The director of central intelligence, George Tenet, has ordered U.S. spy outfits to turn commercial satellite images into the mainstay of government mapping, rather than spy satellites. The policy, a shot in the arm for the fledgling U.S. remote-sensing industry, would leave the government’s own high-resolution satellites free for spookier work.
“My goal in establishing this policy is to stimulate, as quickly as possible, and maintain, for the foreseeable future, a robust U.S. commercial space imagery industry,” Tenet said in a June 7 memo to James Clapper, head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency.
U.S. commercial satellite imagery should be “the primary source of data used for government mapping, regardless of whether the production work is performed by NIMA or is outsourced,” he said.
Among the potential beneficiaries is Boeing Co., which is developing “Future Imagery Architecture” for the National Reconnaissance Office, a secretive Pentagon contracting agency that designs, builds and operates spy satellites.
Tenet’s order, first reported by The New York Times, was obtained by Reuters on Wednesday. CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield confirmed its authenticity. In it, Tenet also told Clapper to streamline the acquisition of commercial satellite imagery for other federal agencies in an effort to expand the market.
NIMA is one of the 13 executive-branch outfits that make up the U.S. intelligence community. A Defence Department arm, it manages the collection of imagery and mapping for combat commands, the CIA, the Defence Intelligence Agency and other spy agencies.
(Picture: Space Imaging)
