Line of Control

TWENTY

For most of its history, the shadowy National Reconnaissance Office was the least known of all the government agencies. The spur for the formation of the NRO was the downing of Gary Powers's U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union in May of that year. President Eisenhower ordered Defense Secretary Thomas Gates to head a panel to look into the application of satellites to undertake photographic reconnaissance. That would minimize the likelihood that the United States would suffer another humiliation like the Powers affair.

From the start there was furious debate between the White House, the air force, the Department of Defense, and the CIA over who should be responsible for administering the agency. By the time the NRO was established on August 25, 1960, it was agreed that the air force would provide the launch capabilities for spy satellites, the Department of Defense would develop technology for spying from space, and the CIA would handle the interpretation of intelligence. Unfortunately, there were conflicts almost from the start. At stake were not just budgeting and manpower issues but the intelligence needs of the different military and civilian agencies. During the next five years relationships between the Pentagon and the CIA became so strained that they were actually sabotaging one another's access to data from the nascent network of satellites. In 1965, the secretary of defense stepped in with a proposal that time and resources would be directed by a three-person executive committee. The EXCOM was composed of the director of the CIA, the assistant secretary of defense, and the president's science advisor. The EXCOM reported to the secretary of defense, though he could not overrule decisions made by the EXCOM. The new arrangement relieved some of the fighting for satellite time though it did nothing to ease the fierce rivalry between the various groups for what was being called "intelligence product." Eventually, the NRO had to be given more and more autonomy to determine the distribution of resources.

For most of its history NRO operations were spread across the United States. Management coordination was handled in the Air Force Office of Space Systems in the Pentagon. Technology issues were conducted from the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center at Los Angeles Air Force Base in California. Intelligence studies were conducted from the CIA Office of Development and Engineering in Reston, Virginia. Orbital control of NRO spacecraft was initially handled by technicians at the Onizuka Air Force Base in Sunnyvale, California, and then moved to the Falcon Air Force Station in Colorado. Signals intelligence other than photographic reconnaissance was handled by the National Guard at the Defense Support Program Aerospace Data Facility at Buckley Air National Guard Base in Aurora, Colorado. The U.S. Navy's NRO activities were centered primarily on technology upgrades and enhancement of existing hardware and software. These duties were shared by two competing naval groups: the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command in Crystal City, Virginia, and SPAWAR's Space Technology Directorate Division, SPAWAR-40, located at the Naval Research Laboratory across the Potomac River in the highly secure Building A59.

Though the NRO proved invaluable in bringing data back to earth, the management of the NRO itself became a nightmare of convolution and in-fighting. Though the government did not officially acknowledge the existence of the organization, its denials were a joke among the Washington press corps. No one would explain why so many people were obviously struggling with such rancor to control something that did not exist.

That changed in 1990 with the construction of a permanent NRO facility in Fairfax, Virginia. Yet even while the NRO's existence was finally acknowledged, few people had first-hand knowledge about its day-to-day operations and the full breadth of its activities.

Photographic reconnaissance operations director Stephen Viens was one of those men.

The consolidation of NRO activities under one roof did not end the competition for satellite time. But Viens was loyal to his college friend Matt Stoll. And he would do anything for Paul Hood, who stood by him during some difficult CIOC hearings about the NRO's black ops work. As a result, no group, military or civilian, got priority over Op-Center.

Bob Herbert had telephoned at four P.M. What he needed from Viens was visual surveillance of a specific site in the Himalayas. Viens had to wait two hours before he could free up the navy's Asian OmniCom satellite, which was in a geosynchronous orbit over the Indian Ocean. Even though the navy was using it, Viens told them he had an LAD — life-and-death — situation and needed it at once. Typically, the OmniCom listened to sonar signals from Russian and Chinese submarines and backed them up with visual reconnaissance when the vessels surfaced. That allowed the navy to study displacement and hull features and even to get a look down the hatch when it was opened. The satellite image was sharp to within thirteen inches from the target and refreshed every.8 seconds. If the angle were right the OmniCom could get in close enough to lip-read.

Working at the OmniCom station in the level four basement of the NRO, it was relatively easy for Viens and his small team to use the repositioned satellite to ride the field phone signal to its source. They pinpointed it to a site above the foothills at 8,112 feet. When Viens and his group had repositioned the satellite to look down on the site, dawn was just breaking in Kashmir. The rising sun cleared the mountains to the east and struck an isolated structure. It resembled a slender travertine stalagmite more than it did a mountain peak. Whatever it was, something remarkable was happening on its face.

There were over a dozen figures in white parkas on the eastern side of the peak. They were armed with what looked like automatic weapons. Some were climbing up the peak, others were rappelling down. They were all converging on a small mouth located near the base of the tor.

Viens quickly refined the location of the audio signal. It was not coming from the people on the cliff but from a stationary target. Probably from an individual or individuals inside the cave.

Viens immediately phoned Bob Herbert and redirected the signal to Op-Center.