CDR: Going secret again

[Anonymous]

U.S. Spy Office Dying, Group Says 
         Reuters 

         1:30 p.m. Nov. 14, 2000 PST 

                                                                                  
                                                                                                  

         WASHINGTON -- A U.S. commission on Tuesday recommended creating an office cloaked in secrecy
         to pursue innovative technology for spying from space, saying the existing agency was not
         sufficiently clandestine for the task. 

         The National Commission for the Review of the National Reconnaissance Office said the NRO, the
         agency that designs, builds and operates U.S. spy satellites, had lost some of its luster since the end
         of the Cold War due to inadequate funding and declining attention from the president, secretary of
         defense and CIA director. 

The commission, established by Congress in legislation that went into effect in
                    December 1999, warned that if current trends continued the NRO might lose its edge
                    in providing the nation its "eyes and ears" for monitoring the proliferation of weapons
                    of mass destruction and tracking international "terrorists." 

                    "Without bold and sustained leadership, the United States could find itself deaf and
                    blind and increasingly vulnerable to any of the potentially devastating threats it may
                    face in the next ten to twenty years," the report said. 

                    Rep. Porter Goss, a Florida Republican, and Sen. Bob Kerrey, a Nebraska Democrat,
                    served as co-chairmen of the 11-member bipartisan commission. 

                    The panel did not recommend abolishing the NRO, but said the agency had "become a
                    publicly acknowledged organization that openly announces many of its new program
                    initiatives," which in turn hindered its ability to tackle intelligence problems. 

                    The commission recommended creating a new Office of Space Reconnaissance to
                    work on super-secret projects to gain technological advantage in space-related
                    spying. 

                    "Evolution is continuously moving forward in technology, and I think that those
                    things should be done very discreetly and with boldness and risk-taking. And we
                    need (is) to create a mechanism that can allow those things to happen," Goss,
                    chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, told Reuters. 

                    "There are so many new things on the horizon that have such promise and they need
                    to be pursued, but they need to be pursued in a way that we dont give the
                    advantage to others of knowing about them, or sharing some of the things weve
                    learned," Goss added. 

                    The National Reconnaissance Office, which marked its 40th anniversary this year, has
                    evolved away from its original mission "to go out and do things that had never been
                    dreamed of before, and we need that," Goss said. 

                    It also used to be given the highest level attention from the president and top U.S.
                    officials, the congressman added. 

                    "Its been taken for granted and its lost some of its punch," Goss said of the NRO. 

                    "We need to get on to the next generation," he added. 

                    Budget constraints have delayed modernization while the proliferation of commercial
                    imaging technologies has provided U.S adversaries with "unprecedented insight within
                    our national borders, as well as into our overseas activities," the commissions report
                    said. 

                    "Equally problematic, widespread knowledge of the NROs existence and public
                    speculation on how NRO satellites are used has aided terrorists and other potential
                    adversaries in developing techniques of denial and deception to thwart U.S.
                    intelligence efforts," the report added. 

                    In addition, other technologies such as fiber-optic communications "render certain
                    NRO capabilities obsolete," the report said. 

                    The report warned that the agencys resources were being stretched "and the result
                    is a prescription for a potentially significant intelligence failure." 

                    The NRO is overseen by the Defense Department and the CIA director. 

                    An NRO spokesman said the commissions recommendations were "valuable" and the
                    agency would look at them. The CIA declined comment.