it did was an innovative "first," to become a mature organization today with customers who expect and rely upon products for their success. While the current NRO architecture is the result of innovation 10 to 20 years ago, the architecture planned for the future is evolutionary in nature. This architecture reflects evolutionary innovation and is designed to assure delivery of critical products to "demand-pull" customers. The NRO must continue to provide those products.

Nevertheless, during the past decade the NRO has developed the enabling technology, systems concepts, engineering designs, and in some cases also flown the prototype hardware for very exciting, innovative new systems which could achieve revolutionary capabilities. The NRO pushed those new systems concepts through the budget process, but in the end at least half a dozen potentially revolutionary new systems were cancelled at the Intelligence Community and DoD decision forums. At these forums, customers prioritized continuation of current capabilities above risk-taking for revolutionary new systems. The DCI and SECDEF supported customer desires and the NRO complied.

But the not-yet-understood information superiority imperative of the next century will require, in addition to the continuation of expected service to today's customers, a revolutionary path to an entirely new innovative architecture. The current path, and the current process, will not get there. The imperatives for near-continuous global coverage, long dwell, and hard target characterization demand innovative solutions. As illustrated in Figure 3, those solutions must be worked on a new revolutionary path parallel with and additive to today's evolutionary path to continue to satisfy today's customers. Driven by risk aversion practices, the current acquisition process works well for evolutionary systems, but it limits competition. The evolutionary process will not satisfy the information superiority imperative which requires innovative solutions.



Figure 3. Revolutionary Path to an Innovative Architecture

The NRO needs a new approach if it is to successfully develop innovative new solutions with revolutionary capabilities. The NRO cannot wait for customers to produce the visionary requirements, to prioritize innovation, and to sacrifice current capability to chase a dream. Instead, the NRO must adopt and secure endorsement from the DCI and SECDEF for a major corporate commitment to innovation as a core element of its fundamental mission. The NRO should become the innovative technology engine for the Intelligence Community. No other element of the Community can fill that role.

Recommendations: To foster innovation as part of its core mission, the NRO should:

    * Include a commitment to innovation as a core value and as part of its 21st Century mission.
    * Reorganize to elevate the status, visibility, and power of the NRO organizational entity responsible for innovation.
    * Increase funding for Reconnaissance Technology/AdvancedDevelopment (RT/AD) to focus on new concept development, demonstrations, prototypes, and flight tests.


Issue 8: Should NRO systems engineering be strengthened?

Findings: Systems engineering within the system project offices (SPOs) appears to be effective. Within individual SPOs as well as within the SIGINT, IMINT, and COMM Directorates, systems engineering is adequately accomplished. However, because the existing SPOs pursue evolutionary development, technology insertion and innovation are fragmented. There does not appear to be a strong, cross-organization systems engineering capability. Integration of NRO systems into an overall "system of systems" concept is lacking, yet will be required in the future. Top-down systems integration will provide future improvements in cross-queuing and is necessary to ensure future data relay capabilities satisfy both SIGINT and IMINT current and projected requirements.

The lack of integration across system assets also makes it difficult for users (and oversight forums) to understand all capabilities. As a result, it is difficult to make trades and to address requirements coherently. The Panel felt integrated systems engineering (NRO-level integration across Directorates as well as integration with non-NRO systems) should be enhanced. An NRO-level activity is needed to focus on technology insertion, NRO-level architectural development, and establishment of an NRO "system of systems" capability. This capability would also contribute to coherently coordinating the requirements process with users.

Recommendations: Establish a single NRO-level Systems Engineering Authority and an associated process for ensuring systems fit into the approved architecture. The focus of this position would-be on a "system of systems" approach, to engineer across systems where logical and to advocate technology insertion into architectural alternatives.

The systems engineer would also serve as the NRO-level Architectural Authority. The office would be responsible for NRO top-level systems integration and for establishing architectural standards or "building codes" and focus on capabilities across the entire space architecture. In this sense, the Architectural Authority would be the lead NRO strategic planner. The position would also be the primary NRO interface for coordinating with DUSD (Space) and the DoD Space Architect.


Issue 9: What security system is appropriate?

Findings: Fundamental to the NRO is its security system. A recent Joint CIA-DoD Inspectors General (IG) Report stated that there were "numerous examples of overclassification and use" of the compartment for management instead of security purposes. The panel heard evidence consistent with the conclusion of the IG report.

There have been several attempts in the past to scrub the NRO security system and reduce its scope and the amount of information covered, and there is some evidence of success in doing so. Still, the practice of using the NRO security system as something more than a security compartment continues. There remains a perception by many outside the NRO that the NRO security system is selective and arbitrarily restricting what is seen as legitimate access to NRO information.

Recommendation: Accelerate the pace at which planned security changes are being made. Dramatically shrink the current security system to safeguard the minimum amount of data that requires protection.


Issue 10: Should NRO contractor relationships continue to be classified?

Findings: The fact of an NRO relationship with contractors has traditionally been classified in the NRO security system. There is no longer any reason to universally apply such a rule.

The protection of the NRO-corporate relationship in the NRO security system is a costly practice that limits legitimate communication across programs and restricts competition for NRO business. It has outlived its original purposes. Historically, the NRO protected its contractor relationships to protect technology advantages, conceal the breadth and scope of collection activities, and minimize threats from foreign intelligence services. In some cases, an added benefit has been reduced systems costs.

Recently, the Acting DNRO directed a thorough re-evaluation of this practice based on two primary criteria: (1) the ability to protect appropriate technology, organizations, and operations, and to preserve cover arrangements consistent with sources and methods techniques; and (2) the ability to preserve the full range of contracting options at the unclassified, classified, and compartmented levels.

The Panel solicited comments from companies currently eligible to do business with the NRO. Most companies would opt for an open relationship with the NRO. Some companies might want to maintain a covert relationship with the NRO for business or safety reasons. However, continued classified relationships must be based on national security considerations.

If NRO-corporate relationships are allowed to be overt, we believe that the number of companies which initially expressed a desire to have a covert relationship with the NRO would decline steadily over time.

Recommendation: Proceed on an accelerated basis to decompartment/declassify the NRO-corporate relationships. Exceptions should be on a limited case-by-case basis.


Issue 11: Do current military and civilian personnel practices adequately support the NRO?

Findings: The NRO personnel base is made up primarily of Navy and Air Force military personnel and Navy, Air Force and CIA civilians. Historically, the NRO has been the beneficiary of special treatment by their respective personnel systems. That situation is now being eroded.

In the past, Air Force and Naval officers entered at junior grades and were usually "by name" requested and/or recommended. They often stayed through promotion to 0-6, an Air Force Colonel or Navy Captain. Recent assignment, rating, and promotion policies of both services increasingly require assignment outside the NRO for officers to be competitive for promotion. Furthermore, there appears to be significant benefit to both the military service and the NRO when career assignments include both Service-wide and NRO rotational assignments.

With respect to civilians, the NRO gains employees from three systems; CIA, Air Force, and Navy. The largest contiguous group is CIA civilians. Multiple personnel systems are difficult to administer within a single organization, and the DNRO has little control over the systems, policies, and practices that govern NRO's human resources. The Panel recognizes the potential benefits that come from the overall CIA manpower base, and was cautious not to alter the fundamental arrangement. The Panel also saw little benefit in moving personnel to a new appointing authority--especially mindful that there was not large-scale employee acceptance for such a move. The Panel recognizes the need to create additional Memoranda of Agreement concerning civilian personnel, such as are outlined in the NRO response to the recent Joint CIA-DoD IG Draft Inspection Report.

Recommendation: The NRO and the Services should select the appropriate policy medium and issue guidelines for personnel policies to support the NRO. Regarding civilians, the Panel recommends establishing Memoranda of Agreement (MOAs) between the DCI and the SECDEF as well as between the DNRO and the Executive Director of the CIA establishing the authorities and responsibilities of the DNRO with respect to civilian personnel management arrangements. These MOAs should focus on arrangements for DNRO oversight of all personnel and manpower actions affecting size, accessions, promotions, grievances, awards, reassignments, and separations from the workforce, and oversight of the NRO's equal employment opportunity (EEO) process. These MOAs should also provide for DNRO participation on applicable CIA Senior Intelligence Service promotion boards.


Issue 12: Is the current NRO internal organization well matched to the future?

Findings: The NRO organization experienced significant change in 1989 and again in 1992 to address issues such as internal competition, connection to intelligence customers and military operators, and the need for cost-effective integrated architectures. Those reorganizations succeeded in addressing and resolving the issues, and today the NRO is a mature organization,structured in parallel to its principal customer base, collocated in a central facility with integrated program offices, and largely rid of destructive internal competition.

But the environment continues to change in ways which demand review of the appropriateness of the current organizational structure. The dominance of large, expensive, ongoing programs, each of which carries a long operations and maintenance (O&M)tail, limits the flexibility to pursue new ideas. The customer base continues to grow with the SMO needs ever expanding. Integration of heretofore separate programs into an integrated "system of systems" has become, perhaps, the most critical task of all.

The environmental changes give rise to six distinct organizational issues that the Panel identified as impediments to accomplishing the 21st Century NRO mission:

    * Lack of a clear organizational focus for large-scale systems engineering for integration of components into the "system of systems."
    * Dispersion of customer support interfaces throughout many elements of the NRO.
    * NRO is no longer universally accepted as being at theleading edge of technology.
    * Organizational champions for innovation are either nonexistent or lacking influence.
    * Increased staff and processes slow decision making.
    * The role of the Plans and Analysis (P&A) Office is unclear in the wake of the 1992 reorganization when integrated SIGINT, IMINT, and COMM planning went to the new Directorates.

Recommendation: To resolve those issues and establish an NRO organizational structure appropriate for its future, the Panel recommends the following steps be taken. A recommended organizational chart incorporating these changes is illustrated in Figure 3.

    * Increase the visibility and stature of technology and innovation in the NRO by elevating those functions into a new Directorate of Future Technologies and Applications co-equal to the SIGINT, IMINT, and COMM Directorates.
    * Reinvigorate the systems engineering function in P&A under the oversight of the NRO Technical Director to accomplish the integration of NRO systems into an integrated "system of systems." To reflect this reenergized responsibility, change the name of P&A to Systems Engineering, Plans, and Analysis.
    * Clarify and enhance customer support with centralized guidance, planning, and oversight and decentralized execution.
    * Establish a Senior Advisory Board to provide advice to the DNRO.
    * Consolidate administrative, staff, and support functions into a Finance and Administration Office under the leadership of the Chief Financial Officer. This Office should include ROM, MS&O, and staff functions.



Figure 4. Recommended Organizational Chart

4. CONCLUSION

The Panel considers the NRO a valuable national asset and clearly the world leader in providing intelligence capabilities from space. NRO capabilities underpin the role the U.S. plays in world affairs and are critical elements in maintaining U.S. influence around the globe. Adaptability to change and the ability to deal positively with internal and external assessments are two keys to the continuing success of the NRO.

The Panel suggests its recommendations be discussed throughout the NRO so that personnel understand the recommendations and are encouraged to provide value-added feedback. The Panel feels implementation of its recommendations will go a long way toward sustaining the NRO's much needed contribution to information superiority into the 21st Century.





APPENDIX I-1

JEREMIAH PANEL INTERVIEWEES
(in chronological order)

Hon. Lynn Hansen - Director, National Intelligence Council

VADM David Frost (USN) - Deputy Commander in Chief, U.S. Space Command

Lt. Gen. James Clapper (USAF, Ret) - Former Director, DIA

Mr. Jeffrey Harris - Former Director, NRO

Mr. Robert Fuhrman - Former President and Chief Operating Officer, Lockheed Corp

Mr. James Woolsey - Former Director of Central Intelligence

Dr. Robert Hermann - Former Director, NRO

Mr. Robert Davis - Deputy Undersecretary of Defense (Space)

Representative Larry Combest - Congress, Chairman of the HPSCI

Representative Norman Dicks - Congress, HPSCI member

Dr. Vance Coffman - Vice-President, Lockheed-Martin Corp.

Senator J. Robert Kerrey - Congress, SSCI member

Mr. Duane Andrews - Former Assistant Secretary of Defense(C3I)

VADM Michael McConnell(USN, Ret) - Former Director, NSA

Mr. Keith Hall - Acting Director, NRO

RADM Robert Geiger (USN, Ret) - Former Navy Program Director

Dr. Larry Gershwin - National Intelligence Officer

Dr. John Foster - Former Defense Director for Research and Engineering

Gen. Thomas Moorman, Jr. - Vice Chief of Staff, USAF
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Source

COMMIT ENTERPRISES INC.

SPAWAR C2
NGA IT/IS
NGA IA Services
NRO SE/SI
U.S. Army PMO
OSD C2P
GSA
NAVSEA SeaPort-e
 
SPAWAR Systems Center; N65236-04-D-6847 (SES)



The scope of this contract is to provide technical support to the emerging concepts required for senior leaders to have the ability to shape a situation and rapidly respond to change. Net-centricity enables these concepts by providing dispersed command capabilities across multiple organizations within a simultaneous C2 environment, providing for shared understanding and enabling flexible synchronization of plans and forces. The resulting superior decision-making capability assures that senior decision makers make the right decisions more quickly than our adversaries. 3 Year, $8,489,004, CPFF / IDIQ Contract.

 
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), NMA100-02-C-0002; NJVC Subcontract, S03COM01 (IES)



The NJVC Contract provides Information Technology and Information Services (IT/IS) ranging from enterprise engineering, technology assessment and planning, management, implementation, and information assurance services to National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), formally National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA).

CommIT Enterprises, Inc., provides project support, project management, and principal engineering for delivering communications, networks, systems, security, and software to support the NGA mission areas and worldwide sites. This global support spans a wide range of technologies including CISCO, ATM, SONET, Windows, LINUX, HP-UX, Sun Solaris, SGI IRIX and AIX implemented across a wide range of networks and security domains including NIPRnet, SIPRnet, JWICS, CWAN/GWAN, CIAnet, NSAnet, NGAnet and DIAnet.
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, HM1571-050C; Raytheon Subcontract, 3014928 (IES)



The NGA Information Assurance (IA) Services contract consists of program management, life-cycle planning, intrusion detection and prevention, information system security, public key technical support and IA special projects including studies, analyses, recommendations and support for the protection of NGA computer systems, networks, and infrastructure.
National Reconnaissance Office, Lockheed Martin Corporation (IES)



The scope of this contract is to provide Systems Engineering (SE) and Systems Integration (SI) support to the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). CommIT Enterprises, Inc., performs the necessary systems engineering, analysis, and integration to support the accomplishment of their goals and objectives. This effort also supports activities associated with Enterprise level integration, verification, validation, transition, and initialization. Tasks include the development of concepts, plans and procedures, and coordination with stakeholders to resolve Enterprise issues and mitigate risks.
Product Manager, Information Warfare, HC1047-06-C-4007; Chugach industries, Inc. Subcontract, HC1047-06-C-4007-S-CommIT (IES)



CommIT provides Systems Engineering and Technical Analysis (SETA) Support Services to the PMIW programs and its mission support activities. SETA support and service requirements include, but are not limited to: the research, preparation, review, and update of program and acquisition management and technical documentation; research and preparation of independent assessments and briefings; program budget documentation, executions, and schedule; contract and government purchase card (GPC) executions, research, monitoring, evaluations, market surveys, reporting, and training; special studies, surveys, and technical analysis; program security (including physical, industrial,
and personnel security); administrative and scheduling; organization and strategic planning; facility and office management; acquisition logistics; government property control and accountability; secure and non-secure Local Area Network (LAN) management; system and operations analysis, general engineering and application engineering analysis and support, and test and liaison support activities.
OASD / NII / Command and Control Policy, GS-23F-0416K; CACI (Formerly National Security Research, Inc.) Subcontract, CommIT-002 (SES)



The scope of this contract is to provide engineering and technical support to the development of Command and Control Policy (C2P) for today’s strategic security environment as it is characterized by complex, asymmetric, and variable threats posed by a diverse collection of international actors. This environment now requires an increasingly broader set of national response options and military missions to counter these threats. Partly in response to that, and partly due to the evolution of national strategy, DoD has sought to provide national and military leaders with a wider range of precise global strike options, and reduce our reliance on the use of nuclear weapons as stated in Nuclear Posture Review. Changes to Combatant Commander responsibilities outlined in the 2001 Unified Command Plan, and the development of the Joint Operations Concepts ((JOpsC) and its subordinate Joint Command and Control (JC2) Functional Concept are changing the DoD landscape. The scope and pace of the activities that will change DoD C2 suggest that a broader, but centralized view and assessment of the nation’s capabilities is critical to guiding the development, risk management and resource allocation needed to provide modern C2 required in the Information Age.

General Services Administration IT Contract, GS-35F-0127R (download PDF)



SIN 132-51 - Information Technology (IT) Professional Services:
FPDS Code D301 IT Facility Operation and Maintenance
FPDS Code D302 IT Systems Development Services
FPDS Code D306 IT Systems Analysis Services
FPDS Code D307 Automated Information Systems Design & Integration Services
FPDS Code D310 IT Backup and Security Services
FPDS Code D316 IT Network Management Services
FPDS Code D399 Other Information Technology Services, Not Elsewhere Classified

NAVSEA SeaPort Enhanced - BearingPoint



The NAVSEA SeaPort Enhanced (SeaPort-e) makes electronic procurement of Engineering, Technical and Programmatic support services at NAVSEA a reality. The Navy Virtual SYSCOM (VS) Commanders (NAVAIR, NAVSEA, NAVSUP and SPAWAR) have decided to leverage the successes and efficiencies of the SeaPort-e business model by designating SeaPort-e the vehicle of choice for future Engineering, Financial, and Program Management contractor support services.

ommIT was formed to provide integrated engineering services for strategic and tactical communications (RF & telephony) and enterprise Information Technology (IT) solutions. Our firm specializes in a broad range of technology solutions to support the growing need for processes and services for the enterprise-wide information and knowledge solutions and systems.
Our Core Competencies include:

    * Consulting Engineering
    * Integration
    * Professional Services
    * Concept Exploration
    * Integrated Logistics Support
    * System Design, Engineering, and Integration
    * Test and Evaluation
    * Enterprise Management / Architecture
    * Decision Support
    * Net-Centric Concept Development
    * Program Development
    * Portfolio Management
    * Program Management
    * Project Management
    * System Engineering and Technical Assistance (SETA)

We specialize in defining requirements, designing and implementing cost-effective solutions, development of responsible doctrine, and performance evaluation of IT systems and response doctrine.
Our core domains include:

    * Command and Control (C2) Concepts Development and Implementation
    * Information Technology Architecture Development and Assessment
    * Systems Engineering and Integration (SE&I)
    * Information Assurance (IA)

Strategic Enterprise Solutions

The assignment of global C2 responsibilities to USSTRATCOM (UCP Change 2) and Battle Management C2 to USJFCOM (MID 912) represent the most profound change in Department of Defense (DoD) C2 since the National Security Act of 1947. In addition, since the release of the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) in December 2001, DoD has sought a new strategic approach to increase national security by providing additional strategic strike options to leadership while reducing reliance on the use of nuclear weapons. A change in warfighter responsibilities, coupled with the Department’s transformational move to net-centric operations, is driving new concepts for and the need for a new governance process to manage the evolution.

An initiative to develop a structure of this complexity requires involvement from many organizations, agencies, and institutes to establish and mature the technological implementation. Additionally, technical consultation is required for administrative, policy, procedure and organizational framework development with a focus on the Process Management, Project Planning, Engineering, and Support required by the Enterprise services organization.

Intelligence Enterprise Solutions

CommIT’s core competencies are built on a diverse foundation of providing expert solutions to our clients in the areas of physical, technical, and cyber security, certification and accreditation, vulnerability assessments, threat analysis, risk management methodologies, cost effectiveness analysis, pathway analysis, remediation plans, minimum essential infrastructure assessments, mitigation strategies, and business continuity plans. We employ risk management, threat assessment, and vulnerability analysis processes to mitigate risk for mission critical operations and assure accreditation for our clients.

Our employees have demonstrated extensive experience within each of our core competencies which provide our clients with the necessary confidence that each phase or objective within the program is accomplished within specified design and cost parameters. This also provides our clients with overall savings in direct costs and indirect costs associated with schedule and implementation delays and overruns.

ntelligence Enterprise Solutions (IES) is a team-oriented unit with a solid reputation for talent, innovation, quality, and integrity. IES vigorously recruits and retains energetic and highly motivated Top Secret (TS) and Secret Compartment Information (SCI) individuals that provide an immediate impact to CommIT’s clients. The IES staff greatly contributes to CommIT’s tradition of excellence and qualifications and experience demonstrate our ability to deliver management and technical services that support the development of a cogent secure critical systems and infrastructures.

CommIT prides itself on its experience and past performance in the areas of Information Technology (IT), Information Assurance (IA), Systems Engineering (SE), and Systems Integration (SI).  We have provided engineering and technical support services for software, system, and network development, design, installation, integration, operation, and testing of command and control (C2) concepts and military command, control, and communications (C3) with DoD and within the IC community.  CommIT has both the background and the personnel to make important contributions in the C4ISR and the IC arenas.

The IES Division’s core capabilities include:

Systems Engineering and Technical Assistance (SETA)

    * Program Management
    * Specialized Engineering
    * Acquisition Program Support

System Engineering & Integration (SE&I)

    * Project Management
    * System Engineering / System Integration
    * Network Engineering
    * Information Assurance (IA)

Clients

    * NGA
    * NSA
    * NRO
    * U.S. Army
    
Partners

    * NJVC-LLC
    * Raytheon
    * Lockheed Martin
    * CII
    * SAIC

[Anti_Illuminati]

Report of the National Commission for the review of the National Reconnaissance Office

http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Aeronautics-and-Astronautics/16-891JSpace-Policy-SeminarSpring2003/05086F3D-438C-4222-BBFA-634EFE1FD166/0/nro.pdf

[Anti_Illuminati]

http://www.govexec.com/features/0602/0602s3.htm

Raising The Ante
By Anne Laurent alaurent@govexec.com Government Executive June 1, 2002

Venture capitalists are helping government buy its way back into the emerging technology market.

Computer gamer Gilman Louie now plays for keeps.

Former chief of online projects at toy maker Hasbro, inventor of the popular Falcon F-16 flight simulator and importer of the hypnotic Soviet computer puzzle Tetris, Louie now ferrets out emerging technologies and invests in them for the CIA. He is the most visible of a new breed of government buyers. They're using venture capital to lure technology innovators into the federal market they once shunned. Louie runs In-Q-Tel, a 3-year-old nonprofit "venture catalyst" created and funded by the CIA to place bets on technologies likely to succeed at the agency - as well as in the commercial market.

Louie's at the leading edge of a desperate push to speed the latest, greatest gizmos, gadgets and software into the hands of federal users. Especially since Sept. 11, legislators and the Bush administration are intent on driving high-impact technology into government - especially the Defense Department and intelligence agencies. If that means powering over, past or through traditional contractors, procurement methods and people, so be it.

The Defense Department has taken to pleading publicly for anti-terrorist technology. The first such call, in October, netted more than 12,000 proposals. A second was issued in March. This year's $159 million Defense Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrations program is larded with homeland security and counterterrorism measures. The 7-year-old program seeks to bypass the acquisition process, quickly prototyping developing technology and getting it into use. In December, Defense launched a dozen rapid improvement projects to test ways to implant new technology within 18 months.

Outside Defense, the White House Office of Homeland Security dedicated four staffers to meet with industry and weigh technology proposals. Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., announced in February his plan for a national test bed to evaluate new technologies for the war on terrorism. In April, Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., announced he wants to create a program at the Office of Federal Procurement Policy to help take advantage of homeland defense and anti-terror technology innovations.

Well before Sept. 11, U.S. intelligence agencies realized they had fallen behind the technology curve. It was a difficult, embarrassing admission for the folks responsible for intelligence satellites, the U-2 spy plane, the SR-171 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft and a host of other groundbreaking gear. But times had changed. The Soviet Union's collapse in the early 1990s removed the overwhelming rationale for spending any amount to gain a technological edge. That time also saw the rise of the World Wide Web, the beginning of the information onslaught, and the start of an era in which industry vastly outspends government on research and development, especially in information technology.

"The Russians were a simple threat. It was easy to come up with focused, targeted solutions," says Michael Crow, executive vice provost at Columbia University and In-Q-Tel board member. "When you are looking at an enemy that can vaporize your civilization in an instant and somebody says, 'I need a handmade satellite and I'll pay anything,' well, the world doesn't work that way any more. Now, [enemies] have an advantage: They're using the same technologies the market is using and the Agency is not accessing the market. In certain areas of technology, the private sector is bigger than the government and can move faster." Crow was named Arizona State University president on March 29.

Intelligence visionaries saw that the speed of technological development, industry's spending lead, and the loss to downsizing of considerable tech talent, meant government had little choice but to try to harness the innovative energy of private firms. One of those seers, Ruth David, had come from Energy Department research partner Sandia National Laboratories to run the CIA's science and technology directorate in 1995. She found the situation dire. "I had to ask for Internet access on my desktop," David says. "Not tying the Internet to the internal network, I agree with, but not having it available on an independent network? People in the intelligence business need to live in the world of information."

David, now chief executive officer at Anser, a nonprofit research institute in Arlington, Va., found the Agency's technology team isolated and far too reliant on a handful of large, CIA-savvy contractors. "If their job is to infuse the best technology to enable the mission, then they need to have access to it, and that comes in communications with the people developing the technology," she says. "The traditional contractors are not the hotbed of innovative IT."

Elsewhere in the intelligence world, the National Reconnaissance Office, which runs the U.S. spy satellite network, already had begun moving beyond traditional buying methods and suppliers. "There was a small [NRO] group that realized in the late 1980s that government was not driving technology, but had become just another customer," says Mark Lister, senior vice president for government operations of Sarnoff Corp., a Princeton, N.J., research and development firm, and managing director of Rosettex Technology and Ventures Group. "To capitalize on industry investment, they realized, government would have to become a player. NRO had to. . . form relationships with companies in the commercial world."

In 1987, struggling with the magnetic tape it used to store a huge volume of images and other data, NRO reached beyond its contractor comfort zone, bringing in 3M, then a leading recording technology firm with little government experience. 3M solved the problem and NRO got the firm to lead a consortium of corporate and academic partners in creating the National Media Laboratory to take further advantage of commercial advances in information storage and retrieval. Three years later, NRO created a National Information Display Laboratory, hosted by Sarnoff, to help solve problems related to sharing and displaying images and data. In 1992, the labs were folded into the National Technology Alliance, which is dedicated to finding and developing commercial IT products for use by Defense and intelligence agencies.

In February, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, executive agent for the alliance, abandoned the labs and awarded Rosettex Technology and Ventures Group a contract worth up to $200 million over five years to be the National Technology Alliance's In-Q-Tel. The company is charged with leading a team of experts sniffing out best-of-class technology in imagery, cartography, digital processing and analysis, and digital infrastructure. Rosettex is a joint venture of Sarnoff and SRI International, a nonprofit research institute in Menlo Park, Calif. Both firms license technologies, and they've created 26 new companies between them, according to Lister. Rosettex will invest profits from the technology alliance contract in a venture fund, which, like In-Q-Tel, is intended to support technologies useful to government and the commercial market.

SURFING SILICON VALLEY
Venture funds are today's hot and trendy answer to a problem government has tried to tackle before. Agencies have tried many ways to cut nontraditional deals for commercial R&D and infant technologies. For example, agencies can use the "other transactions" contracting category, which expressly permits agencies all sorts of flexibility in intellectual property rights, cost sharing, government oversight and business arrangements. The Defense Department's dual-use science and technology program also helps fund commercial R&D on products with military applications. And the department runs programs to fund small businesses to do military research. But none of these efforts has widened the supplier base much beyond the usual suspects.

The government's procurement culture is just too suspicious of business needs and practices to embrace flexibility. Business, especially the fast, high-rolling technology sector, distrusts government's contracting methods and finds its oversight onerous. What's more, when Ruth David went technology prospecting in California, high-tech startups bluntly told her the CIA's market share just wasn't big enough to bother with. "The government still has not come to terms with not being a big player in a market it helped to create," she says. As David sought ways to marry the Agency and the Valley, control of the CIA passed in 1997 to George Tenet, who brought along investment banker A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, first as his counselor and later as executive director. A tough-talking former Marine infantry officer with the polish of Princeton, Krongard had been CEO of Alex Brown Inc., the seventh-largest bank in the country and an early investor in Microsoft and AOL. Krongard and Tenet embraced David's effort.

"I immediately saw the attractiveness of the idea," Krongard says. "Alex Brown had the reputation of being the No. 1 technology bankers in the country. Consequently, we had met, interfaced, romanced, cajoled, begged for business - whatever - a lot of different people. Their attitude was such that they were not gonna put up with the typical government approach to doing business, and yet [that was] where the cutting-edge stuff was being performed."

Tenet decreed the CIA had to "swim in the Valley," and a new relationship between the Agency and tech firms was born.

Jeffrey Smith, In-Q-Tel's legal counsel at Washington law firm Arnold & Porter and formerly CIA general counsel, worked with Krongard to build a board of outsiders to fill in the outlines of David's vision. "The CIA didn't quite know what it wanted - it wasn't a federally funded research and development center, it wasn't procurement, it wasn't in-house," says Louie. "So they went to Norm Augustine, not as [former] Lockheed CEO, but as a maverick, and said, 'Help us put together an all-star, killer board of directors to wrestle with the problem and create a model.'"

That model mimicked venture capital firms, right down to their equity investments in startups and new technologies. "From the beginning, we knew equity drove the IT market," Smith says. "Equity was the genius, the energy. It was the only thing that would give us credibility in the open rating system of Silicon Valley."

But investments were to be just one tool at the organization's disposal, a tool to be used sparingly - most venture firms are funded at $100 million or more, more than three times In-Q-Tel's annual budget. So In-Q-Tel invests cautiously; the board must approve any investment of more than $250,000. To allay legislators' and the CIA's fears that they might lose control of In-Q-Tel if investments really paid off, all proceeds must be reinvested in further technology research and acquisition. "Our goal is not to collect a bunch of stock," says Louie. "We're using the approach to get products and services that are going to make a difference to the world of intelligence. What happens to the equity is a byproduct of the style with which we engage the company."

Investments buy the CIA access to technologies still in the womb. In-Q-Tel's board saw that "if the CIA could be involved at the beginning as a technology was being developed for commercial applications, the company could be modifying it so it would be useful to both industry and the CIA," Smith says. "As soon as it hit the market, the CIA could buy and use it and be as current as anybody in the world."

As the board developed a model, agency insiders canvassed the CIA's technology needs. The board then shopped the list, or "problem set," among research organizations, academics and tech companies, asking, "'You got anything? This interest you? We've got $30 million and the CIA as a potential customer,'" Smith says. Annually updated problem sets now determine In-Q-Tel's direction.

As for choosing a CEO for the new organization, the board "wanted a 30-year-old with a ponytail," Smith recalls. Board member John Seely Brown, who had run Xerox's famed Palo Alto Research Center, recommended hiring a computer gamer. Some of the very best talent in the Valley was in gaming, he said, because gamers have to push technology to its limits.

At the time, Louie, who had created his first computer game company while in college and had just sold his latest company, MicroProse, to Hasbro, was having a blast in the toymaking business. He recalls thinking, "It's the movie 'Big' for me. I'm Tom Hanks." Invited by a business magazine to participate in a mock dogfight put on by an Atlanta flight school, Louie was "shot down" by corporate headhunter Randy Jayne, who was working for In-Q-Tel's board. Jayne gave Louie a concept paper about the CIA's plans and pressed him to interview for the CEO slot. But Louie was reluctant to leave Toyland. "My father was a Navy planner and estimator for construction projects, a loyal government employee," says Louie. "I always was interested in government, but it didn't pay, and I believed you couldn't get anything done in government."

What's more, Louie, a Democrat who had demonstrated against California ballot initiatives favoring English-only classes and opposing affirmative action, was not a likely spook. But the CIA paper intrigued him and convinced him the Agency wanted to change. "I'm an American-born Chinese, fourth generation, a 'banana,' " Louie says. "In the circles I hung out in, there was a lot of discussion about how the U.S. misread the climate in China and couldn't understand how Chinese youth had become more nationalistic. They were the Internet generation and the U.S. thought they would be sympathetic and not want to fight over Taiwan. But that was not the case. So I thought that if the intelligence services could do a better job of understanding the other side it would lead to less mistakes and better policy.

"I decided to take the job because I was convinced that the Agency was serious. With these people, it's a game for keeps," Louie says. The board was delighted, despite Louie's leanings. "Gilman knocked the socks off the interviewers with grasping what we wanted," says Krongard. "So much of the technology is in California, and Gilman was very well connected out there."

Q'D IN
In-Q-Tel is no typical CIA front company. From the beginning, the Agency was completely public, even proud, about having cracked the government mold to connect with the bleeding edge of business. Simultaneous stories in The New York Times and The Washington Post on Sept. 29, 1999 unveiled the Agency's venture capital aspirations. Since then, Louie and In-Q-Tel have become media darlings. The youthful software king has posed in black glasses, in a trench coat and seated on the CIA emblem for photographs accompanying stories entitled, "Spy Tech," "Spies Inc.," "The Spy Who Funded Me," and the like.

"The coverage worked in our favor," Louie says. "The high-tech companies in the Valley are run by people who were kids in the 1970s and 1980s. They thought Bond and his gizmos were cool and if they had cool Bondish technology, they'd have a big customer in the CIA." The homage to gadget master, "Q," in In-Q-Tel's name, multiplied the Bond effect, surpassing the wildest hopes of In-Q-Tel supporters. "We assumed the Valley would be intrigued by the CIA, but reluctant to deal with it," says Smith. "To our delight, that was not the case. The smarter ones recognized an opportunity for them. When they worked with the CIA technical people they discovered they were enormously talented. Plus, they recognized the imprimatur of the CIA is a useful selling device: If it's good enough for the CIA, it ought to be good enough for you."

The reception inside the CIA was markedly cooler. Fiercely protective of their own projects, CIA program chiefs resented having their budgets reduced by the $28 million it cost to start In-Q-Tel. They also doubted that a group of slick, geeky outsiders could possibly find technology on the Agency's behalf. A congressionally mandated status report found that In-Q-Tel needed to enlarge its PR campaign to include the CIA. The vehicle for that marketing effort and for getting In-Q-Tel's finds adopted within the Agency is the In-Q-Tel Interface Center, known as the QIC.

The center, made up of 13 to 15 widely experienced, well-respected CIA staffers, is responsible for overall planning and management of In-Q-Tel's relationship with the agency. "We had to come up with a mechanism to lock the two together to avoid too much of a culture shock between In-Q-Tel and the Agency, [so] we created QIC," says Krongard. "QIC's a broker between In-Q-Tel and the Agency. They do every thing from say, 'That's not true,' if they hear a rumor about In-Q-Tel, to sifting out the ideas. Somebody has to take a corporate view - If we're going to spend dollars and time, where is there a big payoff for the entire organization?"

In-Q-Tel's 40 employees, along with the interface center staff, have become adept at identifying solutions and getting them into the Agency. They have engagements of various types with 20 firms and investments in 14. About 80 percent of In-Q-Tel's $35 million annual contract with the CIA goes into project funding, investments and the costs of transferring technologies into CIA programs. Unlike a typical venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel measures its success not by return on investment, but by return to the CIA in the form of technologies adopted. Since 1999, In-Q-Tel has delivered 19 technologies and demonstrations of 6 others, mostly in the fields of knowledge management, enterprise intelligence, and data classification - all methods of distilling knowledge from masses of different types of data from multiple sources.

In-Q-Tel employees tap into the high-tech deal flow by working the room wherever techies and venture capitalists hang out. Increasingly, they collect leads from other venture capitalists seeking to vet promising firms by piggybacking on In-Q-Tel's fiendishly rigorous technical due diligence. In-Q-Tel has become a sought-after investment partner as well, which nets early intelligence from other venture capitalists. Since Sept. 11, patriotism has swelled the proposal stream - more than 60 percent of the nearly 2,000 proposals In-Q-Tel has received since 1999 came after the attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon.

MORE THAN MONEY
Unlike most government buyers, In-Q-Tel will negotiate almost any aspect of its relationship with a company. It will forgo government's traditional rights to intellectual property and data, for example, on the theory that a company must preserve full intellectual property rights to interest other venture capitalists in investing. In-Q-Tel also varies the deal to match the company. "Investment is extremely important at the very early stage," says Louie. "For more mature companies financing is not as critical." In addition to money, know-how and the world's most sophisticated beta site, In-Q-Tel offers entrée to the Byzantine federal market.

Take In-Q-Tel's arrangement with Mountain View, Calif.-based Stratify. The Stratify Discovery System classifies and manages unstructured data - documents, e-mail and the like. When Stratify began its mating dance with In-Q-Tel, the firm had raised more than $35 million since its creation in 1999. "Whatever few million [In-Q-Tel] brought wouldn't make any difference," says Nimish Mehta, Stratify president and chief information officer. "The attractive part of the relationship was their knowledge of the government market, their position, the introductions," Mehta says.

Zaplet, a Redwood Shores, Calif., maker of collaborative tools that allow software applications to travel by e-mail and be automatically updated by each recipient, wasn't looking for money either, says co-founder David Roberts. "We had just finished a $90 million financing round." So instead of investing directly in Zaplet, In-Q-Tel bought the firm's product and services and credit to buy stock down the road at a set price. "We wanted to say, 'We are interested in your product and services and we will help you build a government market, but we want to understand what's in the heads of your investors - we want a strategic-level engagement,'" Louie says.

The Stratify and Zaplet engagements are among the two-thirds of In-Q-Tel deals that Louie deems "evolutionary" - new ways of applying known technologies to solve new kinds of problems. Another 10 percent are revolutionary. They are new science with a hot new market and no competition. An example is In-Q-Tel's investment in La Jolla, Calif.'s Graviton, which makes Web-based wireless sensor monitoring and control systems that could, for example, allow an electric company to measure the temperature of electrical transformers and alert the customer if one overheated. Such sensors could have myriad intelligence uses for monitoring equipment, communications and the like. The rest of In-Q-Tel's deals involve mature technologies, such as System Research and Development's Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness soft- ware. Popular with the casinos in Las Vegas, where SRD is based, as well as among retailers, NORA surveys a company's collections of data to identify relationships that could point to fraud and collusion among employees, clients, suppliers and outsiders. The software has obvious applications for detecting terrorist sleeper agents and scrubbing airline reservations. SRD CEO Jeff Jonas says he is using In-Q-Tel's money to add a secret "ultimate feature" to NORA. Especially attractive to the CIA, the feature should make NORA even more attractive to corporations. "To my shock, everything we're doing, every feature valuable in the federal space, is just a bigger problem that also goes on in corporate America," Jonas says.

BEARDED BABY
Not surprisingly, the rest of government also is interested in In-Q-Tel and its technologies. "It's like a baby with a beard. Everyone is rushing to see it," says Krongard. Louie's briefed the Office of Homeland Security, NASA, and the Defense, Justice and State departments, some of them many times. In January, Retired Adm. Arthur Cebrowski, head of the new Pentagon Office of Force Transformation, suggested the Defense Department get into the venture capital business. The Army's already moving into the venturing game. The 2003 Defense appropriation ordered the Army to reserve $25 million in R&D funds to establish an independent venture fund modeled on In-Q-Tel.

But not everyone is keen on In-Q-Tel proliferation. "It's not in In-Q-Tel's interest, because right now we've got the field to ourselves," says Krongard. "So we are cooperative and we tell everybody the good, the bad and the ugly, but if they think I'm trying to sell them on having [an In-Q-Tel] they're wrong." Lister worries that agencies won't fully appreciate the risks involved in betting on untested firms and products and that creating more funds will dilute potential technology gains. "If NRO and [the National Security Agency] and NIMA and the Army and Air Force and Navy and Marines all do In-Q-Tels, the competition is going to be enormous. And I question how much return on investment you get as a community," he says.

Last year, the Army Science Board said the Army, and federal agencies in general, "should avoid owning a minority interest in private companies." The panel "disfavors the In-Q-Tel model of making anticipated return on investment an evaluation factor" because "it detracts from the foremost objective of selecting vendors with the potential to develop technologies necessary for the objective force." The Army currently collects little more than $400,000 a year in royalties on products developed with industry, so the board also doubted the existence of commercial markets for technologies in which an Army In-Q-Tel might invest.

"I went to the Army and said, 'Why not spend your money through Rosettex?'" Lister says. "Do your R&D and we'll put our fee in the venture fund and Army leaders will be gaining some knowledge." Lister already is working with In-Q-Tel and has invited Louie to sit on the board of Rosettex's venture fund. "Gilman and I are interested in working collaboratively so people who come to him with ideas that are too early-stage for him and need prototyping he will shoot to me. He'll also see stuff he could pick up by sitting on the Rosettex board," Lister says. "Our models are complementary: I can't compete with him because I don't have enough money. He will not compete with me because the stuff Rosettex invests in is too early in its development for him."

If In-Q-Tel and its look-alikes continue to cooperate with one another and other venture capital funds, they may succeed in speeding the flow of fast-evolving, useful technology into federal agencies. That won't quiet critics who believe government has no place in business, but it might help intelligence agencies better grapple with the multiple threats and unfathomable welter of information they confront in the post-Cold War era of terror. "We live with fear in this business," Krongard said in an interview 10 days before Sept. 11. "One of our biggest fears is that something happens today, and when we do the autopsy we find that two weeks ago we had it, [but] we didn't know because it was buried in something else that wasn't getting processed or we lacked for a Pashtun speaker or who knows what."

# A 'KILLER BOARD' To create a company daring, agile, and hip enough to be attractive to Silicon Valley startups, the CIA pulled together a board packed with corporate mavericks, innovators and canny investors.

# Lee Ault, chairman of the In-Q-Tel board; former chairman and CEO of Telecredit Inc.
# Norman Augustine, former chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin Corp.
# John Seely Brown, former director, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
# Howard Cox, general partner, Greylock; chairman, National Venture Capital Association
# Michael Crow, president, Arizona State university; former executive vice provost, Columbia University
# Stephen Friedman, senior principal of Marsh & McLennan Capital Inc., and former chairman of Goldman Sachs and Co.;
# Paul Kaminski, president and CEO of Technovation Inc., senior partner in Global Tech- nology Partners, and former undersecretary of defense for acquisition and technology
# Jeong Kim, former group president, Lucent Optical Networking Group, part of the Lucent Technologies Group, and founder of Yurie Systems
# John McMahon, former president and CEO of Lockheed Missiles and Space Co., and former deputy director of central intelligence
# Alex Mandl, former chairman and CEO of Teligent and former president and CEO of AT&T
# William Perry, former secretary of Defense

Seeking Solutions
In-Q-Tel scours the high-tech world for start-ups and established companies developing or selling products that will address a specific set of problem areas for the CIA. Here are the Agency's current priorities:

      Internet Search and Discovery
    * Web crawling, indexing, ranking
    * Personalization

      Information Security and Privacy
    * Adaptive threat detection
    * Network privacy/anonymity
    * Digital rights management

      Enterprise Knowledge Management and Visualization
    * Enterprise search/retrieval, indexing, access management, personalization
    * Data warehousing/mining
    * Collaboration environments

      Geospatial Information Services

      Distributed Sensing/Data Acquisition

[dissident99]

Holy Sh1t .. How Blind have we been forced to be ... I am sure there are other really heavy secrets lurking in the background.

[Dig]

Holy Sh1t .. How Blind have we been forced to be ... I am sure there are other really heavy secrets lurking in the background.

We are conditioned to believe the government is filled with incompetent morons that can never really produce anything more powerful than the people.

What a joke.  You see the underfunded cops on TV in dilapidated neighborhoods and silly politicians arguing about nonsense.  Meanwhile the real government is building full spectrum tyranny grids that can monitor any nanometer across the globe.

[Anti_Illuminati]

Source
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Order Code RL31369



CRS Report for Congress
Received through the CRS Web



Imagery Intelligence: Issues for Congress



April 12, 2002




Richard A. Best, Jr
Specialist in National Defense
Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division



Congressional Research Service ~ The Library of Congress
 
Imagery Intelligence: Issues for Congress

Summary

Intelligence derived from satellites has become an essential element of military operations and foreign policymaking. In particular, precise imagery from space-based collection systems makes possible the effective use of precision-guided munitions that is becoming the basis of U.S. defense planning. Imagery intelligence also provides the factual bases for addressing many foreign policy issues.

Imagery is collected by satellites acquired and operated by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an organization with a record of enormous technological achievements since its creation in 1961. Imagery collected by the NRO is processed, analyzed, exploited, and disseminated by another organization, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA). NIMA was established in 1996, incorporating the Defense Mapping Agency and various intelligence offices.

Congress has been concerned with satellite imagery because of its critical importance and its high costs. Independent commissions established by Congress to assess the state of the imagery intelligence effort have concluded that significant changes need to be made in the way the Nation’s imagery effort is conducted. There is a consensus that greater emphasis should be placed on better collection targeting and improving processing, exploitation, and dissemination (the processes collectively termed TPED); that greater attention should be given to acquiring commercial imagery; and that the management of the imagery effort may need to be changed.

Even before the events of September 11, 2001, there appeared to be a fairly widespread view within congressional committees that at least some additional funding should be directed towards imagery collection and TPED. Subsequent military campaigns have underscored the use of imagery in military operations and other counterterrorist efforts. TPED encompasses the establishment of a “multi-int” database, i.e. an electronic file containing information from all intelligence sources, that will require the balancing of different needs of intelligence agencies and government consumers. Congress has encouraged NIMA’s role in establishing this database, but obstacles include costs, inherent technical difficulties, and the administrative and security complications of placing one agency in charge of maintaining and editing data for a multitude of users.

Some observers advocate more fundamental changes. These include significantly greater reliance on commercial imagery and a reduction in coverage by Government satellites. In this approach, the NRO and NIMA would concentrate on developing cutting edge technologies and on meeting special requirements beyond the capabilities of the private sector. Some would reconsider the next generation of imagery-collecting satellites. Satellite imagery is among the most important technological achievements of the Intelligence Community; maintaining a capability to support military operations that avoid inflicting vast civilian damages provides the underlying justification for a continuing effort.
 
Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Issues for Congress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Tasking, Processing, Exploitation, and Dissemination (TPED) . . . . . . . . . . 7
Funding TPED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Commercial Imagery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Management and Personnel Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Appendix A. National Reconnaissance Organization (NRO) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Appendix B. The National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) . . . . . . . . . 28
 
Imagery Intelligence: Issues for Congress
Introduction

The NATO campaign against Serbian forces in Kosovo undertaken in the spring of 1999 has been termed both a brilliant success and a harbinger of military operations in the twenty-first century. Among other things, it demonstrated the increasing importance of precise imagery intelligence that permitted NATO to attack and destroy crucial Serbian targets with minimal friendly losses or collateral damage. Over 9,300 strike sorties were flown with NATO losing no aircrews and only two aircraft.  Without the need for a costly ground campaign, Serbian forces pulled out of Kosovo and Albanian refugees were able to return to their homes.

In the midst of this successful air campaign, however, occurred a significant blunder that was to have major repercussions on the other side of the globe and demonstrated significant weaknesses in the imagery analysis and dissemination process. On May 7, 1999, a U.S. B-2 bomber fired a 2000 lb. guided bomb and precisely destroyed a building believed to be the Headquarters of the Yugoslav Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement (FDSP), a legitimate military target.  The building was first designated by intelligence officers at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Unfortunately, the building was not the FDSP headquarters, but the Embassy of China.

As a result of the attack, three Chinese officials were killed and the United States had to apologize formally and pay restitution. Despite the apology and restitution, the mistaken bombing was deeply resented in Beijing and may have contributed to a general deterioration of Sino-American relations. The misidentification of this Belgrade office building reflects both the crucial importance that intelligence has come to have in military operations and the serious consequences of what Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) George Tenet acknowledged as an intelligence failure. As Tenet later testified: When cities were struck in past wars, none doubted that civilians, embassies, hospitals, and schools would be in harm’s way.

Today, our ability to strike precisely has created the impression that sensitive sites can be safe in the middle of a war zone. Our desire to protect innocents in the line of fire has added an enormous burden on all of us that we accept. The incident demonstrated the crucial importance of integrating satellite imagery of major installations with other forms of intelligence that would identify what was going on inside them. Tenet also suggested the origins of the mistake­a failure to maintain accurate data bases. “We have diverted resources and attention away from basic intelligence and data base maintenance to support current operations for too long.”1

In the post-September 11, 2001 campaign against the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists, imagery intelligence has continued to be of great value. Aircraft based in the U.S. are able to attack ground (and underground) targets with precision weapons using imagery obtained by reconnaissance satellites. Imagery intelligence is also an important component of the global war against terrorism in which it is tied to information from other intelligence sources and from unclassified, open sources to locate terrorist facilities and activities. The additional funding becoming available for intelligence in the wake of September 11 is expected to alleviate some of the problems encountered in the Kosovo campaign, but the overarching challenges of aligning the agencies involved and maximizing the usability of their products by both policymakers and the operating forces remain to be resolved.

The Intelligence Community has emphasized the development and operation of satellites of great technical complexity, but exploitation and dissemination of the data collected have fared less well. Furthermore, the changing nature of warfare has required that information be transmitted to theater commanders immediately (in “real time”) not just forwarded to Washington agencies. These two requirements­the need for better analysis and the requirement to move the data rapidly to field commanders­underlie the challenges facing two agencies charged respectively with collecting and producing imagery intelligence from satellites, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA).2

Background on the two agencies is provided in the appendices.
Imagery from satellites is used in conjunction with imagery from airborne systems­manned aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). These much less expensive systems have been used extensively in recent combat operations but can be vulnerable to enemy attack and lack the technical capabilities possessed by satellites. In many cases aircraft and UAVs do not collect imagery for use by national intelligence agencies to build permanent databases.3

It is possible that reviews of intelligence organization underway since early in the current Bush Administration may result in recommendations to make major changes in the organization of the imagery effort by placing the NRO and NIMA directly under the DCI. Earlier, one influential study group proposed the abolition of the NRO and the transfer of its program offices to NIMA and NSA­ the national managers of the overall imagery and sigint efforts.4

While observers believe that such proposals would be likely to face substantial resistance, the technical, administrative, and budgetary challenges that have been identified by the NRO and NIMA Commissions will be central considerations for the future of the imagery effort under any circumstances. The nature of these challenges involves billions of dollars which are required for satellite imagery collection and processing. Costs of intelligence programs are not made public (being authorized in the classified annexes to defense and intelligence authorization bills), but it widely understood that satellite programs cost several billion dollars annually and absorb a large proportion of the budget of the National Foreign Intelligence Program.

DCI Statement on the Belgrade Chinese Embassy Bombing, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Open Hearing, 22 July 1999.

The National Security Agency (NSA) is responsible for tasking and analyzing signals intelligence collected by satellites; its role is discussed in CRS Report RL30740, National Security Agency: Issues for Congress, updated January 6, 2001, by Richard A. Best, Jr. See CRS Report RL30727, Airborne Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR): the U-2 Aircraft and Global Hawk UAV Programs by Richard A. Best, Jr. and Christopher Bolkcom, updated December 1, 2000.

Concerned with the future of imagery programs, in 1999 Congress created two commissions to assess space-based intelligence issues, one addressing the NRO and the other NIMA.5 Both have issued reports with a number of recommendations that are currently under consideration in the executive branch and Congress. Congress also mandated the establishment of a commission to assess national security space management and organization.6 The latter commission’s concerns extended far beyond intelligence collection platforms, but it addressed organizational issues involving both the Defense Department and the Intelligence Community. The establishment of these commissions reflected congressional concerns in particular about several aspects of the Nation’s imagery intelligence effort:

Walter Pincus, “Intelligence Shakeup Would Boost CIA,” Washington Post, November 8, 2001, p. A1; National Institute for Public Policy, Modernizing Intelligence: Structure and Change for the 21st Century, September1997. The chairman of the study group was Lt. Gen.  William E. Odom, a former Director of NSA.5 The National Commission for the Review of the National Reconnaissance Office, established pursuant to Title VII of the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY2000 (P.L. 106-120) and the Independent Commission on the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, established pursuant to the classified annex to the Conference Report (H.Rept. 106-371) accompanying the Defense Appropriations Act for FY2000 (P.L. 106-79).

The report of the former is Report of the National Commission for the Review of the National Reconnaissance Office, The NRO at the Crossroads, November 1, 2000, hereafter cited as NRO Commission Report.  The report of the latter is The Information Edge: Imagery Intelligence and Geospatial Information In an Evolving National Security Environment: Report of the Independent Commission on the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, 10 January 2001, hereafter cited as NIMA Commission Report.6

The Commission to Assess National Security Space Management and Organization [Space Commission]; established pursuant to the Defense Authorization Act for FY2000 (P.L.  106-65). This commission was initially headed by Donald H. Rumsfeld, subsequently appointed Secretary of Defense. For further background, see Marcia S. Smith, Military Space Activities: Highlights of the Rumsfeld Commission Report and Key Organization and Management Issues, CRS Report RS20824, February 21, 2001.
 
! perceived imbalances between funds allocated to launching and operating satellites on one hand and that spent on tasking, processing, exploitation, and dissemination on the other;

! the decision to choose a new generation of satellites that was designed to meet established criteria rather than extend the envelope of technical capabilities;

! the possibility of making greater use of commercial imagery;
! ongoing, but disjointed, efforts by NIMA to create and maintain a worldwide geospatial grid.

Dealing with imagery issues is undertaken against an unstable geopolitical environment in which access to high-quality intelligence and communications equipment is becoming available to many other countries and even terrorist organizations. Some observers fear that hostile countries could leap-frog the technological capabilities that the United States has acquired after many years and end up with virtually comparable intelligence at a fraction of the investment made by this country.7

Given the growing importance of space-based intelligence and the sums of money involved, some analysts believe that evaluating, and possibly redefining the responsibilities of the NRO and NIMA will be among the most important challenges facing the Intelligence Community and congressional armed services and intelligence committees in the next decade. Imagery intelligence lies at the heart of efforts to transform the post-Cold War defense establishment, but it is costly. Balancing the opportunities with the costs is a crucial responsibility of both Congress and the executive branch.

Background

The need for space-based intelligence became evident in the earliest years of the Cold War long before the United States developed the capacity to launch and operate satellites. In the late 1940s and the 1950s, ignorance of the military capabilities of the Soviet Union was a source of profound concern given the pervasive fear of Soviet aggression. Overflights near and over Soviet territory were undertaken to collect aerial photography, but there were great risks involved, as demonstrated when a U-2 aircraft operated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was shot down over Soviet territory in May 1960 and the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, put on public trial in Moscow.

The U-2 shootdown provided strong impetus for a satellite program already planned that could provide intelligence from space without risking either pilots’ lives or diplomatic crises.8 (See Report of the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization, January 11, 2001, pp. 19-22, hereafter cited as Space Commission Report. A even greater concern expressed by some observers is the possibility that a foreign entity could find a way to “blind,” disrupt, or falsify a comprehensive intelligence database that had become an integral part of U.S. military operations. Ibid.)

The satellite reconnaissance program grew in importance throughout the remainder of the Cold War, providing the necessary intelligence foundation for U.S. defense programs, national security policies, and, especially, for arms control negotiations. Additional satellites provided different forms of intelligence­from electronic and communications transmissions, radar and telemetry. By the end of the Cold War, satellite programs provided an major portion of the intelligence needed to formulate national security policy and consumed a sizable percentage of the intelligence budget.9

Throughout the Cold War satellite reconnaissance data was primarily used by national-level policymakers and planners focused on the threat of strategic nuclear conflicts involving the West and major communist countries. Many of the collection targets were fixed installations­ missile bases, shipyards, defense industry factories, etc. The data acquired was the basis for targeting aircraft and missiles and for arms control discussions, but it was not, for the most part, integrated directly into ongoing military operations.

The Persian Gulf War in 1990 against Iraq, however, saw extensive use of satellite-derived data in contemporaneous combat operations,­ a practice that was to have a profound influence on military planning for the post-Cold War environment.  The much greater tactical use of satellite reconnaissance resulted in part from the fact that the flat desert terrain was ideally suited to overhead imaging (as compared, for instance, to the triple-canopy jungles of Southeast Asia). In part, it was made possible by the end of the Soviet threat that allowed the diversion of satellite coverage to non-Warsaw Pact targets. The potential value of satellite imagery was quickly grasped by military commanders, but there were many complaints that the ability to disseminate the product was woefully inadequate ­in some cases, imagery had to be hand-carried to various Desert Storm commands. The use of satellite data in Desert Storm was a key part of a major technological breakthrough, in large measure unanticipated:

Yet what, in the end, largely predetermined the allied victory had never been tested before, least of all in the synergistic combination that roved so overwhelming against Iraq. The power of a few stealthy F-117s to operate with impunity and to substitute for mass by way of precision, the confident knowledge of the battlefield at any moment that air- and space-based information superiority gave the coalition’s commanders, and the strategic effectiveness of round-th-clock bombing of Iraqi ground forces were all, to varying degrees, revelations whose extent of leverage became clear only as the war progressed.10

The legality of space-based reconnaissance is recognized in international legal instruments including the 1967 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, and the United Nations General Assembly December 1986 document, Principles Relating to Remote Sensing of the Earth from Outer Space.

For background, see CRS Issue Brief IB92011, U.S. Space Programs: Civilian, Military, and Commercial, by Marcia S. Smith.

Benjamin S. Lambeth, The Transformation of American Air Power (Ithaca: Cornell
(continued...)
 

In the 1990s, at the urging of military commanders and congressional committees, the Defense Department smoothed out dissemination problem to ensure that satellite-derived intelligence could be transmitted without delay to consumers.  This required new communications links, equipment changes, and the development of new analytical and dissemination procedures, including the lifting of restrictions on disseminating information that had previously been strictly accessible only to users with certain special clearances. Much had been accomplished by the time of the NATO-led attack on Serbian forces in the spring of 1999 (Operation Allied Force). As a result, in part, of faster dissemination of satellite data, the Kosovo air campaign achieved most of its objectives. It did so with almost no loss of Allied life and minimal loss of civilian lives on the ground­despite the lamentable attack on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.11

In the post-Cold War environment, requirements for satellite data are closely tied to the growing use of precision-guided munitions (PGMs) that allow very specific targets to be destroyed while minimizing loss of civilian life and damage to civilian facilities. Targeting PGMs depends on very precise locating data that are acquired from satellite data supplemented by airborne reconnaissance.

Current defense planning documents such as Joint Vision 2020 describe precision engagement as including more than the employment of PGMs, encompassing a vision of information superiority that “will enhance the capability of the joint force commander to understand the situation, determine the effects desired, select a course of action and the forces to execute it, accurately assess the effects of that action, and reengage as necessary while minimizing collateral damage.”12 Growing reliance on information superiority by civilian policymakers as well as military leaders will result in increased requirements for space-based imagery­a major consideration for planning the future evolution of the Intelligence Community.

Issues for Congress

Satellites consume a major proportion of the intelligence budget and are thus a focus of congressional attention. In its oversight of the NRO and NIMA and in authorizing and appropriating funds, Congress will ultimately determine the shape of future imagery programs.13 It can augment or decrease funding for the NRO and NIMA.

(...continued) University Press, 2000), p. 260.

The question of whether the air campaign by itself brought about the withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo is controversial and lies beyond the scope of this report.

Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Vision 2020 [http://www.dtic.mil/jv2020] .

For the significance of congressional oversight of the NRO, see Clayton D. Laurie, Congress and the National Reconnaissance Office (Unpublished ms., Office of the Historian, National Reconnaissance Office, October 2000). Also, Jeffrey T. Richelson, “Out of the Black: the Disclosure and Declassification of the National Reconnaissance Office,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Spring 1998. For congressional involvement in the creation of NIMA, see Anne Daugherty Miles, The Creation (continued...)

It can budget for innovative but expensive research. It can realign agency roles and responsibilities. At the same time, Congress cannot direct Presidents to devote more of their personal time to satellite issues, nor can Congress mandate effective cooperation among agency heads within the executive branch. Commissions and many observers have argued against the need for new legislative initiatives. Many believe the number of congressional committees involved and the separate legislative vehicles by which funds are authorized and appropriated for space collection, analysis, and dissemination complicate efforts to address space-based intelligence issues.

Observers note in particular the potential for different priorities among armed services and intelligence committees as well as the budgetary pressures on space-related programs that have existed in recent years. Another view, however, is that the evolution of space-based intelligence may have to be guided by new statutory authorities. Existing or potential overlap among the current authorities of DOD and the Intelligence Community, as well as funding changes and trade-offs that may be required among high-cost programs, may, according to this view, lead to a necessarily larger congressional role. Given the central role of space-based intelligence in future military planning and in intelligence effort, most observers expect a continued high level of congressional interest.

Tasking, Processing, Exploitation, and Dissemination (TPED)

TPED is the collective term used to describe the tasking of satellites to image a particular area at a particular time, downloading the “take,” analyzing it, and disseminating it within specified times to the officials or agencies who use it, the “consumers.” TPED is the core NIMA mission and it is at once a major technological challenge, a significant budgetary issue, and a matter of contention among intelligence agencies.

TPED is seen as encompassing a vast information system that includes inputs from various collection systems that are immediately accessible to users at many levels to use for their own information requirements. It is the foundation of the Defense Department’s determination to use information to secure decisive military results.

Joint Vision 2020 argues that:

The evolution of information technology will increasingly permit us to integrate the traditional forms of information operations with sophisticated all-source intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance in a fully synchronized information campaign. The development of a concept labeled the global information grid will provide the network-centric environment required to achieve this goal. The grid will be the globally interconnected, end-to-end set of information capabilities, associated processes, and people to manage and provide information on demand to warfighters, policy makers, and support personnel. It will enhance combat power and contribute to the success of noncombat military operations as well.

Realization of the full potential of these changes requires not only technological improvements, but the continued evolution of organizations and doctrine and the development of relevant training to sustain a comparative advantage in the information environment.14 Further discussion of the geospatial grid may be found in Appendix B, but, put simply, the goal is to provide a database built around a geographic display (essentially a map displayed on a computer screen); the user clicks a computer mouse on a specific point on the display to obtain information about geographic features such as rivers or hills, the location of manmade structures such as buildings, bridges or weapon emplacements, information about activities likely occurring within buildings, the presence or absence of personnel, etc.

(...continued) of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency: Congress’s Role as Overseer (Joint Military Intelligence College, Occasional Paper Number 9, April 2001).

13
 
This information is intended to permit the recipients to take appropriate action with confidence that targets can be hit, refugees rescued, etc. Much of the discussion of the geospatial grid is focused on the needs of military commanders, but this type of information could be of great utility to government officials outside DOD. For instance, during the Kosovo conflict, NIMA made a daily presentation to the State Department that provided:

! A geospatial reference, including shaded terrain relief overlaid with towns and roads;

! Over this was layered census data showing the distribution percentage of
ethnic Albanians;

! Over which was satellite and aircraft imagery of burning houses; added to
which was:

! Imagery or graphics of the movements of Serbian paramilitary forces and the resulting flow of displaced Albanians.15

NIMA’s role as the functional manager of the whole enterprise is a matter of significant concern. Managing the grid includes making many technical decisions regarding information reliability, communications systems, message formats, access controls, etc., all of which will be difficult to establish on a government-wide basis since, in practice, there may be different needs by different consumers­some with great clout­for specific types of data within different time constraints. Observers express concern that NIMA, as a new agency, will find it difficult to make final judgments resolving differences. Beyond bureaucratic concerns, observers consider that NIMA has far to go in being able to exploit the vast quantities of data collected.

Nevertheless, most observers have reached the conclusion that NIMA should retain control of the geospatial grid. The NIMA Commission concluded, “To whom should we entrust ...[the responsibility to fuse imagery and sigint]? Against all odds, the Commission feels the answer may well be NIMA.” According to the Commission, “the geospatial construct is the obvious foundation upon which fusion should take place.”16 However, the Commission expressed concern not just about NIMA’s ability to manage the TPED process, but also about the agency’s ability to manage the acquisition of TPED systems even for its own staff. Joint Vision 2020. Ibid, p. 64. NIMA Commission Report, p. 48.

“The current TPED acquisition effort lacks a clear baseline, which should tie clearly to overall strategy, requirements, and cost constraints. In addition to the lack of a common definition of TPED, there is similarly confusion as to the requirements that TPED must satisfy.”17 The Commission expressed concern about NIMA’s lack of plans to integrate imagery from airborne collectors­aircraft such as the U2 and UAVs­into TPED based on the FIA. According to the Commission current plans do not address either the integration of airborne imagery or multi-INT integration. Similarly, the Defense Science Board Task Force concluded that NIMA, “as the government agency responsible as the functional manager for imagery and geospatial intelligence, will be at the center of the ‘information revolution’ as it affects individuals and organizations that contribute to national security.”18

According to the Task Force, NIMA should “have the clout to bring other communities to accept the architecture and the standards necessary to build an integrated TPED system.”19 More specifically, the Task Force argued that NIMA should act as the single functional manager for imagery and geospatial information, define future TPED architecture, products, and services; task (and make tradeoffs between) commercial and government collectors, and review budgets of agencies responsible for imagery and geospatial efforts.20

The Senate Intelligence Committee has expressed concern that NIMA “does not exercise comprehensive functional management authority over U.S. imagery and geospatial programs.” The Committee noted in particular the NIMA’s absence of authority to set standards and review investment and RDT&E programs of tactical efforts of the military services.21 The conference report accompanying the FY2001 Defense Authorization Act also took note of the need for an integrated multi-int TPED architecture. NIMA was directed to undertake a review regarding means to achieve the development of such an architecture with “the direct and personal involvement by the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Director of Central Intelligence.” The report anticipates the establishment of a universal architecture that would include information collection not only from overhead satellite systems, but also aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles and all tasking, data, storage, processing, exploitation, analysis and disseminations systems.

NIMA Commission Report, p. 87.

U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology & Logistics, Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on National Imagery and Mapping Agency [hereafter cited as Defense Science Board], April 2000, p. 9. [Defense Science Board, p. 26. 20 Ibid, p. 29. 21 U.S. Congress, 106th Congress, 2d session, Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, Authorizing Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2001 for the Intelligence Activities of the United States Government and the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability System, May 4, 2000, S.Rept. 106-279, p. 30.

The report indicates that NIMA should aim for a 2005-era vision for the imagery TPED architecture and concept of operations.22 NIMA may not be ready to accept such a broad role within the Intelligence Community. According to a media account, Robert Zitz, a senior NIMA official, has stated that for the present integrating imagery and geospatial data and imagery remains the agency’s primary focus; “right now,” according to Zitz, “we don’t feel that we are ready to take on the challenge of doing imagery and signals intelligence both in one architecture.”23 NIMA officials undoubtedly recognize that such fusion would not only be technically challenging but it could involve conflicts with other, older, and larger agencies that could complicate NIMA’s overall missions.

Peter Marino, the chairman of the NIMA Commission, in April 3, 2001 testimony, indicated continuing concern that NIMA lacks adequate resources for such a task: and I think what you’re creating is a recipe for disaster for the day when [FIA] starts dropping down volumes of data that is considerably greater than the volumes of data that we’re seeing today and expects an organization like NIMA to start processing and exploiting that data. That doesn’t close at all right now with the budget that NIMA has to do TPED.24

Beyond questions of resources, some observers express concern that the heavy responsibility of managing a multi-int geospatial grid would be assigned to a relatively new organization that is a DOD combat support agency. According to this view, developing and acquiring the necessary systems that manage the flow of imagery will be a daunting task that NIMA will probably be able to accomplish only with additional funding and by drawing upon outside assistance. They suggest that establishment of collection requirements­determining which targets should get the highest priorities­more appropriately should become the responsibility of the DCI who has, in any event, been assigned the responsibility by statute.25

Nor do they believe would NIMA be a logical candidate to address the tasking of the sigint collection efforts of the National Security Agency (NSA) for which longstanding interagency procedures exist. Organizing a process by which analysts in various agencies can annotate data on an imagery base would be a logical NIMA responsibility, but attempting to become a “final authority” for validating such annotation would, at least in some cases, appear to be an overstretch that could cause prolonged interagency disagreements.

In addition to NIMA’s apparent ambivalence, it should be noted that the NRO Commission recommended that imagery and signals intelligence requirements committees should be returned to the DCI instead of being left with NIMA and NSA in order to ensure the balance and priority of requirements between military and national consumers is maintained.26 It is possible that the DCI’s staff has been reluctant to become overly involved in the operational activities of a DOD combat support agency, but many observers believe that to the extent that NIMA becomes responsible for managing the geospatial grid for a wide variety of Government consumers, inside and outside DOD, there will have to be a significant role for the DCI if for no other purpose than ensuring that NIMA decisions are acceptable to the entire Intelligence Community. 

U.S. Congress, 106th Congress, 2d session, Committee of Conference, Enactment of Provisions of H.R. 5408, Floyd D. Spence National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001, H. Rept. 106-945, October 6, 2000, pp. 713-715.

Amy Butler, “NIMA Official Says Agency Can’t Yet Handle ‘Multi-INT’ Responsibilities,” Defense Information and Electronics Report, February 16, 2001.

Testimony to the Senate Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, April 3, 2001, Federal Document Clearing House transcript. 50 USC 404f.]

It cannot not of course be proven that different organizational arrangements for identifying geospatial data would have prevented the mistaken bombing of China’s Embassy in Belgrade, but almost all observers agree that there needs to be better arrangements for bringing all forms of data ­including human reporting­to bear on target selection and other functions. Establishing systematic collection and review procedures and fixing responsibilities would arguably serve to minimize blunders in the future.

Funding TPED. The question of NIMA’s ability to manage the geospatial grid is closely related to the adequacy of funding for TPED. Reacting to the longstanding tendency to favor collection systems over analysis, Congress has expressed concern that planned investment in FIA has not been matched with a willingness to make the necessary investment in TPED, creating a potential for excessive collection of data that cannot be effectively used. In 1998 Congress authorized FIA but inserted provisions in the FY1999 Intelligence Authorization Act requiring that FIA funds be embargoed pending the identification of TPED requirements.27 In 1999 the Senate Intelligence Committee noted that the FIA program “focuses on collection and pays relatively less attention to the tasking, processing, exploitation, and dissemination functions necessary to a coherent and comprehensive end-to-end architecture.” As a result the Committee urged maintaining a cap on the FIA budget until all requirements, including TPED, were identified.28

In floor debate prior to passage of the FY2000 Intelligence Authorization Act (P.L. 106-120), Representative Jerry Lewis (who also served as Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense), noted that while the FIA “will be the most expensive program in the history of the intelligence community,” there had been “no plan to fund TPED and not even an understanding of how we ought to go about it.” As a result the FY2000 Act included provisions that advised the executive branch that Congress would not fund FIA “unless there is a plan implemented that will process the satellite data that FIA will collect.”

“In English, it does not do any good to take pictures that no one will ever see.”29 The Clinton Administration’s FY2001 Defense budget request included additional funding for TPED as a down payment on a $1.5 billion multi-year TPED enhancement program. The Defense Science Board Task Force, however, concluded that TPED will actually require $3 billion.30 The report accompanying the House version of the FY2001 Intelligence Authorization bill noted that the “administration has, indeed, added funding ... in the fiscal year 2001 budget request. The Committee agrees that this figure represents a substantial investment. However, it is well short of the range of necessary investment reported to Congress by the administration both last year and in testimony this year.”31

NRO Commission, Report, p54.

This provision was criticized in floor debate for complicating the work of the NRO by Senator Thurmond, then chairman of the Armed Services Committee; he argued that some who were concerned about cost growth in FIA “also want to see FIA’s capabilities to support military users reduced so that savings can be used to support other programs. . .that have a more ‘national’ orientation.” Congressional Record, October 8, 1998, p. S11904.

U.S. Congress, 106th Congress, 1st session, Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, Authorizing Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2000 for the Intelligence Activities of the United States Government and the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability System and for Other Purposes, S.Rept. 106-48, May 11, 1999, pp. 4-5.

The Senate Intelligence Committee, in reporting its bill the same month also asserted that funding for analysis “remains woefully inadequate” and discussed a NIMA report on TPED that described projected challenges and budgetary shortfalls related to FIA. The Committee noted that NIMA has proposed a three phase plan that would first (in 2001-2005) lay the infrastructure foundation for effective use of new space platforms, commercial imagery, and “minimal levels of modernization supporting airborne systems.” The second and subsequent phase (2002-2007) would see a transition to full support for using imagery from new satellite systems, provide greater support to airborne systems, and provide infrastructure “hooks” for all intelligence disciplines, including human intelligence (humint) and measurement and signature analysis (masint).

The third phase (2004-2009) would see the establishment of a common operational picture including full support for all intelligence disciplines, full support for airborne systems, and integrate moving target data.32 The Senate Committee expressed concern that the level of funding proposed by the Administration for the first year of the first phase was inadequate. “The Committee is concerned that the dramatic underfunding of Phase One TPED modernization in fiscal year 2001 is setting up a budgetary crunch wherein a disproportionate amount of funds will be required in subsequent years....”33 The following October, in floor debate in the House on the intelligence conference report, the late Representative Dixon, then the Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, noted that in the previous year Congress had made clear its expectation that FIA would encompass an adequate balance between collection and TPED.

“Congress was clear in the description of the consequences that would flow from an executive branch decision not to make TPED investments sufficient to utilize fully the collection capabilities of the FIA. As the classified annex to this conference report makes clear, the resolve of Congress has not changed.”34 The report accompanying the House version of the FY2002 Intelligence Authorization bill (H.R. 2883), while noting “totally inadequate planning and investment,”indicated that the bill provided initial funding for NIMA’s modernization.

Congressional Record, November 9, 1999, p. H11758.

Defense Science Board, p. 32.

U.S. Congress, 106th Congress, 2d session, House of Representatives, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001, H.Rept. 106-620, May 16, 2000, p. 19.

U.S. Congress, 106th Congress, 2d session, Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, Authorizing Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2001 for the Intelligence Activities of the United States Government and the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability System and for Other Purposes, S. Rept. 106-279, May 4, 2000, pp. 7-8.

S.Rept. 106-279, pp. 7,9.

“The funding will enable the initiation of acquisition reform, improved information management capabilities, new business processes to better produce innovative imagery and geo-spatial products, and greater access to all imagery sources.”35 The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) similarly noted “serious deficiencies in the NIMA’s preparedness to task, receive, and exploit data from the Future Imagery Architecture (FIA) being developed by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).”

SASC lamented the necessary transfer of millions of dollars from NIMA’s modernization budget mostly to modify legacy systems for tasking, workflow management, and data transfer.36 The congressional power of the purse was dramatically demonstrated in August 2000 when funding for the Discoverer II radar satellite program was eliminated from the FY2001 Defense Appropriations Act (P.L. 106-259). Discoverer II would have tested new technology that would permit testing of movable antennae that could provide data on a 24-hour basis that is currently being collected by JSTARS aircraft and other systems.

House appropriators criticized likely development costs and foresaw costs of a fully-deployed system reaching some $25 billion. The House Appropriations Committee further noted that DOD “has conducted no trade-off analysis between Discoverer II and other systems and processes” that might accomplish the same tasks nor had DOD analyzed “the impact a Discoverer II constellation would have on an already overtaxed imagery processing, exploitation, and dissemination system.”37 Although plans for alternative approaches were underway in early 2001,38 the congressional willingness to cancel funds for Discoverer II to free up funding for TPED carried a clear and unmistakable message.

Congressional Record, October 12, 2000, p. H9854.

U.S. Congress, 107th Congress, 1st session, House of Representatives, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002, H.Rept. 107-219, September 26, 2001, p. 13.

U.S. Congress, 107th Congress, 1st session, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002, S.Rept. 107-62, September 12, 2001, p. 115.

U.S. Congress, 106th Congress, 2d session, House of Representatives, Committee on Appropriations, Department of Defense Appropriations Bill, 2001, H.Rept. 106-644, June 1, 2000, p. 150. A different perspective is provided by Zachary Lum, “Congress, Not Air Force, Stymies Progress in Space,” Defense News, September 11, 2000, p. 15. On the desire to find funds for TPED, see also Amy Butler, “Space-based Radar Funds May be Used to pay TPED bills, Officials Say,” Defense Information and Electronics Report, December 17, 1999, p. 5.38

Amy Butler, “AOA for Space-based Radar on the Horizon, Space Ops Chief Says,” Inside the Air Force, February 2, 2001.

While acknowledging that investment in collection efforts has not been matched by funding of TPED, some observers note that it may be technically appropriate in some cases to invest in systems before making the necessary arrangements for utilization of the data collected. Furthermore, there may be sound reasons to maintain an extensive imagery database that can be exploited in the event of unanticipated military operations.39

Commercial Imagery

A second major issue is commercial imagery which some believe can reduce the need for massive investment in government satellite reconnaissance systems.  Commercial imagery is increasingly available to customers, government and private, throughout the world.40 It is expected that the quality of resolution available, the extent of coverage, and timeliness of delivery of the finished product will be enhanced by more commercial satellites that are anticipated to be orbited in the coming decade.  At some point, observers predict, continuous global coverage will become available on the open market.

Although there are obvious security concerns about high-quality imagery becoming available to other governments (and terrorist groups), the large inventory of commercial images that can be purchased will be of significant potential interest to intelligence agencies. NIMA is currently purchasing commercial imagery annually, but many observers argue that much larger amounts of commercial imagery could be purchased. Although cost data on government imagery is not public, a given amount of imagery purchased from commercial firms could, in some circumstances, cost considerably less than comparable government imagery. Thus, heavier reliance on acquiring commercial imagery could represent important cost savings, given the potential cost of FIA. The Space Commission argued that, with the currently available half-meter imagery, approximately half of NIMA’s requirements for information on the locations of objects on the Earth could be met.41 In particular, commercial imagery could provide coverage of wide-area surveillance and government satellites could be targeted on more challenging and more sensitive point-target reconnaissance.42

See the conclusions of conferees on the FY2002 Defense Authorization bill; U.S. Congress, 107th Congress, 1st session, House of Representatives, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002, H.Rept. 107-333, December 12, 2001, p. 507. See also remarks by NIMA Director Clapper quoted by Joanne Sperber, Military Information Technology, Vol.  6, No. 1 (2002): “There is the proverbial, perpetual metaphor that the intelligence community collects far more than we can possibly process and exploit. To a certain extent, that’s true; but that’s not all bad. The U.S. intelligence community has a global responsibility, so to the extent that we can collect and archive material that we can refer to late, it’s not all bad.”

See Yahya A. Dehqanzada and Ann M. Florini, Secrets for Sale: How Commercial Satellite Imagery Will Change the World (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2000). A principal advocate of greater reliance on commercial imagery and other open source information is Robert David Steele, On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World (Fairfax, VA: AFCEA International Press, 2000).

In December 2000 the Clinton Administration licensed two U.S. firms to sell half-meter resolution imagery to customers worldwide. See Vernon Loeb, “U.S. Is Relaxing Rules on Sale of Satellite Photos,”Washington Post, December 16, 2000, p. A3.

[Anti_Illuminati]

The NRO Commission also took note of the increasing availability of commercial satellite imagery and the absence of a systematic plan to take advantage of its availability at less cost than acquiring the imagery with new NRO systems. The Commission argued that there is a need for an outside assessment, independent of the NRO, of the utility of commercial technologies to supplement traditional NRO missions.

A Defense Science Board Task Force on NIMA concluded that commercial and international systems could meet many government needs in terms of image quality if not quantity and noted that “Measured in availability and in resolution, commercial capacity will increase [by] a factor of 5 to 10 times over just the next five years.”43 The NIMA Commission argues that the design of the FIA fails to take into consideration the potential integration of commercial imagery (and imagery from aircraft) into the larger imagery/geospatial information system and is, accordingly, “suboptimal.”44

It is uncertain whether the increasing availability of commercial imagery will have any effect on the multi-year process of FIA acquisition that has been underway since the passage of the FY1998 Intelligence Authorization Act (P.L. 105-107).45 Even with FIA satellites coming on line, however, observers believe that commercial imagery will usefully supplement data acquired by government satellites. Many observers believe, however, that NIMA is purchasing far less of the available commercial imagery than could be productively used. The DSB Task Force argued that the budget for commercial imagery, in early 2000 about $400 million for the next several years, was at too low a level.46 The NIMA Commission was especially critical of budgeting for commercial imagery:

The Congress showed keen insight in designating NIMA the DoD and Intelligence Community sole focal point for commercial imagery. Not to be outdone by itself, however, the Congress, one year, denied NIMA the funds necessary for purchasing that imagery. The administration topped that, in successive years, by failing to request sufficient funds, a move that the Congress then trumped by authorizing and appropriating funds that were not requested. Most recently, the NRO announced an on-again, off-again, Billion Dollar Buy. The Commission observes this hot-potato approach with wry amusement; if it weren’t serious it would be funny.47

The NRO Commission noted that, despite the provisions of PDD-49 in September 1996 relating to Commercial Space Guidelines that encourage government agencies to purchase commercial imagery to the fullest extent “feasible,” there have been “relatively insignificant” purchases of commercial imagery by NIMA. Such purchases would allow government imagery collectors to be used for specialized collection and would also help create a “stable and predictable” government market for commercial imagery firms as was recommended by PDD-49.48 The NRO Commission cited “managerial problems that have emerged in NIMA’s Commercial Imagery Program. There is no continuity in the Program and the program manager has been changed frequently.”49

Space Commission Report, p. 35.
Department of Defense, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition,
Technology & Logistics, Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on National
Imagery and Mapping Agency, (Washington: April 2000) [hereafter cited as Defense Science
Board], p. 14.
Ibid, p. 50.
See remarks of Rep. Lewis, Congressional Record, November 7, 1997, p. H10178.
Ibid, p. 28.
 
NIMA, the DSB Task Force argued, should execute a balanced, strategic plan to exploit fully commercial capabilities; most importantly NIMA should “restrict government collection by tasking national systems to collect only on that which cannot be procured competitively from U.S. commercial sources.”50 The commercial satellite industry remains in its infancy. There have been several launch failures and commercial markets are not well developed. One concern about increasing use of commercial imagery is the possibility that the private firms producing it might not remain in business and that, if they fail, restarting government satellite programs would be difficult and lengthy, especially if large numbers of skilled technicians were no longer employed by government agencies.51

Both the NIMA and NRO Commissions suggested that an account be established by DOD that agencies could use only for the procurement of commercial imagery (along the lines of an existing account used to determine whether to use commercial or military airlift capabilities). At present government agencies, including the military services, receive government imagery as a “free good” and may thus be disinclined to expend their own funds for purchasing imagery from commercial firms. Under the proposed approach, agencies would have access to an account managed by the Office of the Secretary of Defense whose funds could be used only for purchasing commercial imagery; thus, there would be administrative machinery in place to encourage use of imagery from commercial sources that does not exist at present.  Advocates argue that a key advantage of establishing such a fund would be to provide a predictable market for commercial firms that would serve to strengthen the U.S.  satellite reconnaissance industry. According to the NRO Commission:

Through an approach to imagery analogous to DoD’s military/civilian airlift practice, Government systems would be focused on targets where their unique capabilities in resolution and revisit times are important, while commercial systems would be used to provide processed “commodity” images.52 Media accounts indicate that NIMA did not request substantial increases in funding for the purchase of commercial imagery in its FY2002 budget submission. There may be a conviction that higher priority should be given to modernizing its own infrastructure than to the larger purchases of commercial imagery. Nor was there a request for a budget augmentation to support such purchases.53 Two staff members of the House Intelligence Committee have expressed their perception that little support currently exists for purchasing additional amounts of commercial imagery at the expense of sacrificing government program funds.54

NIMA Commission Report, p. 55.
NRO Commission Report, p. 68.
NRO Commission Report, p. 70.
Ibid, p. 31.
See Smith, CRS Issue Brief IB92011.
 
In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, NIMA has publicly described more extensive purchases of commercial imagery. NIMA’s director, retired General Clapper, argued that unclassified commercial imagery can be readily shared with coalition partners whereas imagery acquired by U.S. satellites would have to be put through a lengthy declassification process. In addition, commercial images of large geographic areas can be used in conjunction with more specialized intelligence products. Especially important, according to Clapper, are multi-spectral ­color ­images of which commercial systems are the primary source.55

Government procurement of commercial imagery undoubtedly has important implications for the viability of the industry and NIMA’s reported aversion to purchasing larger amounts will be disappointing to industry officials anticipating larger government purchases. However, some observers argue that the imagery companies remain in a weak position as a result of their own inherent problems; as two congressional staffers noted: “after more than six years, this commercial industry has few actual commercial customers.”56

Management and Personnel Issues

A third major issue for the Intelligence Community is the management of the satellite intelligence effort. Specific management issues affecting the NRO and NIMA are discussed in the appendixes, but there are overarching concerns regarding the entire imagery intelligence effort. A key question is whether the emphasis should be on continuing to push the technological envelope in order to acquire even more sophisticated imagery capabilities or to design systems based on essentially existing technologies to meet current needs. In the past, much basic research on satellite technology did not necessarily have immediate practical applications, but it contributed enormously to the overall capabilities of the U.S. satellite programs. This research was expensive, but most observers believe that the payoff easily justified the investment. As satellite programs moved out of their earlier highly secret environment, they became more susceptible to the pressures and constraints of ordinary budgeting processes. Some argue that there is a danger that the U.S. will lose its technological edge with the potential to allow other countries to make technological leaps and to reduce the technological spinoff into the civilian space industry.

NRO Commission Report, p. 71.

Catherine MacRae, “Updated Commercial Imagery Strategy Cites a Need to Back Industry,”
Defense Information and Electronics Report, July 27, 2001, p. 12.

Beth Larson and Kirk McConnell, “Commercial Stumbles: Sat. Imagery Still Needs Federal
Crutch,” Defense News, July 23-29, 2001, p. 13.

“Clear Vision for NIMA,” Military Information Technology, Vol. 6, No. 1 (2002).

Larson and McConnell, p. 13.
 
Both the NRO and NIMA Commissions addressed the question of managing innovation in satellite reconnaissance programs. As discussed in further detail in Appendix A, the NRO Commission, in particular, noted that in earlier decades the NRO, operating in almost total secrecy, was able to accomplish important technological triumphs in designing and fielding the world’s first and most successful satellite reconnaissance program. In large measure these accomplishments have been attributed to the fact a relatively small group of scientists and engineers were permitted to work in secrecy without micro-management and “excessive” oversight from the Defense Department’s layers of acquisitions offices. In more recent years, however, the NRO has had a higher public visibility and has adhered more closely to routine acquisitions regulations.

In earlier years, NRO engineers reportedly were given greater latitude in designing systems to take advantage of newly available technologies and other intelligence agencies were able to take advantage of the NRO’s innovations once they were in place. More recently, NRO satellites have been designed to fulfill the specified requirements of other agencies and there has been a tendency to downplay innovation for innovation’s sake. Some observers suggest that the shift away from attempting to take full advantage of cutting-edge technologies has begun to jeopardize the NRO’s roles and missions. Electing less technically sophisticated approaches, they argue, will require an approach different from that currently followed. Specifically, the NRO Commission recommended that with the NRO a separate mini-organization be established to develop and acquire cutting edge technologies:

The Secretary of Defense and the Director of Central Intelligence should establish a new Office of Space Reconnaissance under the direction of the Director of the NRO. The Office should have special acquisition authorities, be staffed by experienced military and CIA personnel, have a budget separate from other agencies and activities within the National Foreign Intelligence Program, be protected by a special security compartment, and operate under the personal direction of the President, Secretary of Defense and Director of Central Intelligence.57 As discussed in Appendix B, a major problem for NIMA has been inadequate numbers of personnel with highly sophisticated skills to deal with the technical challenges involved in creating the geospatial grid. The NIMA Commission recommended the creation of an Extraordinary Program Office (EPO) armed with special authorities of the Director of Central Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense, augmented by Congress, and staffed beyond ceiling and above “cap” through an heroic partnership between industry, NIMA, and the NRO. The EPO, to be constituted within NIMA from the best national talent, shall be charged with and resourced for all preacquisition, systems engineering, and acquisition of imagery TPED­from end to end, from “national” to “tactical”.

NRO Commission Report, p. 78.

The first milestone shall be completion of a comprehensive, understandable, modern-day “architecture” for imagery TPED. Other provisions of law notwithstanding, the Congress shall empower the Director of the EPO to commingle any and all funds duly authorized and appropriated for the purpose of the “TPED enterprise,” as defined jointly by the Secretary of Defense and the Director of Central Intelligence.58 Such entities would be able to employ scientists and engineers without being bound by civil service pay scales and procure equipment unfettered by the usual government acquisitions regulations. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld indicated in his May 8, 2001 press conference that he had requested a study of how an Office of Space Reconnaissance might be established within the NRO, but no details of his immediate intentions have been made public.

There are pros and cons to attempts to provide such exceptional authorities in government agencies. There is no question that seeking out the most creative personnel can be facilitated by avoiding rules and regulations that apply across the length and breadth of the federal government and were not designed for the purpose of engaging a relatively small, technological elite of systems engineers and systems acquisitions people at a time of high demand within the civilian sector. Nor were the promotion regulations and merit system protections designed with the culture of computer engineering in mind. Arguments can be made that the NRO and NIMA both need to be able to attract the most innovative thinkers at least for a period to move both agencies into an intelligence world unlike that which has ever existed before.

Again, these moves cannot necessarily be made by strict application of the procurement regulations as they currently exist. There is arguably a much greater need to accept risks inherent in innovation in the area of space-based intelligence in order not to jeopardize the possibility of revolutionary gains. On the other hand, there are significant and substantial risks involved in setting up specially compartmented research and development efforts with unique personnel and procurement authorities. Most obviously, there is a risk of failure. There is also a potential for excessive costs when usual regulations for competitive bids and standardized salaries are not in place. There is a danger that interest in pushing the technological envelope will result in equipment and software that, while conceptually brilliant, is not optimized for operational use. Extraordinary entities do not necessarily coordinate well with other government organizations. Instead of authorizing exceptional authorities for small offices, some observers suggest that Congress could provide more comprehensive authorities for the entire organizations based on a consensus surrounding the nature of the tasks required.

NIMA Commission Report, p. 90.
 
Another challenge is the different perspectives of the Director of Central Intelligence and the Defense Department. The DCI has broad statutory authority over all national intelligence activities, but DOD has control over much of the resource base of both the NRO and NIMA. There is a possibility that either the various agencies will go their own ways with minimal coordination or that there will constant struggles over resources and responsibilities. In the case of space-based imagery and sigint collection, there have been periods of inter-agency conflict in the past, but in more recent years some observers have noted a tendency for DOD concerns to dominate a process that was supposed to serve national as well as defense needs.

There are also concerns that effective inter-agency coordination has not been achieved among the NRO, NIMA, and NSA. Both the NRO Commission and the Space Commission urged greater direct personal involvement of high-level officials, especially the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the DCI in coordinating the space programs, including those of the NRO. This recommendation undoubtedly reflects the difficulties involved in coordinating the information requirements of military commanders and those of national-level policymakers. Competition between military and national consumers for intelligence resources has existed for decades and can be expected to continue.59 The solution would be effective coordinative mechanisms to establish priorities and involvement and acceptance of responsibility by senior officials. Observers note, however, that it may be unrealistic to expect the degree of presidential involvement in such issues that existed during Cold War administrations. In discussing DOD’s initiatives on space operations, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld indicated on May 8, 2001 that he and the DCI meet regularly and have established an executive committee that they both co-chair to review intelligence issues of joint concern.

Proposals to place the NRO and NIMA (along with NSA) under the direct control of the DCI would, according to proponents, enable tighter control of their activities and avoid counterproductive rivalries. Skeptics argue, however, that such a shift would impede the close links that must exist between these combat support agencies and DOD’s operating forces. The Space Commission also recommended the establishment within the Defense Department of an Under Secretary of Defense for Space, Intelligence and Information. This position would serve as the principal advocate for space within DOD and would incorporate the responsibilities of the current Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence (C3I). The Commission’s apparent goal would be to provide greater visibility to space-related issues, including both policy and satellite acquisition issues, within the Pentagon. This recommendation was not accepted by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld in announcing DOD’s responses to the recommendations. Rather, he indicated that the responsibilities of the current Assistant Secretary for C3I would be reviewed.

It has been suggested that U.S. surprise at the Indian nuclear test in May 1998 resulted from the diversion of satellite resources to monitoring the Persian Gulf area in support of U.S.  forces stationed there. See CRS Report 98-672F, U.S. Intelligence and India’s Nuclear Tests: Lessons Learned, August 11, 1998, by Richard A. Best, Jr..
 
The Space Commission stated that the DCI’s Community Management Staff (CMS) is not well structured to coordinate with OSD on broad intelligence policy, long-term space strategy and other issues requiring intelligence support. In particular, the Space Commission noted that the DCI does not have authority to reprogram in-year money within components, an authority that would enhance its direction of Intelligence Community affairs. Rumsfeld did not comment on this recommendation that has faced opposition not only in DOD but also within congressional armed services committees.

The Space Committee also took note and made recommendations relating to congressional oversight, arguing that:

Congressional oversight of the authorization and appropriation of national security space funding routinely involves no fewer than six committees. Generally, each committee mirrors the priorities of the executive branch interests it oversees. The intelligence committees focus on issues concerning “sources and methods” and on the ability of the Intelligence Community to provide intelligence to the National Command Authorities. The Armed Services committees contend with competing space requirements of the three Services, the military intelligence agencies and the CINCs, and tend to see national intelligence primarily as support for combat forces. The appropriations committees’ subcommittees on defense oversee all defense and intelligence space programs and are one place where national security space programs are viewed together. However, they focus primarily on budgets.

Executive branch officials must expend considerable time and energy interacting with a large number of committees and subcommittees that, on some matters, have overlapping jurisdiction. To the extent that this process can be streamlined, it would likely benefit the nation, Congress and the executive branch. It would also help if there were an environment in which national security space matters could be addressed as an integrated program­on that includes consideration for commercial and civil capabilities that are often overlooked today.60 Related to managerial difficulties is the challenge of taking advantage of the dynamic changes in computer and communications technologies.

Observers note the difficulties involved in employing persons possessing acquisitions and systems engineering technical skills. It has been argued that strong competition from private industry and limits on government pay and allowances affect the ability of intelligence agencies to employ persons with the sophisticated skills required for the next generation of satellites and associated TPED. There are various approaches currently under consideration to make use of expertise in the private sector through contracts and consultancies, but it has been indicated that the problem will require high-level Administration attention.61

Space Commission Report, pp. 60-62.
See, for instance, Catherine MacRae, “NIMA Wants to Rope In Young Minds with
Undergraduate Training Plan,” Defense Information and Electronics Report, July 27, 2001,
p. 15.
 
Conclusion

Congress is expected to consider imagery intelligence programs in the context of efforts to transform the entire defense structure. The parameters of the transformation effort remain as yet unknown, but almost all observers believe that the effort to obtain “dominant battlefield awareness” and growing reliance on precision guided munitions will characterize the transformation effort regardless of the other initiatives and defense budget levels. Success in any transformation effort will depend on the availability of detailed imagery within required times, ensuring that imagery products incorporate accurate data from all intelligence disciplines, and that budgets for the NRO and NIMA can be adequately funded. Imagery intelligence has been around for several decades, but its importance has been growing significantly in recent years.

The challenge is to design organizations to obtain, analyze, and disseminate the result of new technologies to support an evolving defense and national security structure while remaining within budgetary constraints. The mixture of cutting-edge technologies, complex organizational structures, and budgetary limitations complicate decision-making. Nevertheless, the accomplishments of the Intelligence Community in imagery intelligence represent one of its greatest successes. Maintaining a capability to conduct military operations without inflicting vast civilian damage provides its underlying justification.
 

Appendix A. National Reconnaissance Organization (NRO)

Pursuant to the National Security Act62 the Defense Department is responsible for developing, acquiring, and operating satellites and processing raw data that are provided to other intelligence agencies for analysis and dissemination to government consumers. The NRO was established in 1961 but its existence has been acknowledged publicly only since 1992. It was created within DOD, but has always had a reporting responsibility to the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). The contours of DOD-DCI responsibilities for NRO operations have varied over time, but currently both the DCI and DOD retain important roles. The NRO remains part of DOD, but the concurrence of the DCI is required in the appointment of the head of the NRO.63 The DCI develops and approves the annual National Foreign Intelligence Program (NFIP) budget that includes funding for the NRO. Although the DCI also has statutory authority to approve reprogramming of NFIP funds, he does not have authority to be involved in the execution of the NRO budget after funds are appropriated.

The NRO developed highly innovative technology and displayed a willingness to take risks and endure multiple failures before successful launches were accomplished. Initially, satellite photography was parachuted back to Earth in canisters that had to be netted in mid-air; processing and analysis could take days or weeks. In the 1970s, in a major technological breakthrough, the NRO developed electro-optical capabilities that allowed real-time electronic transmission of imagery to ground stations from whence it could be relayed to authorized consumers. In more recent years capabilities have been created to permit satellite data to be transmitted directly to “shooters”­ships, attack aircraft, and other military units.

The significant progress that the NRO achieved resulted from a number of factors. The effort was conducted in tight secrecy by a relatively small group of highly qualified scientists and engineers. It had strong backing from the White House and adequate funding by Congress with limited oversight. The emphasis was on innovative technological approaches rather than meeting carefully specified and coordinated requirements. Funds were available for cutting-edge technologies without immediate practical applications.

Overriding all else was a pervasive, and unquestioned, determination to identify threats, especially from the Soviet Union, that could destroy the United States or its allies. In the mid-1990s, the NRO began work on the Future Imagery Architecture, which will be based on a larger number of smaller satellites that can provide more frequent coverage than is currently possible. Unlike their larger predecessors, however, these satellites are not designed to push the envelope of satellite technologies, but rather to meet stated needs of potential customers. Observers also note that the sheer quantity of imagery collected and requiring exploitation and analysis will grow exponentially once FIA satellites are operational.

50 USC 403-5(b)(3).
Although recommendations can be sent to the President without the DCI’s concurrence, the
absence of concurrence must be noted.
 
According to media accounts, the NRO received $1.5 billion in a FY1998 supplemental appropriation (P.L. 105-277).64 With the project expected to involve up to $25 billion over twenty years, a contract to develop, launch, and operate the FIA satellites was awarded to the Boeing Company in September 1999 with initial launches expected around 2005.65 In the FY2000 Intelligence Authorization Act (P.L. 106-120), however, Congress placed caps on the FIA program as a result of concerns that its cost could draw funds from other intelligence programs and that the costs of analyzing and disseminating the acquired data had not been included in DOD’s budget submissions.66

The NRO is not an analytical organization, but it has to undertake a certain amount of data processing prior to delivering its products to other agencies. According to the NRO Commission it has also “rendered extremely valuable non-space-related services over the years by providing terrestrial communications systems, visualization tools, imagery exploitation systems, and technical problem-solving skills to U.S. combatant commands and military departments when no other entity was willing, capable, or agile enough to do so.”67 The NRO Commission implies that there may be an element of duplication of effort with other agencies (the National Security Agency, NIMA, and the office responsible for measurement and signatures analysis (masint)) and urges that there needs to be careful delineation of the responsibilities of different agencies for tasking, processing, exploitation, and dissemination.68

The NRO Commission praised the overall record of the NRO, but took note of a number of managerial problems that it felt need to be addressed. It argued that the management of the NRO requires greater personal attention by the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the DCI, but did not recommend a legislative solution. The Commission noted: No matter what form the Secretary of Defense-DCI relationship regarding the NRO should take, it is not self-executing and requires that active participation of both in order to best effect the basic mission of the NRO. This basic point was made again and again to the Commission by past and present senior officials.69

See Walter Pincus, “Much of Intelligence Funding Will Go to Satellites,” Washington Post,
October 23, 1998, p. A16.
See Peter Pae, “Massive Spy-Satellite Program to Cost Billions,” Los Angeles Times, March
18, 2001.
Remarks of Rep. Jerry Lewis, Congressional Record, November 9, 1999, p. H11758.
NRO Commission Report, p. 27.
Ibid, p 31.
Ibid, p. 113.

The Commission also noted that:
 
Because it responds to both the Secretary of Defense and the DCI, the NRO frequently is caught between the competing requirements of the both DOD and non-DOD customers, all of whom expect to be satisfied by NRO systems. With its systems over-taxed and unable to answer all demands, yet attempting to be ‘all things to all agencies,’ the NRO often bears the brunt of criticism from all sides.70 The Commission recommended that attention be given to achieving the proper balance between strategic and tactical requirements for NRO systems, present and future. It noted also that funding limitations of recent years, in conjunction with expanded support for military operations, have limited NRO’s ability to satisfy strategic, longer-term intelligence needs.71

Congress in the report accompanying the FY2001 Defense Authorization Act, took note of the fact that recent years have witnessed the increase of NRO support to military commanders at the same time as DOD has been less involved in budgeting of the NRO through the Defense Space Reconnaissance Program (DSRP). The Conference Committee directed an assessment by the Secretary of Defense to analyze whether funds and responsibilities for NRO’s support of military operations and exercises should be consolidated and whether the DSRP should be revitalized.72 The NRO Commission went further, recommending that the DSRP be reestablished.

The NRO Commission noted that current innovation programs are designed to meet existing requirements within established cost controls. The Commission, however, suggested that this approach will not necessarily provide the type of technological breakthroughs that the NRO achieved in the past and, accordingly, recommended the establishment of a small office that “would focus narrowly on high technology solutions to the most difficult intelligence problems based on the requirement to gain frequent, assured, global access to denied areas.”73 The Commission envisions the office operating separately from the rest of the NRO with a small, highly skilled staff, and with considerable budgetary independence and high-level direction by the President, Secretary of Defense, and the DCI.

The NRO Commission noted the importance of coordination of space-based collection with that obtained by airborne platforms, manned aircraft and unmanned airborne vehicles (UAVs). Satellites of course do not put pilots at risk and, in general, are much less at risk to hostile attack than airborne platforms (especially from Third World states or terrorist groups). Airborne platforms can nevertheless supply immediate, long-term, multi-INT coverage of a limited area of interest. The Commission and other observers consider that there has been inadequate coordination of space and airborne programs especially since the space programs are “national” and much of the airborne effort is service-specific. The NRO Commission argued that the NRO should supply system engineering capabilities to the airborne programs and promote common technologies.

Ibid., p. 12.
Ibid, p. 51.
H. Rept. 106-945, p. 712.
Ibid, p. 40.
 
At the same time, the Commission indicated its concern about the NRO’s mission to support national policymakers and recommended that the DCI should have greater latitude in transferring funds “to respond most effectively to the specific types of issues that arise in NRO programs.” Giving the DCI authority over the execution of the budgets of DOD agencies has long been controversial and this recommendation has not been endorsed by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.

The NRO Commission noted that the NRO is currently developing new satellites that will be launched by new launch vehicles and that significant technical and administrative risks are involved. “Today, the fragility of the satellite and launch architectures offers no margins for error.”74 The Commission noted that the in the 1980s, the Challenger disaster and the suspension of space shuttle flights required the reconfiguration of NRO satellites for other launch vehicles. “This cost billions of dollars and placed U.S. national security at risk during the period when replacement satellites could not have been launched if circumstances had so required.”75 The Commission also addressed NRO’s personnel policies, taking exception to what is viewed as overly rapid turnover among military personnel assigned to the space reconnaissance effort:

The Commission believes there is a compelling need for a separate NRO career path and assignment policy that provides an opportunity for selected highly trained engineers, acquisition professionals and operations specialists to be assigned to the NRO on a long-term basis and progress through a broad range of NRO positions. The technical complexity of NRO systems is unique, and it requires the continuity of a dedicated cadre.76 Most observers would concur with the conclusion that the management of the NRO and its relationships with other intelligence agencies could be usefully improved by greater attention from the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the DCI and that better coordination needs to be established between the NRO and other intelligence agencies and a better balance achieved between the strategic and tactical requirements levied on the NRO.

Whereas improvements in coordination could readily be implemented by the executive branch, the Commission also considered, but did not recommend, the enactment of legislation to provide additional statutory authorities to the NRO, although some observers believe that legislation could enhance the NRO’s legal charter more effectively than an informal working relationship among one set of incumbents that might not outlast the initiating Administration. The Commission’s recommendations reflect the continuing important role of the NRO in the Intelligence Community and the extensive budgetary resources that such a role entails. In stressing issues of coordination, the Commission acknowledged that the Nation’s intelligence effort no longer consists of stand-alone agencies each performing specific functions or serving different consumers. Many agencies and military commands depend on data derived from space reconnaissance; providing the funding and tasking priorities to the NRO is a challenging problem.

NRO Commission Report, p. 64.
Ibid, p. 66.
Ibid, p. 16.

The Space Commission also took note of the NRO’s current tendency to eschew major emphasis on technological innovation and concentrate instead on managing “legacy” systems in order to meet established requirements and avoid disruption of service to consumers. The Space Commission concluded:

...the U.S. Government­in particular, the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community­is not yet arranged or focused to meet the national security needs of the 21st century. Our growing dependence on space, our vulnerabilities in space and the burgeoning opportunities from space are simply not reflected in the present institutional arrangements. After examining a variety of organizational approaches, the Commission concluded that a number of disparate space activities should promptly be merged, chains of command adjusted, lines of communication opened and policies modified to achieve greater responsibility and accountability. Only then can the necessary trade-offs be made, the appropriate priorities be established and the opportunities for improving U.S. military and intelligence capabilities be realized. Only with senior-level leadership, when properly managed and with the right priorities, will U.S. space programs both deserve and attract the funding that is required.77

Space Commission Report, p. 99.
Appendix B. The National Imagery and Mapping
Agency (NIMA)

The NRO’s primary customer is the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. Currently estimated to have some 7,600 employees, NIMA was established in October 1996, combining elements of the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC), the Central Imagery Office, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the Defense Mapping Agency (DMA), and other offices in the Defense Department. Much of the impetus for the creation of NIMA was unsatisfactory experience during the Persian Gulf War when maps, charts, and geospatial data proved hard to acquire and difficult to disseminate to military commanders with pressing needs for precise locating data. In congressional testimony, one Marine general recalled his experience in Desert Storm in locating imagery needed for breaching Iraqi defenses.

DOD had forwarded 1 ½ million imagery products to the theater, but there was no index. As a result, Our solution as surprising as it might seem was to take one officer from each of the divisions in their desert camouflage utilities, put them on a commercial aircraft, fly them back here to Washington, DC, have them go to DIA, CIA, and ... six [other] agencies..., try to find photos, wrap them up, get back on commercial aircraft, and fly back to Saudi Arabia and distribute them. Our ground commanders got those photos 2 nights before the ground war began.78 The difficulty illustrates the crucial importance of dissemination; precise imagery is useless if it does not reach the decisionmaker when it is needed. NIMA was established in the FY1997 Defense Authorization Act (P.L. 104-201) despite reservations among some Members that the designation as a combat support agency would limit its ability to support non-DOD policymakers.79

The Conference Report that accompanied that Act stated that, “NIMA must be under the clear authority, direction, and control of the Secretary of Defense. But the charter also provides for a clear and prominent role for the DCI to task imagery systems and exploit imagery products in support of the national mission.”80 Current law provides that the DCI “shall establish requirements and priorities governing the collection of national intelligence by NIMA ....”81

Testimony of Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, USMC, in U.S. Congress, 104th Congress, 2d session, House of Representatives, Committee on National Security, H.R. 3237­the Intelligence Community Act, Hearings [H.N.S.C. No. 104-9], July 11, 1996, p. 60.

See remarks of Senator Kerrey, Congressional Record, June 26, 1996, pp. 15476-15477;
also, U.S. Congress, 104th Congress, 2d session, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, To
Authorize Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1997 for Intelligence and Intelligence-Related Activities of the United States Government, S.Rept. 104-277, June 6, 1996, pp. 5-6.

U.S. Congress, 104th Congress, 2d session, Committee of Conference, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997, July 30, 1996, H.Rept. 104-724, p. 803.

50 USC 404e(b).
 
Much of the attention of NIMA’s leadership in the five years of its existence has been expended on the need to create a single new agency out of the offices formerly associated with other agencies. The unique and disparate cultures of imagery analysts and cartographers have been difficult to combine. The fact that the Defense Mapping Agency was never part of the Intelligence Community presented other administrative and cultural challenges.

Observers credit NIMA with significant progress. Maps and other forms of geospatial data are made available in a wide variety of formats to consumers throughout the government. The NIMA Commission concluded that “while NIMA’s transformation is still incomplete, and progress against some of the goals mixed, the Commission observes progress in virtually every area.”82 NIMA has acquired a global terrain elevation set that provided a foundation display of the Earth’s terrain heights within some 30 meters. Although greater accuracy is required for targeting Precision Guided Munitions (PGMs), this database reportedly will ensure a much more accurate geographic dataset than previously available.83

Much of NIMA’s current efforts are directed at making maps available to the rest of the Defense Department and other agencies (according to one report NIMA produced 29 million maps for thousands of users in 1999 alone84 ), but a major emphasis is the creation of the “geospatial grid.” As currently envisioned, the grid would include a vast database of information collected from all parts of the Intelligence Community and from open sources. The data would be organized around geographic datapoints and would provide a common operating picture to the user, hopefully reconciling information from a variety of sources and reducing the possibility of mistaken attacks on embassies and other unintended targets. Thus, a consumer would be able to view a particular geographic location on a computerized map, note terrain characteristics and manmade features, and then have access to a database with current intelligence regarding further information such as activities within a factory or office, ethnic compositions of specific areas, etc.85

Even if administrative and technological barriers can be successfully overcome by NIMA, there will still be limitations to the information available through geospatial reference points.

NIMA Commission Report, p. 6.

Craig Covault, “NIMA Infotech Retools U.S. Space Recon Ops,” Aviation Week & Space
Technology, August 7, 2000, p. 63.

Ibid.

NIMA uses the term geospatial information which is defined as “information that identifies the geographic location and characteristics of natural and constructed features and boundaries on the Earth, including: statistical data; information derived from, among other things, remote sensing, mapping, and surveying technologies; and mapping, charting and geodetic data, including ‘geodetic products.’ Thus, ‘geospatial information’ is information about any object­natural or man-made­that can be referenced to a specific location on the Earth.” Lt.

Gen. James C. King, Director, NIMA, Address to the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, [http://www.asprs.org], August, 23, 2000. King subsequently described “a digitized and extremely accurate map of the actual environment­including man-made structures­that represents ‘ground truth.’” “King: ‘Geospatial Reference Data’ Crucial for Info Superiority,” Defense Information and Electronics Report, November 2, 2001.
 
First, there will always be classification limitations. If, for instance, there is one human source who can identify a factory producing weapons of mass destruction within an especially brutal dictatorship, placing that information in a database accessible to many people could be overly risky and there would need to be some way either to compartment that piece of information so only some users can access it with a special codeword or handle it in separate channels. Secondly, some observers believe that a geospatial basis may be more useful for intelligence of concern to military commanders than to civilian policymakers. There may be no advantages and even significant disadvantages to tying certain types of information to a geospatial grid. Political, social, or religious movements that may be of great concern to policymakers may not be tied to a single geographic point. For example, Russian decisionmaking may be of enormous interest, but tying it to an office building in the Kremlin would not be especially informative.

Most observers believe that there will be a continuing need for paper maps even as NIMA works on a computer-based grid. Media reports indicate that NIMA plans envision eventually phasing out the production of paper maps. Some observers, however, maintain that paper maps will continue to be required in many situations, including special operations. They believe that NIMA will have to ensure that paper maps remain available even if they are produced commercially.86 For the NIMA Commission, the goal is to provide TPED through an integrated data architecture, not a collection of systems, products, or processes. Seeking the “mother of all databases,” the Commission conceived of all information with some form of georeference and widely and easily shared among users to include mapping and imagery in a seamless packaged whole. Third parties would be able to add additional information in a process that would be termed “annotation.” “The database should be structured to be independent of client or application, fully distributed, and capable of accepting successive value-additions and user annotations.”87 The Commission sees NIMA as the appropriate agency to achieve multi-INT integration and thus break down the intelligence stovepipe.

Collection systems, once in place, can produce mountains of data at regular intervals and much undoubtedly goes unanalyzed. There may be quantities of data left “on the cutting room floor” (in actuality, the data would be stored in a retrievable form) and, arguably, a failure to provide decisionmakers with all information that has already been collected. On the other hand, government officials are not always equally interested in every corner of the world and in some cases data collected can be stored for future reference should interests change. While it may not be expedient constantly to analyze certain targets, it is important to retain coverage in files.

The NIMA Commission also made a number of specific recommendations that would in some cases require congressional authorization.

See Frank Tiboni, “NIMA Takes Monumental Step Toward Digital Maps,” Defense News,
May 21, 2001, p. 18.

NIMA Commission Report, p. 103.
 
! The establishment of an “Extraordinary Program Office” (EPO) to acquire state-of-the-art TPED and related communications. The Commission concluded that NIMA lacks the necessary expertise, that it is not readily available in other agencies, and that it is needed to accomplish the necessary goals within the next five years. The proposal would provide for non-government experts to be hired without the constraints of federal hiring restrictions or salary levels. The EPO would possess the special acquisition authorities of the DCI. The emphasis would be on maximal use of commercial off the shelf products while avoiding proprietary systems that face more rapid obsolescence.

! The nominal tour length of the Director of NIMA should be five years. One of the ongoing challenges facing NIMA is the establishment of a common culture for employees with backgrounds in several different agencies and greater longevity for senior leadership is needed.88

! NIMA should be authorized additional Senior Executive Service (SES) and Senior Intelligence Service (SIS) positions in order to promote and retain the caliber of personnel required to undertake the necessary transformation.

! NIMA is “severely under resourced given the expanding mission and the need to modernize.”
! Augmentation of NIMA’s research and development budget.

! NIMA should develop a new strategy to integrate commercial imagery with information from intelligence sources on an urgent basis.

! OSD should establish a commercial imagery fund through which Defense elements can charge purchases of commercial imagery.

A larger question is whether the FIA satellite program is justified given the availability of commercial imagery. According to media accounts, NIMA has taken a number of reforms to deal with concerns identified by the Commission. Efforts have been made to seek advice from industry experts, to get a clearer view of foreseeable technologies, and to improve acquisition and delivery efforts.89 It is impossible to make conclusive judgments on this issue without reference to classified materials, but congressional committees are reviewing the program.

NIMA’s mission is to provide a global database to provide current, basic geographic products to its customers. Many observers question whether NIMA is capable of taking charge of maintaining multi-int database at this point. Building a new single agency out of several components must overcome differences based on previous organizational ties and separate bureaucratic cultures. As this is being accomplished, NIMA must also establish a reputation for accuracy, completeness, and responsiveness that extends throughout the national security community. Achieving such a reputation will require not only effective leadership, but also the development and acquisition of an innovative and highly complex technical infrastructure.

On August 8, 2001, DCI Tenet and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld announced the
appointment of retired Lt. General James R. Clapper, Jr. as NIMA’s next Director. Clapper
had previously served as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 1991 to 1995.

Catherine MacRae, “Imagery and Mapping Agency Reports Steady Progress at Reforms,”
Defense Information and Electronics Report, July 27, 2001, pp. 13-14.

[Anti_Illuminati]

http://fcw.com/articles/2008/05/23/nro-same-mission-different-strategy.aspx

NRO: Same mission, different strategy

By Peter Buxbaum
May 23, 2008

The National Reconnaissance Office's transformation is taking that agency in a different direction, the agency's chief technology officer said recently.

The NRO's transformation places less emphasis on the collection of satellite data and focuses instead on developing ground capabilities to process, fuse, and analyze that data, Michele Weslander Quaid, NRO’s CTO, told a gathering of intelligence and industry officials in Herndon, Va., May 22.

The NRO is an intelligence agency that develops and operates spy satellites on behalf of the Department of Defense and other intelligence components.

“Our mission remains the same, but our focus and the way we execute it will change significantly,” said Quaid. “Ground capabilities will have equal priority with collection. Our primary deliverable will become value added information.”

The NRO transformation encompasses organizational and technological aspects. The agency plans to develop a single integrated enterprise architecture that will discard a structure characterized by separate organizations that specialize in areas such image intelligence or signal intelligence.

“There was some grass-roots collaboration among these groups,” said Quaid, “but we were missing opportunities for synergy. Now we are all on one team.”

At the technology level, transformation will mean acquiring plug-and-play common platforms instead of sensor specific platforms. It also means making greater investments in technologies that help process and fuse data, and not merely collect it.

“We need to get to a common environment to bring down the data, process it, and get it where it needs to be,” Quaid said. “We are developing new ways to support the intelligence user.”

Inaugurating an integrated enterprise architecture and its supporting technologies is five years away, she said.

The NRO is searching for and implementing off-the-shelf products that facilitate better collaboration and information sharing in the agency, among its community of users, and, ultimately, with non-U.S. coalition partners.

One tool being used is a blog where analysts and users can communicate about intelligence community needs and how to meet them. The ultimate goal of this and other social networking tools is to anticipate the needs of the intelligence user community.

“We don’t want to wait until they write a requirement,” Quaid said. “We need to be proactive to enable the discovery and access to information.”

[chrsswtzr]

I knew of the NRO's existence, but just that. I had no idea the extent of power they have, and I still cannot fully grasp the extent but I surely get the idea! Oh my God. This is big. This is not good at all, and I agree with all your sentiment and commentary Sane. As usual, you're spot on with all of this. Brilliant thread, thanks a lot for the declassified info. I'm going to research the NRO a bit today, and see what I come up with. Despite this whole 'swine hybrid flu' pandemic, I'm going to steer of course until early evening and turn back onto the news channel(s) and check back with the swine flu community theorists here on the boards. Thanks again Sane, as always. Cheers mate

[Anti_Illuminati]

http://www.gotgeoint.com/archives/qa-chris-tucker/

Q&A: CHRIS TUCKER, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, AMERICAS AND NATIONAL PROGRAMS, ERDAS AND USGIF BOARD MEMBER

Added by USGIF Category: General, Guest Q&A

It has been an interesting few days for Christopher Tucker. A USGIF board member and ERDAS Senior Vice President for Americas and National Programs, we’ve heard his name being whispered as a potential choice candidate for the position as the new Director of the CIA under an Obama Administration. We’re not the only ones hearing this either.

We caught up with Chris last week – prior to this news leak – and now have his exclusive take on the recent development. We also got his perspective on geospatial intelligence, where the tradecraft is headed, and developments at ERDAS, the company which he is leaving at the end of the week in order to be available for some new horizons …

Q: Tell us about ERDAS and your role within the organization?

A: ERDAS is a really interesting company that was started back in 1978 as the original Landsat imaging processing company. Landsat was the first orbiting multispectral bird out there providing global coverage for general use. It enabled us as a community—remote sensing community—to come together and do things that we only thought we could do in theory; for both civilian and defense/intel purposes. Once you had that sensor out there, you needed a tool that could let folks use the data for practical gain. That was the Earth Resources Data Analysis System [ERDAS]. ERDAS was a start-up that spun out of Georgia Tech, literally in a garage on the campus. And the rest is then history.

ERDAS has grown over the past 30 years to not just do Landsat but to deal with every space-based sensor there is and all the airborne sensors and geospatial data of all kinds, including the National Technical Means that the National System for Geospatial Intelligence [NSG] relies upon. And, ERDAS is no longer just an imagery company. If anything you do ever uses or ends up on a map, you should give ERDAS a call.

My role at ERDAS has been senior vice president for Americas and national programs – it’s kind of a euphemism to address everything from the Yukon to Tierra del Fuego and everything requiring a security clearance.

Q: And you are fairly new to the organization, right?

A: I came to ERDAS by way of acquisition last year. Prior to that, I was CEO of IONIC.

The ERDAS IMAGINE tool, which is the heritage of the company, really represents the next generation of multi-source, multi-sensor, net-centric applications that allow users to access imagery and other geospatial data, make this data geospatially accurate, exploit/analyze this data, and generate information products that can support analysts, operators, targeteers, and support personnel in the intelligence community as well as the tactical military community. What tools like IMAGINE have done is helped people harness a whole lot of data for real mission gain. The side effect, however, is that a data management problem has evolved as this data has accumulated.

ERDAS, recognizing this problem, used to point customers to our partners, saying, “Maybe they can solve your data management problems.” It turned out this was unrealistic, so the company decided to build an enterprise spatial data infrastructure product, which we now call our APOLLO Server. Some of this product was built from scratch, but somewhere down the line ERDAS decided to acquire some companies to accelerate that platform development. That is when they acquired IONIC, and I came to the company.

So, I really come from the company not from the remote sensing tradition that I talked about earlier but from a service-oriented architecture tradition; specifically the implementation of Open Geospatial Consortium-compliant web services.

I know that’s a mouthful but it’s something that NGA and the rest of the federal government, and frankly governments around the world, have been investing in over the past 15 years in order to achieve the interoperability, information sharing, data discovery, and geospatial enablement that they have sought within their enterprise.

Q: When you were at In-Q-Tel, what kinds of companies did you all invest in at the time? And what were the key attributes of these companies that made you want to invest in them?

A: If I told you, I would have to kill you—Ha! When I was first came to In-Q-Tel, I was given the task of sitting down with agency [CIA] personnel and defining the CIA’s priority technology challenges in what we called “The Problem Set.” The original In-Q-Tel Interface Center—the “QIC” for short—staff (Sue, Basil, Anne, Rick, Sharon, Kathy) really deserve great credit for this accomplishment, as they had to help tease this information out of one of the most complex and secretive organization on Earth.

It was the first public, unclassified articulation of the agency’s priority technology challenges, which enabled us to “go to market” and engage hundreds, and by now, thousands, of technology companies and organizations that the agency had great difficulty in otherwise engaging. The way they described it was that those were the challenges that they were unable to solve despite all the money, all of skills, and all of the acquisition vehicles—the methods for contracting— available to agency.

The idea was that they would create an organization that had different acquisition characteristics and an external view on the agency, which was “exquisitely tethered”—I believe those were Sue’s words—back to the agency’s needs. Seeing the big IT explosion in the mid to late ‘90s, and realizing that the agency was less and less capable of engaging those smaller start ups, those small businesses, some that couldn’t find the Beltway on a map if they had to. They needed an organization that could engage those companies which was not encumbered in the same ways by the FAR [Federal Acquisition Regulation].

This special problem set gave us the road rules and we immediately got down to business. I think this demonstrated real foresight on the part of George Tenet, Buzzy Krongard, Ruth David, Joanne Isham, and, well, success has many parents.

The types of businesses we were investing in ranged widely, to include those offering technologies in multi-lingual search and retrieval, entity extraction, machine translation, multi-media search and retrieval, high-end information assurance and privacy, data warehousing and data mining, enterprise middleware—for all sorts of purposes, knowledge management, and on and on.

Geospatial intelligence, a term that did not yet exist, did not come to the top of the investment priority list. It wasn’t until late in our problem set definition that one of my agency colleagues thought it important to mention something along the lines of “sometimes we get asked questions about what happened in a particular area of the world at particular moment in time, and it is extremely difficult for us to do this in a timely manner.”
I was dumbfounded. Having grown up watching [Tom] Clancy films and the like, I knew that this could not be true. Let’s just say that after some due diligence, this became one of In-Q-Tel priorities, and it led me personally down a path that I never would have imagined.

The first steps down this path involved investing in “geospatial interoperability”—for lack of a better term—particularly through what is now called the Open Geospatial Consortium, of which I am now on the board. We put out a few million dollars worth of funding into that technical community not only to invest in technologies that might be individually useful to the agency but in a way that would ensure that data from different systems across the agency could dynamically show up on the director’s map.

We saw the OGC as a great context to take out priority problems and challenges and have them executed by industry collaboratively in a context where industry and governments worldwide were already engaged.

Geospatial is one of these things that became a big focus for In-Q-Tel. And, as a result, a number of things came out of that beyond our investment in OGC such as MetaCarta and Keyhole, which ultimately became Google Earth. OGC continues to yield an evolving standards-based architecture that has come to integrate real-time sensor networks and more. In my opinion, these technologies have really changed the way that we do business but still hold the promise of transforming the enterprise fundamentally.

Q: There was a significant focus on interoperability at the GEOINT Symposium. Tell us what was happening on the exhibit floor at GEOINT.

A: I think there are a lot of different things on the floor at GEOINT. You have software providers. You have solutions providers. You have professional services organizations that when you go in their booth they are demonstrating that they have a track record of dealing with a multitude of technology. The GEOINT Symposium really has evolved into the premiere intelligence conference and is something I am proud to be associated with.

As you would suspect at the GEOINT Symposium you see a lot of people putting things on a map. The interesting part is how things got on that map. I can’t emphasize this enough. Sometimes it is a file sitting on a laptop being visualized on an application running local on that laptop. Sometimes the data is served from the other side of the world or 10 servers from all over the world on 10 different vendors’ platforms from 10 different operating systems with the data in many different formats and the data “magically” shows up on your map.

Those are two radically different worlds, and I’d say at the GEOINT Symposium you see the entire continuum because in reality our customers need a wide range of different kinds of solutions. However, the National System for Geospatial Intelligence is working hard to achieve this world of massively distributed, secure, net-centric spatial data infrastructure where all their business data, or mission data, is laid out upon more traditional geospatial data—whether it be imagery, maps, features, etc.—by authoritative data stewards in a time dominant fashion.

So at GEOINT see a lot of different things. But especially within interoperability demonstration and the participating vendor booth, you are seeing the use of the standard web services architecture that we invested in at In-Q-Tel, and which NGA, ArmyTEC and other DoD elements have continued investing in to this day.

You often have GEOINT attendees, and I think this is common around the defense and intelligence communities, that think about intelligence from a policy, organizational or political science sort of way—which I can say lovingly, since I have a Ph.D. in political science—and I believe this worldview is important. But in the end, the mechanics of our national intelligence and defense intelligence infrastructure require that everything be put on a map. And I think that one of our big struggles in our defense/intelligence community is that we have not yet reconciled the actual organizational imperative to have all of our data, all of our observations, all of our knowledge managed in a spatial/temporal context on your map.

We haven’t reconciled that imperative with a commitment across the entire defense/intelligence community to expose all of our data as I described earlier. Right now the mode we are in is the next necessary step in our evolution; to say NGA is in charge of geospatial intelligence just as NSA is in charge of signals intelligence and CIA is in charge of human intelligence and we all rely on NGA for maps.

I think that has been important because NGA has great geospatial assets that need to be made available to the community as described above. But at the same time every single defense and intelligence agency in the United States—and across our commonwealth partners and coalition partners—needs to be managed geospatially and needs to be published with these standard web service interfaces, of course accounting for the need to know, which is another problem that many do not understand has been solved. Without this, we as a community will not achieve the level of time dominant targeting, operations, analysis and support that we require.

Q: You spent some time at GEOINT week before last. What were some of the big takeaways for you?

A: It is interesting to see how the generations interact. As a relatively young guy, though I have been feeling old lately, and being relatively new to the scene, I only have one decade under my belt, it is priceless to observe the interaction of folks that have spent decades establishing the system that we currently have and have given us the capabilities that we have. There is great knowledge at the top of where the next logical steps are, from the standpoint of doctrinal evolution. I think General [James] Clapper’s presentation was a great example of this sort of knowledge. But then, I think there is a little bit of looking around and going “Where is the next round of ideas that are going to get us there?”

I see the same sort of thing go on at the USGIF’s GEOINTeraction Tuesday events, where folks like Pete Rustan, Kevin Meiners, John Goolgasian, and others show up and share their challenges, and openly state that there is a need for this next round of ideas and technologies to be introduced. They all understand that the defense/intelligence community is a technology intensive enterprise in which good people struggle valiantly—whether in targeting, operations, analysis or support—to get their jobs done with tools that are not necessarily their friends.

As has always been the case, frankly, the younger generation is more engaged at the technology level, focused on tomorrow’s technology. We see where these new technologies can be inserted quickly in a cost effective manner to achieve real mission gain. I think one of the biggest challenges we face as a community is how to marry these generational viewpoints; to have tomorrow’s technologies applied today to the doctrinal shift that we know is not only imminent but absolutely necessary for mission success.

For me, that’s probably the most interesting aspect of the GEOINT Symposium every year.

Q: As a board member of USGIF, please tell us what you think the Foundation has achieved in the last 5 years and where do you think it is heading?

A: I always like to say that USGIF is about three things: community, interoperability and tradecraft. From a community perspective, the Foundation has clearly done a great job in building up the community beyond our wildest imagination. And frankly, I believe there is still great untapped growth potential as everyone comes to realize that when you catch bad guys, you do it by having your mission data on maps. The creation of the GEOINT Symposium, the mid-year Tech Days event with the classified day at NGA, GEOINTeraction Tuesday and other related community-building events are amazing. I’d say the Foundation has achieved its first goal of community building.

Second, interoperability. Why have a community of technology and services providers if their technologies and solutions aren’t going to work together? Or if it will be chronically difficult to bring data together from these different systems in order to do your job? I think from its inception, USGIF has recognized this issue and has played a significant role in facilitating interoperability while bringing community together. Otherwise, USGIF members would just be selling the defense and intelligence communities a bunch of technological stovepipes that can never interact—and that would be a bad thing. We have all lived that nightmare for far too long. USGIF’s commitment to interoperability has been a good thing and certainly accelerated the adoption of OGC web services within NGA and across the NSG. You cannot have a GEOINT community without interoperability.

The third area, which also was a key foundation element when USGIF was established, is tradecraft. By tradecraft we mean all of the skills, know-how, sources and methods that are applied everyday in the trade of geospatial intelligence to get actionable intelligence.

There is a huge generation shift here. If you look at the demographics of who is in the community you’ll see a two-humped camel. There you have folks nearing retirement who have a treasure-trove of knowledge of how to do amazing and often esoteric things. Because of historic recruitment and hiring patterns, there is a dip in the middle, and then there is this younger generation—many coming in after 9/11 with an explosion of recruitment—who don’t have the institutional knowledge, but have a zeal to embrace many of the newer technologies.

In this context, the focus on tradecraft by USGIF is imperative and will see increased focus in the coming year. Some of the steps we’ve taken include the USGIF Accreditation and Certificate Program for colleges and universities to accredit their geospatial programs. This results in a GEOINT certificate that students can pursue, which beyond its educational merits, signals to employers that these students have critical skills that will allow them to rapidly absorb this tradecraft and quickly begin contributing to the mission.

This is just one of the many undertakings of USGIF with regard to tradecraft. Keith Masback, who joined us rather recently as the new USGIF president, is making this his No. 1 priority. The big focus in 2009 and 2010 will be on tradecraft, which is naturally tied to the current state of technology. So naturally, interoperability and community will be a part of this.

Q: Thank you for that perspective, Chris. Do you have any final thoughts you’d like to leave with us?

A: One would hope that this is an area that the transition to the next administration there would place a lot of focus on. I think the current generation of leaders focusing on GEOINT in the functional manager role is important. But we can’t underestimate the power of all the defense and intelligence agencies committing to spatially and temporally enabling their organizations and activities. It would be nice if during transition proper focus could be placed on the geospatial transformation of all intelligence rather than simply focusing on the established functional managers as we have.

I think there is a lot of untapped power there and we could achieve a lot. And, the incoming president should demand nothing less.

[Asked later …]

Q: Speaking of transition, there is talk of you as a dark horse candidate for the position as Director of the CIA. How did this come about and what do you think about your chances of getting the job?

A: Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to gotgeoint.com.

[chrsswtzr]

I appreciate that input AI, as always. Tons of information to absorb there, and just look at the names that pop up: George Tenet, Buzzy Krongard, Ruth David, Joanne Isham

Q: Speaking of transition, there is talk of you as a dark horse candidate for the position as Director of the CIA. How did this come about and what do you think about your chances of getting the job?

A: Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to gotgeoint.com.

Great answer Chris, gotta love a man who gets straight to the point!

[lordssyndicate]

All I have to say about the last post Anti is man that's hella damning.

[Anti_Illuminati]

Sun Jun 11 2006, 10:31AM
WILLIAM J. BLACK- LEADER OF THE TRAILBLAZER PROGRAM HAS BEEN FIRED.



William Black, Trailblzaer Uberspook & SAIC lackey
Key quote from the article:

Black insisted that he make all major decisions on Trailblazer, and that approach was typical of his management style, which circumvented other senior NSA managers, a former senior intelligence official said

So here we have the major player behind Trailblazer, William Black; the now-fired NSA uberspook is also noted for his close links to shadow government hub SAIC.

Why would Gen. Keith Alexander fire the man who was linking together the NSA, NGA, and NRO to connect the eyes and ears of the cryptocracy?

Could this be a purge of disloyal units or a potential fissure within the September 11 Trailblazer coup faction? Perhaps just a territorial issue? Why "clear the decks" of the Trailblazer team?

And who exactly is John C. Inglis?


John C. Inglis- Leader of the new NSA fascist coup faction?

Not much can be found with a Google search of the new NSA #2 man. But here is a bio:
http://www.sstc-online.org/Proceedings/2002/sp5002.cfm

And here is another: http://www.ngb.army.mil/ngbgomo/library/bio/774.htm

Does Inglis represent a new coup faction within the NSA? Does he represent a group of shadow government Generals/moles within Maryland?

Is he the leader of a new faction of generals loyal to the shadow government, based out of Maryland, with his role as Chief of the Maryland Air National Guard and the Director of Joint Forces Headquarters in MD?

Does his criticism of the old guard within the NSA mean a new unit, even more aggressive unit is taking hold under Gen. Alexander?

-Daniel

-----

Second-ranking NSA official forced out of job by director
Head of spy agency 'clearing the decks,' bringing in his own team
By Siobhan Gorman
sun reporter
Originally published May 31, 2006

WASHINGTON // The National Security Agency's second-highest official is being forced out by the agency's director, who is moving to install his own leadership team nine months into his tenure, current and former government officials said yesterday.

Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the NSA's director, announced in a memo to agency employees last week that Deputy Director William B. Black Jr. would be taking a new position in mid-August as the NSA's liaison officer to its British intelligence counterpart, the officials said.

The change is essentially a swap because Black's successor, John C. "Chris" Inglis, is now the agency's British liaison, a position often considered a final stop before retirement.

Bush approves
President Bush approved Inglis' appointment May 8, according to Alexander's memo, the text of which was obtained by The Sun.

"Alexander is clearing the decks," said Matthew Aid, a former NSA analyst who is now the agency's historian, "getting rid of the remnants of the old regime and bringing in his own people."

Alexander has been looking to replace Black since taking over in August but decided that it was smarter to delay the decision, said a former government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of personnel decisions.

"He has chosen this way of axing" Black, the former official said.

An NSA spokeswoman would not comment on the decision but said a "transition date" was set for August.

NSA insiders had expected Alexander to replace Black quickly. Alexander and his predecessor, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, had clashed and had contrasting leadership styles.

As deputy director, Black was intimately involved in the agency's most sensitive operations, including the warrantless surveillance program.

Last year, Black received one of the Pentagon's Distinguished Civilian Service awards. Hayden, his former boss, said this month that he had brought Black on board in 2000 as a "change agent."

Inside the agency, Black was controversial because of his management style and because of the ties he forged between his former employer, Science Applications International Corp., and the NSA, former intelligence officials said. Black had served at the NSA for nearly four decades before taking a management job at Science Applications in 1997.

The company won a number of large contracts with the NSA after Black returned to the spy agency, including a $280 million contract to oversee the NSA's Trailblazer program, which sought to overhaul the way the NSA sifts and analyzes data. Trailblazer ultimately proved a flop and has been abandoned.

Black insisted that he make all major decisions on Trailblazer, and that approach was typical of his management style, which circumvented other senior NSA managers, a former senior intelligence official said.

Black's successor, Inglis, was the top deputy at the agency's signals directorate, which is responsible for intercepting and analyzing communications, before assuming his most recent post in Britain.

In his memo, Alexander noted Inglis' leadership, professionalism and experience abroad as key attributes that his new deputy will bring to his assignment, which he is to begin Aug. 14.

Alexander noted that Inglis will be tackling projects to improve the NSA's ability to exploit enemies' use of global technology networks, an area in which the spy agency has struggled in recent years. At the NSA, Inglis has spent much of his career honing eavesdropping technology. At a 2002 conference, he criticized some NSA leaders for being afraid to embrace new technologies, Aid said.

Inglis, a 1976 Air Force Academy graduate and a pilot, holds several engineering and computer science graduate degrees.

Disappointment
A former government official said he was disappointed that Alexander had selected an NSA insider as his new top deputy.

"He's been reluctant to go outside to get help," the former official said. "NSA has been a management nightmare for a long time. There is nobody internally who has any experience about how to manage anything effectively."

It is not uncommon for top officials in positions such as Black's to seek overseas assignments in their final years at the agency, said Ira Winkler, a former NSA analyst.

Such assignments pay 25 percent more than those in the United States, he said, and retirement pay is based on an employee's salary for the last three years of his career.

"It makes a hell of a lot of sense," Winkler said.

Washington Post now admits the NGA and NSA have linked together, an oblique reference to the Trailblazer program.

Also, the article casually mentions how Special Forces Ops are running through Iran and North Korea, and linking their information back to the NGA for videos and photographs.

Could this be the linking of the STRATCOM (Gen. Schoomaker) coup faction at Offut and the NGA/NRO clique of satellite space war ops?

Considering we are on the brink of conflict with Iran and possibly North Korea, is it surprising to see the NGA playing such a key role in the intel? (UAVs, Satellite spying, etc)

Also, who will replace James R. Clapper, head of the NGA who is retiring this month?



James R. Clapper- Eye in the Sky Trailblazer pointman
----

Key Quote from the WashPost article:

The NGA also has linked elements of its group with the National Security Agency, whose satellites and ground-based facilities collect electronic messages. Negroponte recently praised this step as "linking our nation's 'eyes and ears.' "

-Daniel

(editors note: while posting this, my internet connection is now down to 3.86 KBPS with a DSL connection. Somebody is snooooooping and slowing down my connection. I can only wonder who...)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/05/AR2006060501122.html

Senators Seek Better Defense Imagery
Committee Wants More Photos, Video and Maps Available to Troops in Field

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 6, 2006; Page A13

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence wants to expand the mission of the nation's imagery intelligence agency so that it can provide U.S. forces on the ground with laptop computers that display still pictures and video of what may lie over the next hill.

"New products including full-motion video and ground-based photography should be included with available positional data [such as maps] in National Geospatial-Intelligence libraries for retrieval on Defense Department and intelligence community networks," the Senate panel said in its report on the fiscal 2007 intelligence authorization bill.

"The committee wants troops to be able to dial up what the route ahead will look like and where potential ambush points may be," said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, an expert in satellite- and ground-based intelligence. He said digital still photos taken by military attachés and Special Forces teams that have slipped in and out of potential target countries such as Iran and North Korea as well as video footage taken by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been collected for years, but have not been integrated into the main data libraries maintained by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).

"The NGA's current library of geospatial products reflects its heritage -- predominantly overhead imagery and mapping products," the committee wrote in its report. "While the NGA is beginning to incorporate more airborne and commercial imagery, its products are nearly devoid of FMV [full-motion video] and ground-based photography," it added.

The panel's solution is to give the director of national intelligence authority to direct the NGA to "analyze, disseminate and incorporate" into its national system "likenesses, videos, or presentations produced by ground-based platforms including handheld or clandestine photography taken by or on behalf of human intelligence collection organizations."

The new visual materials would be available along with traditional mapping data for retrieval by mission planners and troops in the field. "The route to and from a facility or photographs of what a facility would look like to a foot soldier -- rather than from an aircraft -- would be of immense value to our military personnel and intelligence officers," the report said.

Sensitive to the unique roles played by human collectors, including Special Forces teams and clandestine CIA operatives, the report made clear that the NGA's new mission would not give the agency authority to "manage or direct" the collection or set the technical requirements for "handheld or clandestine photography." The human collection agencies would also control the classification of their photography as well as how and to whom it is distributed.

Instead, the panel encouraged the NGA, whose database includes the exact location of where images are taken and the timing, to work with the other collection agencies so their data can easily be retrievable from the National Geospatial data libraries.

Pike said, however, that technical difficulties exist in finding ways to integrate the new collection into the NGA data libraries. "Lots of still-camera imagery does not have time and place stamped into it as do the satellites," he said. He also noted that full-motion videos, where a UAV can be traveling 100 mph, creates a problem in stamping locations so viewers know the start and finish of the target.

An NGA spokesman said the agency does not comment on pending legislation such as the Senate intelligence committee's version of the authorization bill. But the NGA has been making changes in its databases over the past few years. More commercial imagery has been purchased and some video from UAVs such at the Predator and Global Hawk have gone into the system.

Last December, Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte gave the NGA responsibility for overhead, non-imagery infrared and space-borne collectors of measurement and signature intelligence, which involves sensors that, among other things, gather signs of chemical, electronic, nuclear or other radiations emitters.

The NGA also has linked elements of its group with the National Security Agency, whose satellites and ground-based facilities collect electronic messages. Negroponte recently praised this step as "linking our nation's 'eyes and ears.' "

In a presentation last September, retired Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr., the head of the NGA, described his view of "geointellingence" as seeking to answer such questions as "Where am I? Where are the friendlies? Where are the enemies? Where are the noncombatants? Where are the obstacles, natural and manmade, and how do I navigate among them? And what is the environment?"

Clapper, who became director of the NGA in 2001 when it was still the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, plans to retire this month.

More on John "Chris" Inglis, the new pointman within the NSA fascist coup faction, who will take his seat as the #2 man in the NSA on August 14, 2006.

I have found the link to his 2002 presentation where he outlined his vision for new SIGNIT gathering:

http://www.sstc-online.org/Proceedings/2002/SpkrPDFs/Special/Inglis.pdf

The major agenda from Inglis appears to be the following:

1) Continued privatization of the NSA software and human analyzation capabilities via the typical contractors.

2) A stronger emphasis on software based vaccuming, sifting, and examination, perhaps using artificial intelligence which can replace human analysts.

3) A reduced reliance on using actual people to examine the SIGNIT, instead reducing NSA analysts to meneal roles

4) Linking together new private software with DOD coup elements inside the DOD, Army, Air Force & Marine Corps. (We must remember Inglis has strong links to the Maryland JTF and Air Force)

...more coming soon as it develops

-Daniel


----
Here is an article from 9/11/02, where Inglis outlines his plan for privatizing the NSA's software and human analyst capabilities. Obviously this means we will continue to see private firms takeover the NSA/NRO/NGA superspy system.:

Key quote:
That’s not to say NSA will get into the business of creating the software itself. It will rely on commercial products, Inglis said.


http://www.gcn.com/print/21_27a/19932-1.html

NSA pans for data gold

By Thomas R. Temin, GCN Staff

How do you filter coherent information out of a swiftly flowing river of seemingly undifferentiated bits?

That’s the problem the Signals Intelligence Branch at the National Security Agency is struggling with as it overhauls the technical support systems for its intelligence-gathering mission.

Sept. 11 gave extra impetus to NSA’s efforts to change systems and people so they can efficiently sift out what matters in the noise of digital network traffic, said Chris Inglis, deputy director for analysis and production.

“We need coherence out of the myriad of communications technologies, so analysts can make sense of it,” Inglis said. “We can’t use analysts to keep up with a 300 percent per year growth in network traffic.”

A shift from reading everything and trying to figure it out to taking and sorting data samples in response to specific demands by analysts would transform NSA, Inglis said.

In a recent presentation to Defense Department workers and vendors, Inglis outlined an information architecture that would support this new style of turning raw data into intelligence. The goal is to have software tools and human beings each do what they do best, but not expect too much from software nor overwhelm people with data.

Such an architecture would have five layers—from signal through data, information, knowledge and intelligence. Inglis acknowledged that the model “makes something artsy sound scientific.”

The first three layers are software-intensive, requiring automated tools to gather in and sort the raw materials for human analysts to go to work on, mainly at the knowledge and intelligence layers. Inglis described the required tools as “a coherent application suite to perform noncognitive tasks.”

Agency culture must change for the approach to be feasible, Inglis said, in part because analysts have a history of controlling their technology. At one time, some of them wrote their own machine assembly code, he said.

“People resist this, but we need time spent on strategic goals, not tactical thrills,” Inglis said. “We need systems engineers, software engineers and program managers as much as Farsi experts and linguists. If not, we will fail.”

NSA is putting money where its mouth is, having approved raises of up to 25 percent for workers in technical disciplines. Inglis said NSA was prepared to hire people even at the GS-15 level for some technical jobs. Plus, the agency wants to establish an acquisition group within its signal directorate for specialists to meet a top software Capability Maturity Model ranking.

That’s not to say NSA will get into the business of creating the software itself. It will rely on commercial products, Inglis said.

----

Here is yet another article, where Inglis pushes for more privatization of software.

http://www.gcn.com/print/21_10/18593-1.html

Defense coders are fading away

By Thomas R. Temin, GCN Staff



"Marine Corps CIO Debra Filippi says the service will continue to use its own people to run networks but will contract out coding."


SALT LAKE CITY—The armed services are nearly out of the software coding business. For the most part, military officials have turned over development of new systems to contractors or have implemented commercial software.

But do the services have the talent necessary to perform lifecycle management for software, tasks such as acquisition, riding herd on vendors for software quality and ensuring on-time deployment?

In open sessions and private interviews, officials at the annual Software Technology Conference said a new era has arrived in which few soldiers, sailors and pilots are code jockeys. Nor are civilian personnel, for that matter. But the coders haven’t been replaced with enough people who understand software engineering, enterprise architectures or how to help operational domains cope with specifying and buying software, officials said.

John Gilligan, CIO for the Air Force, told a gathering of service members and vendors: “Only a small percentage of software is developed in-house. Yet, we are short of the people in intelligence or security. We need more of them to work with combat forces and business domains to advise” on software management.

The ever-growing dependence on software plus the strain on systems and people caused by the ongoing campaign against terrorism is intensifying the need for skilled people, Defense Department officials said.

The National Security Agency is pursuing a radically new and far more software-intensive approach to data analysis and intelligence creation, said Chris Inglis, deputy director for analysis and production. The approach will depend less on gathering huge amounts of data for later sifting and more on seeking answers to specific questions.

In this scenario, software tools will automate much of the pattern generation, filtering and alerting now done by people, Inglis said. Humans will perform purely cognitive tasks. “We need to hunt, not gather, sucking it up and sorting it out later,” he said.

Failure looms

But his agency, too, lacks enough people versed in software management to turn the vision into reality.

“We need systems engineers, software engineers and program managers as much as we need Farsi experts and linguists,” Inglis said. So acute is the demand, he said, that the agency will fail if it doesn’t get them. If systems workers can’t be found inside NSA, the agency will hire them even at the GS-15 and Senior Executive Service levels, he said.

Gilligan echoed the importance of such people. “Those who understand technology are going to rule the Air Force,” he said.

Army brass also said that although systems are becoming ever more software-intensive, it will be up to contractors to do most of the heavy code lifting.

“It’s a perishable skill. The government can’t afford a large cadre of programmers. If I was king for a day, we’d go all commercial,” said Lt. Gen. Peter Cuviello, the Army’s CIO.

Like his counterparts in other agencies, Cuviello said he doesn’t believe that outsourcing development absolves the government from having enough in-house expertise to make sure contractors are doing things right.

“It’s important we have people who understand software engineering for things like oversight and testing,” he said. “But the legions of programmers needed will be found in our industry partners.”

At the Marine Corps, it’s the same story, said Debra Filippi, deputy CIO. “We’re phasing out the military occupation specialty that does coding in favor of deferring to industry.”

She added that the Corps will continue to use its own people for network administration and maintenance, especially as a network-centric warfare strategy takes hold.

Although NSA might need to hire the necessary software managers, the Air Force will have to reassign existing people, Gilligan said.

“In many business areas, we are overstaffed. The areas are finance and human resources,” he said. Such domains are filled with people doing manual processes, using up billets that could be used for software management. He added that network infrastructure maintenance is another area where people can be pruned for other purposes, since better tools mean fewer people are needed to keep increasingly complex networks running.

Hill interest

The critical need for better software management hasn’t escaped military overseers on Capitol Hill, Inglis said. He said conversations with oversight committees aren’t about NSA’s progress in the war on terrorism “but on our progress in these disciplines.”

It’s a far cry from the days when conferences such as STC were devoted to the details of one programming language or another.

Inglis said the word he is sending to NSA’s technical communities is pretty straightforward: “Much as it is a joy to write machine language code, we don’t want you to do that anymore.”

-------

New members of the coup faction?



Lt. Gen. Peter Cuviello, the Army’s CIO."The government can’t afford a large cadre of programmers. If I was king for a day, we’d go all commercial,”

------

John Gilligan, CIO for the Air Force
“Those who understand technology are going to rule the Air Force,”

Changes at the NGA

http://www.nima.mil/NGASiteContent/StaticFiles/OCR/nga0616.pdf
Lloyd Rowland New NGA Deputy Director
BETHESDA, Md.—Effective Oct. 1, 2006, Lloyd B. Rowland assumed duties as the deputy director, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). Rowland has served as acting deputy director since April 13 and during that period also served as the agency’s acting director from June 13 to July 7. Rowland is the sixth deputy director since NGA’s establishment in 1996, when it was known as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA). The name was changed in November 2003. Rowland’s experience includes assignments in a variety of roles at NGA and its predecessor agencies. Most recently within NGA and NIMA he was the Business Executive; Assistant Deputy Director, Directorate of Operations; Director, Geospatial Information & Services Office; and Director, Global Operations Office.

He also served 24 years with the U.S. Air Force and commanded a squadron during Desert Storm, receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross for combat operations.

http://www.bloglines.com/blog/ewing2001?id=1998
"Project Trailblazer"- Pre- 9/11 Hub for potential 'Energy Beam Weapons' (Judy Wood)?

By ewing2001

picked up at:
http://911closeup.com/nico/globalfreepress/lostwardrill_chap6.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=324
(loading slow)

(ed: This is an archive mirror from a 2004 article series originally released at globalfreepress, describing the significant role for 9/11 of "Project Trailblazer" (1998) , a code word project for the pre-9/11 secretly relaunched 'Star Wars' Program from Ronald Reagan, also linked to a Satellite Mapping-, Zoning- and Surveillance Program.
Parts of 'Trailblazer' had been developed by BoozAllen Hamilton and BTG Inc. in the same part of the Pentagon, which got officially attacked on 9/11.

This article also hints on logistical steps and their contractots regarding plausible satellite/space weaponry which could have been responsible for the unconventional part of the controlled demolition of the Twin Towers on 9/11, see Judy Wood also here. Check out also The other Hayden: Why "trailblazer" was the real codeword for 9/11, Hayden and the NSA- the most ignored "9/11 connection"

...Trailblazer was much more than just an advanced "spy and satellite program".
Already in September 2000, http://www.spacenewsfeed.co.uk/2000/3September2000.html
SpaceNewsFeed revealed, that Trailblazer is part of the "Trans Orbital Lunar GPS Experiment"...

...in March 2001, Logicon TASC announced it had won another "five-year, $57 million contract" ..."with a U.S. intelligence agency to provide systems engineering and technical assistance (SETA) support for Trailblazer".... June 14th, 2001, Logicon TASC, a Northrop Grumman company, has won a $75 million contract with )
...
Gossgate: In-Q-tel... and other reasons of Porter Goss 'resignation'

http://www.defensetech.org/archives/001563.html
May 23, 2005

It ain't easy pinning down Ionatron Inc., the Tucson, Arizona laser weapon firm...there's one media outlet where Ionatron's name has been mentioned a whole lot, lately. That would be the New York Post, where business columnist Christopher Byron has been on a one-man jihad against the ray gun company....

On May 9, he claimed that "accumulating evidence now suggests that at least some of the technology that Ionatron claims to possess may actually belong either to Waltham, Mass.-based Raytheon Co., which has been conducting its own government-funded 'directed energy' weapons research for years, or to a small California tech company rival called HSV Technologies, Inc., or perhaps to both."

http://www.franklingate.com/flight_77_2.htm
(Mirror)

October 1998 With the help of CFR, Dr. Ruth David (former Director for Science and Technology at the CIA until September 1998) became president and chief executive officer of ANSER. This Institute started to establish the Homeland Security in early 1999, almost 2.5 years before the attacks. Furthermore ANSER was involved in Dark Winter, an anti bioterror drill in June 2001...

http://911closeup.com/nico/globalfreepress/lostwardrill_chap6.htm
...the PNAC papers clearly say:
"...the creation of 'US Space Forces', to dominate space" was most important.

This all started already under President Clinton. One key project was Project Trailblazer, by the NSA, NRO and NIMA, which linked space domination and 9/11 together, some call it NWO....

Chapter 7: Space War

To show, how carefully Sep11th was planned, we have first to take a look on the players of the satellite defense- and space industry. Since the late 90s, they created some shells to hide their plan. It was planned, that the "big 4" Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon and TRW would buy them back again.

Booz, Allen, Hamilton
James Woolsey's company since 2002, but already an important strategic player before Sep11th, and one of the main NRO-contractors of Project Trailblazer.

Cambone, Stephen

Dr. Cambone was the Staff Director for the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization from July 2000 to January 2001. He was the Director of Research at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University (INNS/NDU) from August 1998 to July 2000. Prior he was the Staff Director for the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States from January 1998 to July 1998...

...Other helpful contractors: CACI and Titan Corporation....

...James R. Clapper

Since August 8th, 2001 (two days after Bush received a new PDB with a clear warning on Bin Laden), Air Force Lt. Gen. (ret.) James R. Clapper Jr. is the director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA, also known as "the 'eyes of America'"). ...
...

Logicon Task (Northrop Grumman)

June 14, 2001 -- Logicon TASC, a Northrop Grumman (NYSE:NOC) company, has won a $75 million contract to provide advanced research and development services to a client in the U.S. government. The two-year contract contains three one-year options.

... In March, Logicon TASC announced it had won a five-year, $57 million contract with a U.S. intelligence agency to provide systems engineering and technical assistance (SETA) support for Trailblazer, a major foreign signals intelligence modernization program. In October 2000, Logicon TASC announced a $170 million SETA contract win with a third government agency.

... The Logicon TASC team includes Veridian, the Veridian Information Solutions Division and Veridian Systems Division, Fairfax, Va.; Advent Systems Inc., Mountain View, Calif.; Electronic Data Systems Corp., Herndon, Va.; Advanced Engineering & Sciences, a Division of ITT Industries, Ashburn, Va.; RDR Inc., Centreville, Va.; SRS Technologies, Washington Group, Arlington, Va.; and Titan Systems Corp., Delfin Systems Division, Fairfax, Va....

[Anti_Illuminati]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Release Number 01-14   
August 8, 2001
For information, contact Joan Mears at 301-227-0087
    
Lieutenant General James R. Clapper, Jr., USAF (Ret.) Appointed
http://web.archive.org/web/20020202152756/164.214.2.59/general/8aug01.html

Director, National Imagery and Mapping Agency

Today, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet announced the appointment of Lieutenant General James R. Clapper Jr., USAF (Ret.) as Director, National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA). Clapper succeeds Lieutenant General James C. King who will be retiring later this year after more than thirty years of distinguished service. The Change of Director ceremony is scheduled for 13 September 2001.
 
Clapper brings to NIMA a wealth of experience in the Intelligence Community spanning more than three decades of service in both the military and civilian work force. Clapper's last military assignment was Director, Defense Intelligence Agency and following retirement he served as Vice President and Director of Intelligence Programs at SRA International, Inc.
 
Tenet describes Clapper as a "legend in the intelligence business." "At NIMA, he will head an agency that is not yet five years old, but whose mission of full-service imagery and mapping support is more critical today than ever," Tenet said.
 
The DCI praised King, saying his "clear thoughts and decisive actions have left NIMA a stronger and better place."
 
Established in 1996, NIMA was created to centralize and integrate responsibilities for imagery and geospatial information, achieve synergies across the fields, and exploit the tremendous potential of enhanced collection systems and digital technology. NIMA is responsible for providing the most advanced imagery and geospatial analysis and information to the U.S. national security and civil communities, and to America's global allies. As the leader in the imagery and geospatial fields and primary integrator of the disciplines, NIMA directs, coordinates, and supports activities throughout the defense and intelligence communities.

[Anti_Illuminati]

http://www.strategic-road.com/confid/archiv06/reperes_sem010506.htm

07/05/06  - IN-Q-TEL... La SEC enquêterait sur un scandale qui pourrait éclabousser la CIA

WMR May 6, 2006 -- "General Hayden's nomination to be the next CIA Director came as another scandal involving the intelligence agency emerged in addition to the "Hookergate" scandal centered on the Watergate and another Washington hotel. Under Goss, the CIA's venture capital arm, IN-Q-TEL, which provides CIA money to promising high-tech start-up firms, became the subject of a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation for possible massive misappropriation of taxpayer money and private money involving IN-Q-TEL, NASA's venture capital branch -- Red Planet Capital -- The US Special Operations Command's venture capital firm On Point, and the infamous Carlyle Group -- the war profiteering company in which George H. W. Bush, the Bin Laden family, and former Secretary of State James Baker have held major financial interests.

Suspicions about IN-Q-TEL were raised in late April when its 35-year-old CEO, Amit Yoran, abruptly resigned to "spend more time with his family." Yoran, an Israeli-American, had been on the job for just four months after he succeeded IN-Q-TEL's first CEO, Gilman Louie, a well-known Silicon Valley investor and technical guru. Before taking over IN-Q-TEL, Yoran was the director of the National Cyber Security Division at the Department of Homeland Security.

Under Yoran, IN-Q-TEL's operating budget increased exponentially and the firm began negotiating with various high-tech firms to develop deep data mining programs and spy technology. Yoran's rumored successor was said to be Mark Frantz, who Yoran brought from The Carlyle Group to be IN-Q-TEL's managing general partner and board of trustees member. Frantz worked for George H. W. Bush and held a senior position with Alex Brown, later merged with Deutsche Bank, the firm where the CIA's former Executive Director, A. B. "Buzzy" Krongard served as Chairman. IN-Q-TEL's board of trustees chairman is Lee A. Ault III of Delray Beach, Florida, who also serves on the board of Office Depot.

Individuals familiar with IN-Q-TEL report that the company is suspected of steering CIA funds to start-up firms with close ties to the GOP as well as "pump and dump" penny stock firms tied to three foreign nations -- Israel, Dubai, and Malaysia. The emerging IN-Q-TEL scandal is mirrored by the financial scandal involving favoritism in CIA contracts to Brent Wilkes' ADCS and its subsidiaries.

Deputy DNI Gen. Michael Hayden, who presided over dubious multi-billion dollar contracts -- including Groundbreaker and Trailblazer -- as NSA director, has a great deal of experience in covering up cost overruns, contractor fraud, and contract favoritism. Beyond the need to have a good foot soldier at the helm of the CIA, the Bush administration is clearly hoping that Hayden, using his special form of intimidation through the use of psychiatric and security personnel to threaten whistleblowers, can tamp down the emerging financial "Watergate" emerging at the CIA."
_______________________________________________________
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/23/AR2006042300701.html

Four Months Later, In-Q-Tel Again Needs New CEO
[INSERT: WTF, LOOK AT THE PTECH NAME ON AN OVERHEAD DISPLAY BEHIND HIS HEAD IN THE PHOTO!

Amit Yoran, former head of cybersecurity for the Homeland Security Department, says he wants to spend more time with his family. (By Bill O'leary -- The Washington Post)

By Terence O'Hara
Monday, April 24, 2006

Amit Yoran resigned over the weekend as chief executive of In-Q-Tel , the venture capital arm of the U.S. spy community, after less than four months on the job.

Yoran, a seasoned technology entrepreneur and investor as well as a former head of cybersecurity for the Department of Homeland Security, had led In-Q-Tel since January. He said yesterday that his reasons for leaving were entirely personal, including a desire to spend less time on the road and more with his family. He and his wife have three young children. In-Q-Tel has investments all over the country, and Yoran has traveled extensively. Considered a success inside the Central Intelligence Agency, which created it, In-Q-Tel's mandate has been expanding to find more technology for more spy agencies.

"It's a very amicable parting," said Yoran, 35. "I will say I'm sorry and disappointed as well. But these are personal issues. . . . My continued performance as CEO was not going to be possible."

Yoran said he will continue to work with In-Q-Tel as a part-time consultant. Before taking the chief executive job four months ago, Yoran had invested money in several private technology companies. He continues to serve on several company boards.

Lee A. Ault III , chairman of In-Q-Tel's board of trustees, said he accepted Yoran's resignation "with regret."

"In-Q-Tel has benefited from Amit's vision and leadership during his tenure as CEO," Ault said in a statement. "We appreciate his service to In-Q-Tel, and we look forward to continuing In-Q-Tel's unique and important mission of delivering important and cutting edge technologies to the CIA and the intelligence community."

In-Q-Tel calls itself a venture capital firm, but venture investing is a small part of what it does. The CIA created the organization as a nonprofit, and its job was to identify technologies being funded and developed by the private sector that could have value in intelligence-gathering or national security applications. In-Q-Tel makes small investments in start-up companies, almost always as a junior partner to traditional venture capital funds. Most of In-Q-Tel's money goes toward evaluating and funding the technology to make sure the CIA or other intelligence agencies can use it.

Yoran had begun to ramp up In-Q-Tel's investment activity to meet its growing budget and responsibilities. He said the organization has an annual budget of more than $50 million -- up from $30 million to $35 million several years ago -- and includes as "investors" several other intelligence and homeland security agencies in addition to the CIA. In its early years, In-Q-Tel was funded almost entirely by the CIA. All of In-Q-Tel's contacts with the intelligence community, no matter the agency, still run through a special office inside the CIA.

Last month, Yoran hired his old friend, Mark Frantz , a well-known local venture capitalist who spent the past five years with the Carlyle Venture Partners , as In-Q-Tel's managing general partner. Frantz in an interview last week said the organization would be hiring more people for its investing team.

"We're not exactly taking out help-wanted ads, but we want to add to our venture team," Frantz said. "We've got some very talented folks here, but we're here to turn it up a notch. "

Yoran took over from founding chief executive Gilman Louie , who ran In-Q-Tel since its 1999 inception. The board is expected to appoint an interim chief executive this week and begin a national search for Yoran's replacement.

Yoran said 120 technologies partly funded by In-Q-Tel have been deployed by the CIA or other agencies. "Unfortunately, we can't talk about the specific uses," he said.

Investing in Start-Up Banks

For two decades, Danielson Associates of Rockville has been among the leading dealmakers for start-up banks on the East Coast. Now, it's investing in them.

Founder Arnold Danielson , known for his deep relationships with the region's community bankers, advised dozens of young banks as they grew and ultimately were acquired. His credibility stemmed in part from the reams of cogent research he wrote on community banks. In the past 10 years, Danielson Associates represented sellers in 34 bank acquisition deals worth nearly $3 billion. One of Arnold Danielson's crowning achievements was the sale of Columbia Bancorp to Fulton Financial Corp . Columbia was a longtime Danielson client, and Danielson advised the bank in its $306 million sale to Fulton in February.

Arnold Danielson is semi-retired, spending a lot of time writing a history of banking at his residence in the south of France. The firm is run by his son, David , who is president, and by principle Jonathan D. Holtaway .

Last year, Danielson Associates started Ategra Capital Management , which is run by Holtaway. The new company runs an investment fund that has bought stakes in 32 small banks, totaling about $9.4 million, said Holtaway, who was an analyst at Danielson for 10 years until 2001 and rejoined the firm last year in part to help start the fund.

The fund was created to profit from Danielson's expertise in small banks, which typically have small, intensely local shareholder groups that don't seek out institutional investors.

Not that there's a lot of institutional investment money chasing those banks. The professionally managed investment funds that specialize in community bank stocks generally invest in bigger banks, typically with assets of $500 million or more. Holtaway is investing much earlier.

"We have been a seen a good three-year wave of bank start-ups, and it's expected to continue," Holtaway said. "We only exist at the very low end, where these stocks sometimes don't even trade. You really have to work it to buy some of these stocks."

A typical investment will be $300,000 to $500,000, Holtaway said. The fund is focused on East Coast banks, the region where bankers know Danielson well.

"People in this business identify with the Danielson brand," Holtaway said. Start-up banking "is a highly specialized thing, and if you're going to join these early investors, you really have to understand it and enjoy it."

[Effie Trinket]

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/23/AR2006042300701.html

Four Months Later, In-Q-Tel Again Needs New CEO
[INSERT: WTF, LOOK AT THE PTECH NAME ON AN OVERHEAD DISPLAY BEHIND HIS HEAD IN THE PHOTO!

Amit Yoran, former head of cybersecurity for the Homeland Security Department, says he wants to spend more time with his family. (By Bill O'leary -- The Washington Post)

Old article from 2004:

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2004/0329vermont.html

Time to enlist a 'national guard' for IT?
By Tim Greene, Network World
March 29, 2004 12:09 AM ET

NORTHFIELD, VT. - The U.S. is unprepared to recover quickly from a major cyberterrorism attack and might require government intervention to organize IT professionals, according to military emergency management officials at a security conference.

Authority from the president and Congress should be conferred on a single person to cull government resources to respond to such attacks, but that will not be enough, according to retired Army National Guard Maj. Gen. Jack D'Araujo, a former assistant director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency who spoke last week at the e-ProtectIT conference at Norwich University.

D'Araujo said that in cyberwar games last fall called Livewire, participating businesses seemed reluctant to give up information to federal officials about their networks and what data travels on them. In an actual cyberattack, there is no set official chain of command for dealing with recovering from the attack, he said.

A cyber national guard might be needed, he said, to react as the military National Guard reacts to natural disasters. The need is urgent because the extent and target of possible attacks cannot be known. "We're really plowing some new ground," he said. "We flat-out aren't prepared to deal with it."

The upside is that within the IT community people have knowledge about what do to in a cyberattack, said Patrick Gallagher, former director of the federal government's National Computer Security Center. "If we have problems today, we have network groups who can and do talk to each other and speak a similar language and have the same training," he said. "What we need is the leadership to pull that together."

Recovering quickly is important, but because there has never been a cyberdisaster, it's difficult to know what will be needed and how quickly damage can be repaired, said Pierce Reid, an Internet warfare specialist and vice president of marketing for VoIP vendor Qovia. "What will it take for a national reboot? A lot of these systems have never been taken offline," Reid said.

These comments came a week after the IT industry Cyber Security Early Warning Task Force issued a report calling for an early-warning network and a national crisis coordination center run by CERT (see Bradner column). The purpose would be to gather attack information and issue appropriate warnings to the right people. Representatives from BellSouth, Computer Associates, Intel, Internet Security Systems, Microsoft, SAIC, Symantec and other corporations participate in the task force. The group plans to issue a report on public responses to its proposals in June.

Currently, informal information-sharing systems exist for business, government and military agencies to deal with cyberattacks, but they lack official powers to make responses more efficient and focused, D'Araujo said. These systems are built on personal contacts and cooperation, but not on a system, and he said that is a weakness. "When someone knocks you on your ass in a cyberwar, you'd better have something more than Fred-knows-Joe on the golf course to rely on," he said.

Livewire exercises organized by the Department of Homeland Security called for early warning centers to be run cooperatively by banks, water and electric utilities, and technology companies, but information was shared reluctantly or not at all in many cases.

Attacks on data and voice networks need not bring down business, utility and government networks for long to do a lot of damage, said Phil Sussman, Norwich's CIO who ran a seminar on network security. If such attacks affect 911 emergency phone systems, hospitals and emergency dispatch centers, public confidence in the government to protect it will be undermined, he said. "It will shake confidence in the network itself with a series of things people expected but are no longer there," Sussman said.

"Public trust and confidence is one of [attackers'] objectives," D'Araujo said. When planes hit the World Trade Center, its psychological damage was devastating, he said. "Public trust and confidence in the government to keep them safe in airplanes was shot," he said.

U.S. IT professionals need to look at their operations as attackers do to be better prepared, said retired U.S. Marine Gen. Commendant Alfred Gray. "We've got to get street-wise. We've got to look for what people do when they have less capability than you do - they look for the seams, they look for the cracks," he said.

Reid said recent virus attacks can be seen as preliminary probes to a major assault, just as there were terror bombings over a period of years that led up to Sept. 11. "What we're seeing is the embassy bombings, the attack on the USS Cole - all the pin pricks that lead up to the main event," he said.