The Birth of Intelligence Policy and Space Use

Before rocketry had captured the imagination of either civilian scientists or military leaders as a near-term reality for space exploration or warfare, before nuclear weapons had graduated from one-time exemplar of terror to a regular tool of superpower leverage, signals intelligence already had demonstrated its utility to a small, tightly-knit cabal within the victorious allied powers. The number of people that understood the way that interception of radio traffic and cracking complex military codes interleaved in the new complex science of cryptography and signals intelligence, were numbered in the low hundreds at the end of World War II. Yet cryptography's importance was obvious to those in the know. The cracking of the Soviet Venona one-time-pad codes1 at the end of World War II allowed the United States to verify the existence and identity of Soviet spies operating within the US, and proved the utility of the Signal Security Agency and its successor, the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA). It took the temporary defeat of US forces on the Korean peninsula in 1950 to finally turn the small US signals intelligence community into a globe-circling network, but the elements of a listening web surrounding the Soviet Union were in place by mid-1945.

During both world wars, signals intelligence was merely an enabling activity for codebreaking, and the standard of excellence was set by the British cryptographers at Bletchley Park, who cracked the German Enigma machine. The main task for interception teams was to determine the relevant radio frequencies used by adversary military agencies, and to attempt to tap into land lines when possible, particularly at aggregation points, such as submarine cable landing points and telephone switching centers, where scores of individual circuit-switched calls were multiplexed.

Those engineers involved in basic research in antenna and sensor design were aware that signals intelligence could include the interception of any emanation across the electromagnetic spectrum. Traditionally, however, researchers in British air-defense fields working on radar technology were segregated from radio interception specialists. As the technology for manufacturing key electronic items such as klystron power tubes moved to the US, however, American defense contractors realized the common technology base spanning radar and electronic intelligence platforms. As allied intelligence groups scoured for hints of Soviet intentions at the end of World War II, the unified nature of electronic intelligence was recognized by many theorists and practical engineers.

Imaging intelligence, including both visible light and infrared imaging, almost always is managed separately from all other electromagnetic interception, since it evolved from overhead aerial reconnaissance, and only belatedly was dependent on advances in photo processing, electronic image capture, and 'hyper-spectral' analysis covering several frequency bands. Through the Cold War, imaging was handled by the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center, and later by the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), only coming together with signals information at the level of the space-based intelligence agency, the National Reconnaissance Office.

Signals intelligence, or SIGINT, includes both communications and electronic intelligence. Communications intelligence, or COMINT, traditionally refers to intercepted messages generated by any communications or computer platform generating a linear message intended to be interpreted by humans. Electronic intelligence, or ELINT, involves the study of emanations of radar, electronic systems in planes and ships, and the like. Later in the Cold War, telemetry intelligence (TELINT) and measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) were added to the roster, respectively referring to the interception of data automatically generated by missiles in flight, and data collected from nuclear bomb tests, chemical emissions, and similar non-electromagnetic sources. The latter intelligence was often gathered by specialty military organizations like the Air Force Technical Applications Center, and is currently the responsibility within the Pentagon of the Central MASINT Office, or CMO.

While comprehension of the unity of technical intelligence was still piecemeal in 1945, the drive for establishing global listening webs was apparent virtually from the day of German defeat. The tedious Marxist claims that the Cold War was born in a Western race for empire sounded hollow to those on the front lines of Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, observing the Soviet putsches that established vassal states in mixed-economy nations like Poland and Czechoslovakia. Yet the assumptions of how the world was to be parceled up by Western powers always bore a whiff of empire building, particularly in the establishment of 'white boys' clubs' meant to delineate global spoils for industrial nations.

The United States and Britain were the only two allied nations with significant signals intelligence and cryptography expertise at the end of the war – the US provided funding and technology for building global networks, while British crypto and radar expertise developed at wartime labs was widely appreciated in US scientific circles. When the United States and Britain established the BRUSA Pact for cryptography and radio-interception sharing in 1943, predecessor to the wider UKUSA Treaty of 1947, there never was a thought given to including the Soviet Union on signals intelligence discussions. The so-called even balance of the Cold War was predicated upon a version of containment: the Soviet Union was allowed free rein to implement policies in its own periphery and that of Eastern Europe (later extended to China), but open seas and air lanes belonged primarily to Western allies.

As 'mass retaliation' weapons evolved from B-29-based A-bombs to B-52 H-bombs, and finally to land- and sea-based missiles, the underlying assumption of Cold War boundaries rested upon a boxed-in Soviet alliance and a free-ranging democratic empire. The United States certainly pressured its more traditional European allies to abandon explicit colonialist relationships in developing nations, in favor of CIA-backed free-market influence, but few in the West ever pondered the issue of geographical balance on either side of the Iron Curtain.

This was the hidden dichotomy behind the BRUSA and UKUSA pacts. In later years, conservatives would express outright shock whenever the Soviets tried to establish listening posts in locations such as Cuba or Vietnam. Yet it was deemed perfectly acceptable to surround the Russian empire with...