The nation's first photo reconnaissance satellite system, operating
from August 1960 until May 1972. The program was declassified in
February 1995. Since the CORONA satellite made its first successful
flight in August 1960, the Intelligence Community's overhead
reconnaissance programs have been among the nation's most closely
guarded secrets. The end of the Cold War, however, has at last made
it possible to declassify both information and imagery from the
first American satellite systems of the 1960s. To do this,
President William Clinton in February of this year ordered the
declassification within 18 months of historical intelligence
imagery from the early satellite systems known as the CORONA,
ARGON, and LANYARD. Because the President's Executive Order 1295 1
envisions scientific and environmental uses for this satellite
imagery, the declassified photographs will be transferred to the
National Archives with a copy sent to the US Geological Survey.
Vice President Albert Gore, who first urged the Intelligence
Community to open up its early imagery for environmental studies,
unveiled the first CORONA sateIlite photographs for the American
press and public at CIA Headquarters on 24 February 1995. To mark
this new initiative, CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence and
the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University are
cosponsoring a conference, "Piercing the Curtain: CORONA and the
Revolution in Intelligence," in Washington on 23-24 May 1995. On
the occasion of this conference, the CIA History Staff is
publishing this collection of newly declassified documents and
imagery from the CORONA program. This is the fourth volume in the
CIA Cold War Records Series, which began in1992 when Director of
Central Intelligence Robert Gates launched CIA's Openness Policy
and reorganized the Center for the Study of Intelligence to include
both the History Staff and a new Historical Review Group to
declassify historically important CIA records. The editor of this
new volume, Dr. Kevin C. Ruffner, has an A.B. from the College of
William and Mary and an M.A. in history from the University of
Virginia. He joined the CIA History Staff in 199 1, soon after he
received his Ph.D. in American Studies from George Washington
University. The documents and imagery in this volume were reviewed
and declassified with unusual dispatch by a special working group
of declassification officers from the National Reconnaissance
Office, the Central Imagery Office, CIA's Directorate of Science
and Technology, and its National Photographic Interpretation
Center. The group's prompt work is especially notable since many
documents required consultation with the US Air Force, National
Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, Department of Energy,
Department of State, and CIA's Collection Requirements and
Evaluation Staff. This volume's appearance just three months after
President Clinton's declassification order is yet another tribute
to the skill and speed that the History Staff of the Center for the
Study of Intelligence has come to expect from the Design Center and
Publications Center in the Directorate of Intelligence, and fromthe
Directorate of Administration's Printing and Photography Group.
General
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