Films About
the Corona Spy-Satellite Program
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>>> The films below concern the Corona Program, which produced the world's first photo-reconnaissance (spy) satellites. Although the National Reconnaissance Office was put in charge of Corona, and is still the nation's spy-satellite operating agency, these films were produced by the CIA because the imagery product from Corona was the responsibility of the CIA. The first film, "A Point in Time," has been available to the public via the National Technical Information Service, but has not been widely seen. The other films - from a groundbreaking 1995 conference - were recently released as a result of Mandatory Declassification Review requests filed many years ago with the NRO by Michael Ravnitzky. The NRO released the declassified films on VHS videotapes, which were digitized by tech guru Brett Milner. We've posted them at the Internet Archive for bandwidth reasons, so all links will take you there. |
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A Point in Time Highly informative hour-long documentary about the Corona Project, which gave us America's first photo-reconnaissance satellites. Produced by the CIA in 1972, it premiered publicly at the "Piercing the Curtain" conference about Corona in May 1995 but has not been widely seen. Fascinating archival footage, interviews with key players, etc. If you download only one of these films, make it this one. Watch it at the Internet Archive. A Windows Media version is available at the Black Vault here.
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"Piercing the Curtain: CORONA and the Revolution in Intelligence" Conference The CIA said of the conference:
Below are the keynote address and two panel discussions from this conference. ____________________________________________________________________________ Keynote Address: "Corona: A Triumph of American Technology" Keynote address by Albert Wheelon: Primary architect of the Corona Program; first Deputy Director for Science and Technology at CIA; former Director of the Office of Scientific Intelligence at CIA; former CEO and Chairman of the Board of Hughes Aircraft; former member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Watch it at the Internet Archive.
____________________________________________________________________________ Panel: "The First Satellite Reconnaissance System" A panel presentation comprised of the following. John McMahon (moderator): former Deputy Director of the CIA; former president of Lockheed Martin. General Lou Allen: Chairman of the Board of Draper Laboratories; member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board; member of the Aspen Committee; former Director of Air Force space programs; former NSA Director; former Commander of Air Force System Command; former Chief of Staff of the Air Force. Worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Dr. Richard Garwin: Adjunct professor of physics at Columbia University. Member of the President's Science Advisory Committee and the Defense Science Board. At IBM, helped design nuclear weapons systems. Jim Plummer: Former Lockheed manager in charge of Lockheed's part of Corona. Former Undersecretary of the Air Force; former Director of the National Reconnaissance Office; former Secretary of the Air Force; former Executive Vice President of Lockheed. Dr. Walt Levison: Former manager of iTech Corporation's aerial reconnaissance business; former Assistant Director of Boston University's physical resarch laboratories in charge of reconnaissance programs for the Air Force; senior Vice President of Operations of iTech. Watch it at the Internet Archive.
____________________________________________________________________________ Panel: "Corona Satellite Imagery" The panel discusses "what's going on right now with the data that everybody else talked about [i.e., the Corona imagery]." Bo Tumasz: Manager of the Environmental Program at the CIA. John Dwyer: Chief of the Cartographic and Architectural Branch of the National Archives and Records Administration. Al Watkins: Chief of the National Mapping Division of the National Geological Survey. Watch it at the Internet Archive.
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Further Info Corona Video Clips: Small films clips about Corona at the NRO's website "Corona and the Intelligence Community": An article from the CIA's "Studies in Intelligence" that focuses on the declassification of information about Corona, especially as it pertains to the "Piercing the Curtain" conference. It turns out that because of classification issues, the conference was delayed for over a year and almost never happened at all. |
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26 Sept 2005 2005 original text and site copyright 2002-5 Russ Kick |
