Spy Satellite Pictures Are Unveiled

Nov. 13 -- Nearly 40 years ago, even their existence was top secret. But in two days thousands of spy satellite images will be posted on the Web for all the world to see — and download.

In a move that has surprised but pleased researchers, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) has released a trove of about 50,000 images snapped during the 1960s, '70s and '80s by two U.S. spy satellites.

Historians hope to use the pictures to settle long-standing questions about capabilities and alliances during the Cold War while scientists want to use them to track biological changes on Earth and possibly plot the course of global warming.

"I was very surprised they decided to release them," said Jeffrey Richelson, a researcher with the nonprofit organization National Security Archives and author of the book America's Secret Eyes in Space. "Their release was a bigger secret than the war plan."

Caught in a Bucket

Former President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore first launched the initiative to release declassified images to the scientific community in 1991 and the first batch of satellite images were unveiled in 1995. That first collection included 860,000 images from the once-secret CORONA satellite and offered overhead swatches of the Earth's surface between 1960 and 1972.

Some feared the recent terrorist attacks and ongoing war against terrorism might discourage the current administration from continuing the program. But as Tim Brown, a military analyst for the nonprofit Global Security, Inc., said, "It seems they were just on autopilot and were going to release them anyway."

Run under the code name "GAMBIT," the KH-7 surveillance satellite orbited Earth between 1963 and 1967 and captured images detailed enough to pick out objects only 2 feet to 4 feet wide on the ground. The second satellite, KH-9, which orbited between 1973 and 1980, was mainly for mapping, so its view was more sweeping with an average resolution of 20 feet to 30 feet.

Unlike today's satellites that relay their images by digital transmission, the two Cold War-era satellites returned their film in buckets. As the buckets sailed down to Earth by parachute, specially designed aircraft caught them and delivered them to Secret Service agents.