CIA-RDP90-00965R000707000002-9.pdf

S AT ARTICLE EARED OM PAGE PENTHOUSE March 1985 HIGH-TECH ESPIONAGE On the evening of June 24, 1947, Kenneth Arnold was flying his private plane near the Cascade Mountains in Washington State when he saw a sight he was never to forget As he recounted later. he spotted nine very bright objects flying in what _ap- peared to be a chain formation. Each about the size of a DC-3 transport plane, the objects passed within several miles ot Arnold's plane at a very high speed. Arnoid had never seen anything like it. and later. in trying to describe how the objects flew. he used the simile “like Sau- ce…

Next, Raca developed an ingenious au- tomatic system for the balioon that cropped ballast to keep the balioon ata constant altitude Guring the flight. then ioosed an incenciary or other type of bomb as the dalioon settled to earth somewhere in the United States The Raca-designed balloons were launched eastward in tne fai of 1944 Operation Fu-Gb, as tne Japanese called it was on As the world’s first intercontinental mil- itary attack Fu-Go was not a giitlering success—-althougn it did Cause some panic in American intelligence. which clamped down a tignt lid of secrecy In order to orevent tne Ja…

eclassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/02 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000707000002-9 3 a Land had vowed the photographic problem could be solved, but what about the platform? That seemed to be a more knotty problem, but the panel noted that a number of high-performance test air- craft might possibly be converted into such platforms—assuming that consid- erable technological problems were solved. At that point, the panel had the good fortune to encounter Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, of Lockheed—a man who was already a legend in the airplane-design business. He had made his mark wi…

along with multispectral scanning de- vices that register wavelengths, picking up images that even the most sensitive photographic films can’t detect. The key to the success of the American spy satellites has been US. technology's ability to dramatically improve ground resolution—the size of the smaliest pos- sible object distinguishable in a satellite camera's picture. A good deal of that Ca- pability has been revealed by the U.S. space program, which routinely pub- lishes amazingly detailed pictures taken by its nonmilitary spacecraft and satel- lites. But even those pictures represent child…

Declassified i - iti ecl sified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/02 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000707000002-9 satellites? Because unlike photo recon- naissance, collecting electronic trans- missions involves much more (and much heavier) equipment. The EC-121 Ameri- can ELINT plane shot down by North Ko- rea in 1969, for example. had a crew of 31 and six tons of eavesdropping equip- ment aboard; it will be quite some time before that amount of equipment can be miniaturized for use aboard satellites. American intelligence has now Sur rounded its perceived enemies, notably the Soviet …