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From: "Steve Wingate" <swingate@crl.com>
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 06:19:41 -0800
Fwd Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1996 10:08:00 -0500
Subject: IUFO: (Fwd) NRO Satellite Launch

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------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
From:          rlawler@dfw.net (Rick Lawler)
Subject:       SNETNEWS: NRO Satellite Launch
To:            snetnews@world.std.com
Date:          Wed, 18 Dec 1996 23:34:57 -0600 (CST)
Reply-to:      snetnews@world.std.com


U.S. lifts veil on spy satellite launch, 12/18/96

      WASHINGTON (Reuter) - A supersecretive Pentagon arm
Wednesday lifted the veil for the first time on the scheduled
launch of a U.S. spy satellite in what it called a major step
toward greater openness. But the payload and its mission remain
classified.

      The National Reconnaissance Office, whose own very existence
was a secret until 1992, said it would no longer seek to shield
the fact of a launch because doing so was costly and unnecessary
for U.S. national security.

    The maiden announced launch of a U.S. spy satellite was to
take place Friday from Vandenberg Air Force Base, 55 miles north
of Santa Barbara, California, the NRO said. It said the launch
vehicle was a Titan IV, the largest unmanned booster in the U.S.
space launch inventory.

      The launch period opens at 11:30 A.M. EST and extends until
1:00 P.M. EST.

     ``This event is the first time the U.S. government has
acknowledged, in advance, the launch of a reconnaissance
satellite,'' the NRO said in a statement.

      ``We've been doing this for 35 years,'' added Katherine
Schneider, an NRO spokeswoman. She said it was tough to keep
secret a satellite ``that's sitting on top of a very large
launch vehicle.''

      ``What we want to protect is the technology,'' she said,
acknowledging that the fact that the NRO and the Air Force were
launching spy satellites from Vandenberg and Cape Canaveral Air
Station, Florida, was well known to anyone interested.

      Continuing to try to keep it a secret ``was costing us money
and it was costing us a lot of frustration in a new and more
open environment,'' Schneider said. But she said the NRO would
not disclose for now the mission of the satellite being launched
Friday nor declassify details of the ``well over 300'' such
launches since 1959, when so-called Corona satellites gave the
United States its fist eyes in space. Other than Corona
satellites, the last of which was launched from Vandenberg on
May 25, 1972, all NRO launches remain classified.

      John Pike, who heads the Space Policy Project at the
Federation of American Scientists, a policy research group based
in Washington, said the new policy inaugurated Wednesday would
save taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars per launch in
wasted security costs.

      Pike said the money was wasted because experts like he could
always figure out what was being launched, partly by looking at
launch windows. He estimated that the NRO had spent many tens of
billions on security in its 35-year existence.

      He said Friday's payload was no doubt an Advanced Keyhole
optical imaging intelligence satellite of a type that lets U.S.
photo-interpreters monitor, within minutes, such things as
compliance with arms control agreements, Iraqi troop movements
and the status of North Korean nuclear weapons facilities.

      Disclosing the fact of the launch was long overdue, added
Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American
Scientists' Project on government secrecy.

      ``It was in any case a non-secret since launches like this
cannot be concealed from anybody who is interested in following
them. So its a step toward sanity,'' Aftergood said.


end

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