Spy Machines
On the 25th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, NOVA investigates the spy planes and satellites that played a critical role in history and influence arms control today.
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00:00Tonight on NOVA, 25 years ago, the world came to the brink of nuclear war.
00:11It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba
00:17against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States.
00:25Spying played a crucial role in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
00:30Now, with nuclear arsenals many times more destructive,
00:33nations ask if sophisticated intelligence tools can help keep the peace.
00:38Spy technology has advanced dramatically.
00:42But just how much can we depend on modern espionage and its high-tech spy machines?
00:53Major funding for NOVA is provided by this station and other public television stations nationwide.
01:00Additional funding was provided by the Johnson & Johnson family of companies,
01:04supplying health care products worldwide.
01:09And by Allied Signal, a technology leader in aerospace, electronics, automotive products,
01:14and engineered materials.
01:39These men might at first seem to be astronauts preparing for launch into space.
01:45In reality, they are modern-day spies.
01:49Pilots of the world's fastest and highest-flying aircraft, the SR-71.
01:54It is but one spy machine in America's vast intelligence network,
01:58which is always listening and watching, taking full measure of the world.
02:06This spy plane can fly higher than 80,000 feet at over three times the speed of sound.
02:12It reportedly can outrun any plane or anti-aircraft missile in existence.
02:20The missions these pilots fly are secret,
02:23and are reported to have ranged from detecting China's first atomic bomb explosion
02:27to surveillance of Nicaragua today.
02:36It is a practice repeated throughout history,
02:38using the view from a high ground to gain an edge over an enemy.
02:48A century ago in the Civil War, the Union Army tested hot air balloons and cameras for aerial reconnaissance.
02:54The dodging Confederate bullets made for blurred photography.
03:07The need for getting above the battlefield was never greater than in the trench warfare of World War I.
03:13The first solution was to once again march out the balloon,
03:17now elongated and thin for stability.
03:32But it was still an easy target, especially for another new invention in the sky, the airplane.
03:45The airplane became famous for aerial dogfights, but its first mission was reconnaissance.
03:52Many planes carried cameras.
03:54They were bulky, heavy, and sometimes held by hand.
03:59But the results proved worth the effort.
04:01Military planners called for more and more photos.
04:04By the war's end, millions of images.
04:09But it was not until World War II that aerial reconnaissance came to the forefront.
04:13One of those responsible for America's effort, retired General Elliot Roosevelt.
04:18We were woefully lacking in the techniques of intelligence gathering.
04:25For instance, in my field, which was aerial reconnaissance,
04:31we went into the war with absolutely the crudest idea of aerial reconnaissance
04:38and what could be garnered in the way of information.
04:41We learned it all from the RAF and the British.
04:511940, the battle for the skies of Great Britain.
04:55The British pilots were badly outnumbered, but they had a secret weapon,
05:00a technological breakthrough called radar.
05:03This electronic means of gathering intelligence revealed the precise location of incoming German planes.
05:15The British also had forewarning of many of Hitler's war plans,
05:19thanks to cracking the secrets of the German Enigma machine.
05:22This machine encoded many German command messages that were thought unbreakable.
05:27But it was beaten by another machine, the newly invented computer.
05:33U.S. Navy codebreakers proved just as resourceful in the Pacific,
05:37painstakingly building a copy of a decoder they had never seen to duplicate Japanese codes.
05:43Magic, as it was called, yielded a rich harvest.
05:47By December 1941, American leaders had intelligence warning
05:51of a possible Japanese attack somewhere in the Pacific.
05:54On December 7th, a last-minute decoded message revealed
05:58that the Japanese were breaking off diplomatic relations,
06:01a sign that the attack was near.
06:03But Washington failed to alert military leaders in the Pacific in time.
06:14Pearl Harbor was America's greatest intelligence failure.
06:20But later, American leaders came to rely heavily on magic.
06:23Its information proved decisive in the carrier battles of Midway and Coral Sea.
06:29Some Allied military leaders credited the codebreakers
06:32with shortening World War II by at least a year.
06:40What did end the war was the atomic bomb.
06:49But as the war ended, relations between former allies grew cold.
06:54The Soviet Union was soon perceived as America's new enemy.
06:59And we were incredibly ignorant about military events,
07:03especially within the Soviet Union.
07:05And there were two types of information the United States wanted to get.
07:09One was targeting information,
07:12information about military facilities in the Soviet Union
07:15that would be attacked in the case of war.
07:17The second was early warning information,
07:20being able to detect Soviet military moves
07:23that indicated an attack on Europe or the United States.
07:27But Stalinist Russia was shrouded in secrecy.
07:30Obtaining information became a major effort
07:32of the newly created Central Intelligence Agency.
07:37Dino Brugioni, a World War II aerial photographer
07:40and one of the CIA's first employees.
07:42One of my first jobs was to create files
07:46of industrial installations in the Soviet Union.
07:49So I became an expert in the Soviet Union,
07:52but having flown photography,
07:54I knew that the Germans had flown reconnaissance over the Soviet Union.
07:58So I managed to get a lot of that photography into the files.
08:06In September 1949,
08:08a reconnaissance mission over the Sea of Japan
08:11brought back air samples containing evidence of radiation.
08:14The Soviets had exploded their first atomic bomb.
08:17America's nuclear monopoly was over.
08:21In the rush for more intelligence information,
08:23the CIA recruited photo specialist Arthur Lundahl.
08:27And I said, now wait a minute,
08:29I don't know anything about you guys from CIA.
08:31If you think you're going to parachute me into Trieste or something like that,
08:34forget it, because I'm no 007.
08:37Lundahl was asked not to jump from planes,
08:40but to supervise America's expanding photo interpretation effort.
08:45Most of the photos were taken
08:47from slow-moving planes of World War II vintage.
08:51During the next ten years,
08:53more than 40 American aircraft
08:55and nearly 200 crew members were lost
08:57over or near Soviet-controlled territory.
09:00There were aircraft missions,
09:02mostly U.S. Air Force,
09:04very brave men who skirted the Soviet Union,
09:07taking long-range oblique photography across the borders
09:11and then trying to get away before they were shot down.
09:14Sometimes they were shot down, the headlines were big.
09:17The major industries and things we were looking for
09:19were not along the borders, they were inland.
09:21So it was not a satisfactory program.
09:23You had to get inside, deep, to find what we were after.
09:28Desperate for information,
09:30the CIA resorted to a Civil War technique,
09:33using balloons.
09:35High-altitude skyhooks like these
09:37were sent aloft to drift across the Soviet Union,
09:39randomly taking pictures along the way.
09:41Most were shot down or lost.
09:43The few recovered brought meager results.
09:47Tensions heightened even more
09:49during the summer of 1953
09:51when the Soviets exploded their first hydrogen bomb.
09:54President Eisenhower,
09:55worried over the threat of a thermonuclear Pearl Harbor,
09:58proposed open skies.
10:00Each country would be allowed to fly freely
10:02over the other for military reconnaissance.
10:05No one wants another Pearl Harbor.
10:09This means that we must have knowledge
10:11of military forces and preparations
10:14around the world,
10:16especially those capable
10:19of massive surprise attacks.
10:22Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev
10:24rejected the proposal,
10:26calling it nothing more than a bad espionage plot.
10:30George Kistiakowsky, the late George Kistiakowsky,
10:33President Eisenhower's science advisor, told me
10:36that we were dropping spies into the USSR,
10:39and in Kistiakowsky's words,
10:40they were being liquidated virtually
10:42as soon as they hit the ground.
10:44So it was very, very frustrating.
10:46Imagine being in 1954
10:49and knowing that they've got nuclear weapons
10:52and that they say they're building all these things
10:54and not knowing for sure.
10:56So you have to know for sure.
10:57How are you going to know for sure?
10:59You're going to try and fly over them
11:00and look down and take pictures.
11:02The spy machine to take those pictures
11:04was already being built,
11:06tucked away in a corner of Lockheed Aircraft,
11:08a corner called the Skunk Works.
11:10In overall charge of the program,
11:12the CIA's Richard Bissell.
11:14We knew that we were going to need
11:17a secure location
11:19where flight test and development
11:22could take place.
11:24And we identified a location in Nevada
11:28that was perfect for aircraft operations,
11:30smooth as a billiard table.
11:32The plane, called the U-2,
11:34was like no other aircraft built before.
11:36Part jet and part glider,
11:38it became the single greatest
11:40intelligence accomplishment of its time.
11:42I think one of the great hidden stories
11:45since World War II has been the fact
11:48that intelligence has been enormously important
11:51in creating new forms of technology.
11:53The U-2 is a very good example.
11:55In the early 1950s,
11:57it was thought that you could not get a plane
11:59to fly above 70,000 feet.
12:01It was nearly impossible.
12:03Or if it was possible,
12:05it would take practically 10 years to develop.
12:08Eight months after the go-ahead to build the plane,
12:11the U-2 was in the air,
12:13shattering altitude and distance records.
12:15It was well described as a power glider.
12:19I can make the point by illustration.
12:22I was sitting in Washington one afternoon
12:26and received a telephone call
12:28with the effect that a U-2 on a training mission
12:32over the central United States,
12:34and specifically over Tennessee,
12:36had had a flame-out at altitude.
12:39That is to say, the jet engine had ceased to function.
12:43The pilot was able to...
12:46had said he was going to glide back to New Mexico
12:51and land at Albuquerque,
12:53which is precisely what he did.
12:56The plane's payload was a massive camera
12:59with a specially designed telescopic lens,
13:02a lens so powerful it could spot a golf ball
13:05from a height of 8 miles.
13:07New thinner film allowed for thousands of photos to be taken.
13:11The U-2 could map the entire land mass of the United States
13:14in less than a dozen flights.
13:17The Fourth of July, 1956.
13:20Wiesbaden, Germany.
13:22The U-2's first penetration of the Soviet Union.
13:25A daring overflight of Moscow and Leningrad.
13:29I told Alan Dulles that the aircraft was airborne
13:34and where it was going.
13:36His reaction was exactly like your question.
13:40Is it really wise to go over the two largest cities
13:43and presumably most sensitive locations in Russia
13:46on the first flight?
13:48And I said, well, the first flight
13:50is almost certainly the safest flight there'll be.
13:53Although beyond the range of Soviet surface-to-air missiles,
13:56the U-2 pilot was far from safe.
13:59The plane itself was full of traps and danger.
14:02Well, you are asking a person who has never been on a plane
14:07Well, you are asking a pilot to climb into a terribly cramped cockpit.
14:13He was deprived of food and water for up to 12 and 13 hours at times.
14:19He had to keep a terribly close watch over a number of controls
14:23to keep this plane level.
14:25It takes, needless to say, a great degree of steady nerves.
14:29Colonel Charles Stratton, pilot of the U-2 for 18 years.
14:34We all accepted the fact that it certainly didn't have
14:37some of the very best equipment that a lot of our airplanes did.
14:41It didn't have backup systems for a lot of things.
14:44The early-owned airplanes didn't have ejection seats.
14:48It wasn't extremely difficult to fly
14:50as far as actually flying it was concerned,
14:53but you had to constantly be monitoring
14:56and paying attention to what it was doing.
14:58The stall was by far the worst situation to be in.
15:01You just could not stall it up there.
15:04The first flight over Russia was a complete success.
15:07Four more overflights in July put to rest fears in the United States
15:11that the Soviets had built a large fleet of bombers,
15:14then the only way to deliver nuclear weapons.
15:17But the bomber gap was soon replaced by another fear.
15:24Before the launching of Sputnik, the world's first satellite,
15:28Khrushchev had boasted that Russia would soon have a guided missile
15:31capable of delivering a hydrogen bomb anywhere in the world.
15:35With Sputnik in orbit, Khrushchev's boast became an ominous threat.
15:39Could that same technology deliver a nuclear strike
15:42against the U.S. in a matter of minutes?
15:49Ike pays his first visit to the Missile Test Center at Cape Canaveral,
15:52a personal inspection by the nation's commander-in-chief
15:55of the mightiest hardware in our defense arsenal
15:58at a time when public debate over America's preparedness is at a peak.
16:03In the late 1950s, there was enormous pressure.
16:06We sometimes forget about it today,
16:08but enormous pressure on Dwight Eisenhower to spend almost wildly on defense.
16:13This was especially true after Sputnik,
16:15which put many Americans into a panic
16:18about alleged American inferiority against the Soviets.
16:22Ike's comment after his three-and-a-quarter-hour survey
16:25of what America is doing in the rocket and space race,
16:28it was a very worthwhile trip.
16:32What the U-2 allowed Eisenhower to do was to say privately,
16:37I know what the Soviets have, I know what they lack,
16:41I know that despite what Khrushchev is saying,
16:44they are not spending all that much on defense,
16:46therefore we do not need to spend as much as my critics are telling me we must.
16:52The U-2 was now providing Eisenhower
16:54with more than 90% of America's intelligence on the Soviet Union.
16:58And what Eisenhower most feared, the U-2 had not found,
17:02an operational force of intercontinental nuclear missiles.
17:07Some cases where we had literally pieced together
17:11bits of folklore, mapping, information,
17:15traveler's reports, say on a place like Tayuratam,
17:20we would have stuck all these little bits of information on a map
17:24and made a great melange of things.
17:27And one look at the aerial photo of that place
17:30literally wiped out most of that folklore
17:33and gave us hard, crisp information that was measurable
17:38and reaffirmable by anybody who wanted to look at the pictures.
17:43It was really like seeing the dawn after a long, dark night of ignorance.
17:49The U-2 had revealed the true nature of the Soviet missile and bomber threat.
17:53Yet, despite the importance of this intelligence,
17:56Eisenhower was more and more reluctant to fly into Soviet airspace.
18:00Eisenhower, from the very beginning, perhaps as a military man,
18:04was very sensitive to the fact that
18:06one of the worst things you can do to another country
18:09is send a plane in without permission.
18:12This was especially true, needless to say, in the Soviet Union.
18:16Eisenhower said privately that if the Soviets did this to us,
18:20he would have to retaliate.
18:22It might start a nuclear war.
18:25The Soviets had much to fear from the overflights.
18:28Besides unmasking Khrushchev's boasts,
18:30the U-2s were also providing the U.S. Air Force
18:33with traditional targeting information in the event of war.
18:38Eisenhower also knew the Soviets were coming closer and closer
18:41in their attempts to shoot down the plane.
18:43But he was assured by the CIA that should the flimsy aircraft be hit,
18:46the pilot would have no chance of surviving.
18:50I think I told you that it probably would be fatal, as most of us thought.
18:54Now, there was publicity given to the fact that the pilots all carried
18:58a needle with which they could kill themselves
19:01quite painlessly and very quickly.
19:03But we were very, very explicit in briefing pilots
19:09that that was an individual decision
19:11and they were under no obligation of duty to do that.
19:15In April 1960, U-2 photos like this one
19:18uncovered new activity at Turatom,
19:21the Soviet version of Cape Canaveral.
19:23What the photo showed was evidence
19:25that the first Soviet ICBM was being deployed.
19:28Eisenhower's concern over the missile outweighed his fear of a shoot-down.
19:33He approved one more mission over Soviet territory.
19:37The date, May 1st, the traditional Soviet holiday.
19:41The pilot was Francis Gary Powers.
19:45From northern Pakistan, Powers was to fly over three possible Soviet missile sites,
19:50landing some 4,000 miles later in Norway.
19:53But above the missile site of Sverdlovsk, the plane disappeared.
19:58Eisenhower, assuming Powers could not have survived a U-2 crash,
20:02dusted off a contingency cover story.
20:04The White House announced that the new space agency, NASA,
20:07had lost a high-altitude research plane.
20:10But Khrushchev had his own announcement to make.
20:13On display in Moscow,
20:15the wreckage of pilot Francis Powers' U-2 reconnaissance plane
20:19for Muscovites and foreign newsmen to see.
20:21As the Soviet launches its most belligerent
20:24anti-American propaganda barrage in recent years,
20:27Khrushchev himself at the Moscow press conference
20:29loosed a furious tirade,
20:31charging America with deliberate aggression
20:33and threatening to attack any allied bases
20:36from which U-2 jets flew over Russia.
20:42Political disaster followed at the Paris summit
20:44where Eisenhower had hoped to discuss ways to prevent the arms race.
20:49Khrushchev demanded a public apology.
20:51Eisenhower refused.
20:52The summit collapsed.
20:54It would be the lowest point of Eisenhower's presidency.
21:02The spy plane had helped Eisenhower resist pressure for an arms build-up,
21:07but the U-2 incident was blamed for spoiling
21:09the first hope for international arms control.
21:14Powers was convicted of espionage
21:16and served two years in prison
21:18before being exchanged for a Soviet spy.
21:20His trial received enormous attention.
21:26But amidst the uproar,
21:28America's spy machines were taking their first steps
21:31into the sanctuary of space.
21:39Discoverer 13 roars along from a California launching pad.
21:43It's lucky 13 because after 17 orbital passes around the Earth,
21:47the missile's payload, a data capsule,
21:49is dropped to Earth and recovered.
21:51330 miles from Hawaii,
21:53the first man-made object ever recovered from outer space.
21:57Ceremonies in the White House mark the historic feat.
22:01Disguised as a scientific program,
22:03Discoverer's real mission was to spy on the Soviet Union.
22:08Again in charge, Richard Bissell.
22:11A satellite coverage has enormous area coverage
22:14compared with an aircraft.
22:16I think more important than that,
22:18this was the pioneer satellite reconnaissance venture.
22:24The next mission, Discoverer 14,
22:26went fully according to plan.
22:28The capsule was snagged by a flying boxcar
22:30as it parachuted back to Earth.
22:36Soviet skies, close to the U-2,
22:38were reopened by the satellite.
22:42But the U-2 would play still one more pivotal role
22:45in the most dangerous confrontation of the nuclear age.
22:48This government, as promised,
22:51has maintained the closest surveillance
22:54of the Soviet military build-up on the island of Cuba.
22:58We were concerned with Cuba for a long, long time
23:01because lots of Soviet equipment was going in there.
23:04Obviously not going in there to defend the cane fields,
23:07it was going in there for some other purpose.
23:09What that purpose was, we didn't know.
23:12A clue came from an arcane intelligence discipline,
23:15cratology,
23:16knowing how the Soviets crate their weapons for shipment.
23:25The next piece of the puzzle came from U-2 photos like this one.
23:29This was a surface-to-air missile site
23:32laid out roughly in a Star of David configuration.
23:35This pattern had been seen before
23:37inside the Soviet Union,
23:39protecting nuclear missiles.
23:41And as we were flying the missions over Cuba,
23:44we could actually watch and monitor them
23:48construct a SAM-2 or an SA-2 site.
23:52They would scrape the ground and very slowly,
23:55you could see on subsequent missions over the same place
23:58that they would, the Star of David,
24:01which was the way they laid out the SA-2 sites,
24:05begin to take shape.
24:07More flights were ordered.
24:09On October 14, 1962,
24:12a U-2 passed over San Cristobal
24:15and brought back unmistakable evidence of the unthinkable.
24:18Photos of nuclear missiles
24:2090 miles from America's shores.
24:23After I'd gone over about a dozen of these pictures
24:26with President Kennedy,
24:28and this was on October the 16th, 1962,
24:33he asked many questions about the items in the pictures,
24:37and I defined each of them,
24:39where the nuclear warhead vans were parked behind the trees,
24:43where the missile transporters and erectors were arranged.
24:46All of this military missile jargon.
24:50Photo interpreters had worked with blurry images like these for years,
24:54but some untrained eyes inside the White House had doubts.
24:58The president's brother and close advisor,
25:00Attorney General Robert Kennedy,
25:02later admitted that he and others
25:04saw no signs of missiles in the U-2 photographs.
25:07And the president heard it all,
25:09and then he turned in his chair,
25:11and he looked me straight in the eye,
25:13and he said, are you sure of this?
25:15And I said, Mr. President,
25:17I am sure of this,
25:19as a photo interpreter can be sure of anything.
25:23To halt this offensive buildup,
25:25a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment
25:29under shipment to Cuba is being initiated.
25:32All ships of any kind bound for Cuba,
25:35from whatever nation or port,
25:37will if found to contain cargos of offensive weapons,
25:40be turned back.
25:42It shall be the policy of this nation
25:45to regard any nuclear missile
25:47launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere
25:51as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States.
25:57Once again, the White House and the executive at shelters
26:00commands the interest of the world.
26:02Attention that's riveted on the signing by President Kennedy
26:05of a proclamation ordering a naval and air quarantine of Cuba.
26:10Action that follows the shocking discovery
26:12that Soviet Russia is converting the island
26:15into a ballistic missile base.
26:17Naturally, every unit of the U.S. armed services
26:20led by the Air Force
26:22is being advanced to a perfection of combat readiness.
26:25At every air base in the United States,
26:28planes of every type are ready to retaliate
26:30against any aggression.
26:33Poised for war, the United States
26:35continued to fly reconnaissance missions over Cuba.
26:38Low-flying jets took photos like these,
26:41showing technicians frantically working
26:43to make their missile pads operational.
26:45It was agreed that any surface-to-air missile site
26:50that was fired at one of our aircraft
26:53would be immediately destroyed.
26:55And there were combat aircraft standing by
26:59loaded with rockets and CBUs to take out those sites.
27:04Nearly two weeks into the crisis,
27:06a U-2 flown by Air Force Major Rudolph Anderson
27:09was blown out of the sky by a surface-to-air missile.
27:14Unlike Powers, Anderson did not survive.
27:17But America's leaders, unsure of the pilot's fate,
27:20delayed issuing an order to retaliate.
27:23In a sense, it was fortunate that it took a number of hours
27:27to determine whether Rudolph Anderson had hypoxia
27:31or whether he was shot down.
27:34The downing of Anderson came as the crisis peaked.
27:37But the next day, a diplomatic solution was reached.
27:40The Soviet Union publicly announced
27:42that the missiles would be withdrawn.
27:44In return, Kennedy secretly agreed
27:46to dismantle missile bases in Turkey.
27:50As the world pulled back from the brink of nuclear war,
27:53the same reconnaissance system
27:55that discovered the Cuban missiles
27:57recorded their removal.
27:59From this moment on, the U-2 and other spy machines
28:02would play two roles, the familiar one,
28:05uncovering and tracking nuclear weapons for the military,
28:08and the new assignment for diplomats
28:10of confirming arms control agreements,
28:12even those as informal as between Khrushchev and Kennedy.
28:16People tend to forget that the backdrop
28:19for all this missiles in Cuba business
28:21was the fact that Kennedy knew that Khrushchev was lying,
28:25was bluffing when he said that they were turning out
28:28250 ICBMs a year
28:30that could turn the United States into a ditch.
28:32The reconnaissance satellites,
28:34which did not play a part
28:36in the actual looking at missiles in Cuba,
28:39were looking for missiles in the USSR
28:42and not finding many.
28:44And in a strategic sense,
28:46that allowed Kennedy to back Khrushchev down.
28:51The Soviets, by the same token,
28:53also had reconnaissance satellites,
28:55and what their reconnaissance satellites brought back
28:58was unmistakable proof
29:00that F-100s were flying into bases in Florida,
29:02the Navy was going into northern Caribbean,
29:04that Kennedy wasn't joking,
29:06that we were getting ready to do something seriously
29:09to get them out of there.
29:11Khrushchev backed down.
29:13Kennedy was able to win the hand
29:15because both sides were getting back
29:17unambiguous strategic reconnaissance data.
29:20And in that regard, it may have averted World War III.
29:25A quarter of a century ago,
29:27America was ready to go to war
29:29to remove the threat of almost instant nuclear attack
29:32from missiles 90 miles away from its shores.
29:36Today, nuclear weapons may be stationed further away,
29:40but the atomic threat exists in far greater numbers.
29:43In 1962, missiles were measured in the hundreds.
29:46Now they number in the thousands,
29:48and the world is always no further
29:50than half an hour away
29:52from the possibility of nuclear destruction.
29:55With nuclear arsenals on hair-trigger alert,
29:58intelligence provided by a global network of spy machines
30:01on both sides helps to keep peace.
30:04By their capability to verify arms control agreements,
30:07spy machines provide one of the few stabilizing factors
30:10in the nuclear age.
30:12Intelligence gathering started
30:14when the first balloon was flown with a camera on it
30:18in order to gather information
30:20about the positions of the enemy so you can hit them.
30:23It was in the context of combat.
30:26Verification, on the other hand,
30:28is in the context of negotiated agreements.
30:32You say, what happened?
30:34How did the use of the same technology change?
30:37It changed because you cannot resolve conflict
30:42with combat anymore.
30:44In the presence of nuclear weapons on both sides,
30:48combat is meaningless.
30:50The first formal agreement came in 1963
30:53with the signing of the Atmospheric Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
30:57The Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty of 1972
31:00limited the number of nuclear launchers
31:02each superpower could build.
31:04In 1978, Jimmy Carter,
31:06hoping to build support for the Second SALT Treaty,
31:09was the first president to officially confirm
31:11the existence of spy satellites.
31:14Photoreconnaissance satellites
31:16have become an important stabilizing factor
31:20in world affairs,
31:22in the monitoring of arms control agreements.
31:26They make an immense...
31:27In making this revelation,
31:29Carter hoped to assure the American people
31:31that SALT II was verifiable.
31:33This meant that the United States
31:35had the technical means to confirm
31:37that the Soviets were abiding by the terms of the agreement.
31:40This required being able to locate and count nuclear weapons,
31:43measure their power, size, and accuracy.
31:46One provision limited the size of rocket changes to 5%.
31:50That required spy machines
31:52capable of detecting missile variances
31:54as small as 6 inches from outer space.
31:57I am confident that we can verify with extreme confidence
32:02the existing restrictions,
32:04including the restrictions of the SALT II treaty
32:07that is theoretically no longer in effect.
32:11But we know whether the Soviet Union
32:13has gone over any of those limits or sublimits.
32:16We can tell it.
32:18But SALT II was never ratified by the U.S. Senate,
32:21although generally observed.
32:24Today, the controversy over verification
32:27and the suspicion that one side might cheat continues.
32:31Somehow it's difficult for people to say
32:34that verification is impossible.
32:37They'd much rather say it's difficult,
32:39or very difficult, or extremely difficult.
32:41But sometimes it's simply impossible,
32:43and we ought to say that.
32:45If you are inclined to believe that arms control is verifiable,
32:48you read the intelligence one way.
32:51If you are inclined to believe
32:53that the opposition is 58 feet tall
32:56and you'd better rearm or else,
32:58then you read it another way.
33:00And that's where it gets dicey, when you get into politics.
33:03But both sides do agree
33:05that spy machines can provide only hard technical data.
33:08They cannot tell you the intentions of your enemy.
33:11So human spies will always be a part
33:14of this increasingly high-tech intelligence system.
33:17But their role is changing.
33:20Former CIA Director Stansfield Turner.
33:23For instance, what you do with a human agent today
33:27is to fill the gaps
33:30in what you cannot obtain by technical devices.
33:34Why?
33:36If you were one of my agents,
33:38you wouldn't want me to risk your life
33:40for information that I could get virtually without risk
33:43from a satellite photograph, would you?
33:46These spy satellites are operated
33:48by the National Reconnaissance Office,
33:50which is hidden inside the Pentagon.
33:52The NRO is so secret that its very existence is denied.
33:56But it spends billions of dollars on technical espionage.
34:01The U.S. Air Force Space Division,
34:04a public arm of NRO,
34:06refused NOVA's request for an interview.
34:09But much information about spy machines
34:12is publicly available.
34:14One example is the Keyhole 9 satellite.
34:17First launched in the early 1970s,
34:20this one satellite could photograph
34:23the entire land mass of Eastern Europe and Asia
34:26every 3 1⁄2 hours.
34:29The KH-9 is believed to have carried
34:32infrared and television cameras.
34:34But its best imagery came from film,
34:36which had to be retrieved and processed.
34:39And this delayed timely information.
34:42This problem was solved by real-time digital imaging.
34:45A non-classified version of this technology
34:48is the Landsat satellite.
34:50The smallest object Landsat can see
34:52is about the size of a house.
34:54But even this resolution
34:56retails about important events.
34:58These pictures are of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor.
35:02What we have is the before and after the Chernobyl accident.
35:06During the accident we had a reactor site that was hot,
35:10a building that was hot.
35:13We had no activity going on in the cooling pond at all, whatsoever.
35:17Where before we had activity going on as usual, normal,
35:23we don't anymore.
35:26What we have here, what we'll do is the flicker,
35:29flicker back and forth.
35:32So you can see, notice the changes going on
35:36from the cool to the hot.
35:41This is what allows satellites to make real-time pictures,
35:44an invention called a charge-coupled device.
35:47The images this device sees in orbit
35:50are converted into digits, numbers,
35:52and transmitted back to Earth.
35:54There the picture is being reproduced
35:56on a television screen, essentially.
35:58So as the camera is overflying Moscow or Sverdlovsk or Petropavlovsk,
36:03you can see what it is seeing in real time.
36:06Not only that, but if you see something interesting,
36:09you can order the lens to zoom so you can look even closer.
36:14There's another way to zoom in on targets, using computers.
36:18This company, 3M Comtal, specializes in photo enhancement.
36:23Its technology is used by some of America's
36:25classified intelligence operations.
36:29This picture shows an airfield.
36:31Among the planes on the tarmac is a U-2.
36:35This is a digital image, as are many satellite photographs.
36:41By using a computer to manipulate the digits,
36:44this system can spy on the spy plane.
36:47The photo interpreter can zoom in on the plane,
36:50isolate it, and even sharpen the focus of the image.
36:53What I'm going to do is come in on the U-2 plane,
36:57which is up here in the top at the point.
36:59I can zoom in on this particular plane
37:01until I get to the desired area that I'm interested in
37:04and the desired zoom factor.
37:06So this gives me total interactive control,
37:09and I can zoom and move around anywhere in the image data,
37:13with still maintaining my reference point
37:15up here on the other screen.
37:21This is another example of transforming numbers into images.
37:25Called L.A. the Movie,
37:27it was created by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
37:30in Pasadena, California,
37:32from a single two-dimensional Landsat photograph.
37:51L.A. the Movie
38:09The creator of L.A. the Movie, Kevin Hussey.
38:13A satellite that looks straight down
38:16can actually give you pictures
38:19that look like you're standing 100 feet off the ground.
38:23Something that was 570 miles up,
38:25we can now process and get an idea
38:28of what it would look like to look at the scene
38:30from 100 feet or 1,000 feet from any angle of view.
38:34Given a two-dimensional data set,
38:37a satellite picture, let's say a Landsat picture,
38:40if we have elevation information for that,
38:43it can be derived from the Landsat picture itself.
38:46A geometric model can be constructed in the computer
38:50so that the final image or the output image,
38:55the final product, will be a three-dimensional representation
38:59of what started as a two-dimensional scene.
39:03This type of image manipulation
39:06has many possible intelligence and defense uses.
39:09B-1 bomber pilots could rehearse in simulators
39:12low-level bombing missions,
39:14becoming familiar with enemy terrain without ever going near it.
39:18For photo interpreters, seeing objects in three dimensions
39:21helps in identifying weapons, whether tanks or missiles,
39:24and determining their size and capabilities.
39:28These images, remember, are from a satellite
39:31that can distinguish objects no smaller than a house.
39:34Imagine if the images were from a spy satellite
39:37with a resolution of a few inches.
39:41America's current spy in space, the KH-11,
39:44reportedly has just that capability, all in real time.
39:50The KH-11 was known as a real-time satellite.
39:54So a picture could be on the president or the secretary of defense's desk
39:58within a matter of hours rather than in days or weeks,
40:01as with the other satellites.
40:03And that was a rather major improvement in U.S. capabilities,
40:07particularly if you think of monitoring a fast-breaking crisis
40:10like the Middle East War or the Iran-Iraq War.
40:16No U.S. satellite pictures have ever been officially released,
40:20but this one was purportedly taken by a KH-11
40:23from a distance of 500 miles in space.
40:26The photograph shows the Soviets' first full-size
40:29nuclear-powered aircraft carrier under construction on the Black Sea.
40:33Objects as small as one foot are distinguishable in the photo,
40:37although it is impossible to reproduce this detail on television.
40:43These photographs were originally published by a British defense magazine.
40:47A U.S. Navy analyst was convicted under the Espionage Act for providing them.
40:54But the French-owned Spot Image Corporation
40:57sells satellite imagery for profit.
41:01Here, anyone can buy pictures of any country in the world.
41:08Spot's resolution is about 30 feet.
41:16In this case, the pictures are of a controversial radar defense installation
41:20near Krasnoyarsk in central Siberia.
41:22Some critics argue that it is part of a Soviet defense system
41:25that violates the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
41:33Whether for verifying arms control treaties
41:35or for strictly military intelligence, imaging satellites are not enough.
41:42For spies, hearing is as important as seeing.
41:46The National Security Agency has developed methods
41:48to constantly eavesdrop on communications around the world.
41:53Sometimes that's a very small antenna, and you try to sneak it in.
41:58Sometimes it's a very large antenna that you openly place in your own territory.
42:04Sometimes the signal you're intercepting is very small, narrow, limited range,
42:10and getting your antenna there is going to be very difficult.
42:13I mean, under Mr. Gorbachev's bed is hard to get to, for instance.
42:17You don't necessarily have to place a bug on a telephone in the Kremlin
42:22to pick up a particular conversation.
42:24If that person in the Kremlin is speaking to the Far East,
42:27Soviet Far East, to Vladivostok, say, is going by a microwave,
42:32and those microwaves travel in a straight line,
42:35and that straight line of a microwave eventually terminates in space.
42:41Those microwaves are gathered by the United States
42:44with large, umbrella-shaped satellites called Ryolite, Magnum, and Chalet.
42:50These satellites sweep up thousands of electronic signals,
42:53everything from ordinary telephone calls
42:55to perhaps the most important intelligence of all, telemetry,
42:59electronic data transmitted from a missile
43:02about its technical performance during a test flight.
43:05So when you're testing a new missile,
43:07that's the type of information you'd like to get.
43:09The designers of the missile would like to get that information,
43:12but the other fellow's intelligence community
43:14would also like to get that information.
43:16It can tell you how advanced the missile's design is.
43:19It might tell you something about its vulnerabilities.
43:22And you can also use that information
43:25to monitor compliance with an arms control agreement.
43:28When an actual missile is going to be tested,
43:31the first thing you do is not see it, you hear it,
43:34because telephone calls have got to be made,
43:36communications have got to take place in preparation for this.
43:40Somebody's got to say, Ivan, press the button,
43:43or get ready to press the button.
43:45And then you alert your system.
43:47And the system is redundant.
43:49It's in space, it's around the USSR, it's on land, it is at sea.
43:55While the missile is still on the pad,
43:57the KH-11 sends back live pictures.
44:01During launch, the missile sends telemetry back to its ground controllers.
44:05This data is also picked up by Ryolite-class satellites
44:09and ground monitoring stations.
44:11These listening posts ring the Soviet Union.
44:14There are reports that the U.S. even has listening bases inside China.
44:19As the rocket reaches the Pacific and heads for splashdown,
44:22the missile and its payload are tracked by radar,
44:25ships and spy planes called RC-135s.
44:30The RC-135s are similar in appearance to passenger jets.
44:34On September 1, 1983,
44:37a Korean Airlines civilian jet was, according to one theory,
44:40mistaken for an RC-135.
44:43Off course over Soviet territory,
44:45it was shot down by a Russian interceptor,
44:48killing all 269 passengers and crew.
44:55Out of countless recorded Soviet transmissions,
44:58America's spy system was able to isolate the voice
45:01of the MiG pilot who shot down the KAL airliner.
45:07ZG, missile warheads locked on.
45:10I've executed the launch.
45:14The target is destroyed.
45:21The KAL incident provided the world with a vivid demonstration
45:24of America's eavesdropping capability.
45:27But if America's network of spy machines is to reduce international tensions,
45:31it must have a counterpart.
45:33But just how good is the Soviet reconnaissance system?
45:37We fly Cadillacs, they fly Chevys.
45:40They're very reactive.
45:42And we have got very highly sophisticated,
45:45large reconnaissance satellites with lots of miniaturized stuff in them
45:49that do lots of exotic things.
45:51They're not quite as exotic,
45:53but they send up a lot of them.
45:56In September of 1985,
45:58they had 10 reconnaissance satellites in orbit at the same time.
46:01Their weakness is they're not as good in computers as we are,
46:06and that hurts them a bit.
46:08The Soviets use their Soyuz spacecraft
46:10for science and space exploration and reconnaissance.
46:13It's widely believed that cosmonauts conduct spy missions.
46:17The Soviets also use an unmanned version of the Soyuz
46:20for reconnaissance missions.
46:22The orbital module, instead of returning cosmonauts,
46:25brings back surveillance photos.
46:27But for gathering missile data,
46:29the Soviet Union relies less on spying from space
46:32than does the United States.
46:35In collecting telemetry for missile tests,
46:38they can use surface ships that are driving around
46:41out in the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean
46:43since our missiles are tested over the ocean.
46:45We can't do that since Soviets usually test their missiles
46:49over the Soviet interior,
46:51where even aircraft can't get at them.
46:53So they can simply load up a ship with electronics
46:56to collect information on our missile tests.
46:58We have to develop a very sophisticated satellite
47:01to collect similar information.
47:08As sophisticated and extensive as America's intelligence system is,
47:12it faces many problems.
47:14With tens of thousands of images and messages recorded daily,
47:17are human analysts drowning in information?
47:20Well, the problem has always been the United States,
47:23particularly the NSA, doesn't have any problem
47:25collecting information.
47:27They have incinerators that are designed
47:29to burn 40 tons of paper a day, for example.
47:32So collecting data, collecting information,
47:35has never been a problem.
47:36The problem has been analyzing that information once you collect it.
47:39It's hard to say.
47:40No researcher, which is an intelligence analyst,
47:43ever would want to tell you that he's got too much information
47:47because they always want that one more clue
47:49that they may find is the most valuable one.
47:53And that's where the computer comes in,
47:55and we just couldn't handle this without computers.
48:00A civilian application of computer techniques
48:03to combat the flood of images is seen at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
48:07Here, technicians compare pictures of the same site
48:10taken at different times.
48:12But in reality, it is the computer that first detects the changes.
48:19Comparing masses of digitized images
48:22is just one of the spy tasks assigned to supercomputers.
48:25This machine can perform over 150 million calculations per second.
48:30The National Security Agency reportedly has row after row of them.
48:35Besides information overload,
48:37another problem is that spy machines themselves
48:40are vulnerable to espionage.
48:42The Soviet Union may know more about U.S. satellites
48:45than American citizens do.
48:48Christopher Boyce gave away secrets of the Ryolite satellite.
48:51William Campile sold the Soviets the technical manual for the KH-11
48:55for $3,000.
48:57And Ronald Pelton compromised a host of NSA secrets,
49:01including the existence of a critical underwater listening device
49:04used in tracking Soviet subs.
49:09But the most immediate problem facing America's spy system
49:13is a basic one, getting off the ground.
49:16In 1980, a secret U.S. defense study forewarned
49:20that a failure of the space shuttle
49:22could be disastrous for the entire technical intelligence collection effort.
49:28The Challenger tragedy grounded the next generation of imaging satellites,
49:32which are presently too large for unmanned rockets.
49:37Two other attempts to put into orbit
49:39what were believed to have been the last remaining
49:41KH-9 and 11 satellites failed.
49:46The Challenger
49:54As of right now, we have got one KH-11 in orbit,
49:57and that is getting close to the end of its useful life.
50:00They're being very careful how they use that satellite now.
50:03You don't just keep running it all the time.
50:05You've got to husband your satellite very carefully.
50:08They keep it up as high as they can to prevent atmospheric decay,
50:11and they don't work the system any more than they have to.
50:14So to that extent, it is in trouble.
50:16To the extent that the 12, the KH-12,
50:19is produced and ready to go, we will bounce back.
50:24For the future, America will monitor weapons and arms control compliance
50:28with the yet-to-be-launched KH-12.
50:37Its existence is still officially denied.
50:39The KH-12 is believed to be similar in design and size
50:43to the space telescope illustrated here.
50:45But instead of pointing to the stars,
50:47the KH-12 will look back at the Earth.
50:56It is believed to possess a tremendous ability to spy
50:59down to a resolution of inches,
51:01as well as being able to see in the dark.
51:04Meaning it will be able to get decent,
51:06although not as good as usual daytime photography,
51:11at nighttime.
51:13Which means that if the Soviets are testing a missile at night,
51:16or being involved in troop movements or anything else at night,
51:19then there will be a possibility of getting those photographs.
51:25For three decades, spy satellites have trained their lenses and antennas
51:28mainly on stationary missile pads.
51:32But now the missiles have started to move.
51:36The Soviet SS-20 intermediate-range missile carries three warheads,
51:41and its launcher can be reloaded quickly.
51:44The SS-20's mobility poses a challenge to treaty verification
51:48that will be intensified as the Soviets deploy
51:51their rail-mounted SS-X-24 long-range missile.
51:55Even more elusive is the American cruise missile.
52:05The cruise can be launched from land, air, or sea,
52:09carrying nuclear or conventional payloads.
52:18Though not a first-strike weapon,
52:20the cruise is considered the most difficult challenge
52:22for treaty verification.
52:24Cruise missiles are very difficult to verify.
52:27Verify complete ban or even testing.
52:30Cruise missiles presumably will have nuclear warheads on them.
52:33But then you can't tell whether this is a conventional one or a nuclear one.
52:38And the only way to avoid that confusion and uncertainty
52:40is to ban production of all of them,
52:42which I think the military will oppose with some reason.
52:46So I don't see a solution for the case of cruise missiles.
52:52The cruise missile relies on a computerized mapping system.
52:56Information provided by satellite photography,
52:59much like that in L.A. the movie,
53:01assists in course corrections during flight.
53:03The result is pinpoint accuracy.
53:06In this test, a cruise missile carried a conventional warhead
53:09240 miles to its target.
53:17The guidance system of the cruise missile that we have now,
53:20the TURCOM system, depends on a very, very accurate mapping.
53:25And that, indeed, is another function of photoreconnaissance.
53:29So photoreconnaissance is like Jekyll and Hyde.
53:32It has peaceful applications but also has very threatening applications.
53:37What you see here is exactly what we've been saying for a long time,
53:42namely that technology can be used any way we want to use it.
53:49The same technology, the same capabilities can be used to help combat
53:54and to help negotiated agreements with our opponents.
54:01Throughout history, information gained from the high ground
54:04has been critical for warriors.
54:06It is now critical for peacemakers as well.
54:09As atomic arsenals continue to expand,
54:12any hope for arms reduction and the security it brings to our planet
54:16may rest in large measure with our spy machines.
54:19Yet it is no small irony that the machines that spy on nuclear weapons
54:23also are used as guidance systems
54:25to deliver those same weapons with deadly accuracy.
54:28The more capable reconnaissance systems become,
54:31the more accurate nuclear weapons can be.
54:34For today and the future,
54:36the missions of spy machines and weapons are intertwined,
54:39locked in a cycle of endless competition.
54:42That's true.
54:44When the target becomes more difficult,
54:47like a small cruise missile is more difficult to detect
54:50than a great big inter-knot continental ballistic missile, an ICBM,
54:54you then have to start finding new techniques,
54:58new technical devices to find them.
55:01Maybe you can, maybe you can't.
55:04But that's the game of intelligence.
55:07There's moves to uncover and counter-moves to cover.
55:11And it goes on endlessly.
55:20Transcribed by ESO, translated by —
55:50Transcription by ESO, translated by —
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57:20Transcription by ESO, translation by —