Re: Well then, back to my question...


Message posted by lone wolf on January 03, 2005 at 21:08:00 PST:

Some NRO tidbits from James Bamford's "Body of Secrets" (paperback version):
page 366: The NRO builds and manages all spy satellites.
page 368: The NRO and TRW designed the "rhyolite" satellite, which had its earth station at "a godforsaken patch of earth at the center of Austrailia" known as Alice Springs. The NSA base at Alice Springs was named Pine Gap.
page 466: Bamford says the NRO builds the NSA satellites
page 511: The NSA has an intranet called "Intelink", which links the DIA, CIA,and NRO
page 576: Around 1999, the NRO budget was $7 billion

So I'd say the NRO builds and runs the birds, and everyone else digests the information.

On the topic of satellites, in the dark ages I got to tour the "Blue Cube", which is an Air Force satellite control center. There were lots of "meat lockers", i.e. rooms with vault-like doors. The hardware wasn't as old as the photos in the link, but it sure wasn't modern. Anyway, the interesting bit of info I got from the tour is there are so many satellites up there that downloading all the information is a problem. That is, none of the birds were monitored 24 and 7 like I would have expected. There was a whole organization in the building that did nothing but schedule time on the dishes. I suspect but don't know for a fact that some of the satellites controlled from the Blue Cube are DIA since it is an Air Force operation.

There have been a few incidents of security at the Cube coming after photographers. A local high school teacher thought that photographing the Cube from outside the gate would make an interesting project. Well, it was interesting when the Lockheed Security and the local PD showed up, so the teacher was right. The last time I photographed it I had no trouble with security at all. Of course, it was done from a local traffic helicopter. ;-) This security hype is pretty silly since the building can be photographed from the nearby business parks. Top it off with the fact that the building has no windows, so what is there to see other than a few dishes.

Attached link: blue cube

In Reply to: Re: Well then, back to my question... posted by Redcat on January 03, 2005 at 14:29:54 PST:

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