Page 194 - Gobierno ivisible

Date: 4/5/2011 Page: 194 of 237

agreement to the contrary, these officials maintained that a common law had been established, giving any nation
the right to orbit satellites over another.

On January 13, 1962, the United States asserted formally that this freedom of movement in space had been
endorsed by the UN General Assembly in its unanimous resolution the previous month on "international
cooperation and the peaceful uses of outer space."

The resolution stipulated that international law and the United Nations Charter were to apply to outer space and
that celestial bodies were not to be subject to national appropriation. The United States interpreted this as a
contradiction of the Soviet argument that SAMOS violated national sovereignty.

To demonstrate its sincerity in subscribing to UN supervision of space, the United States pledged, shortly after the
UN Space Registry was established in February of 1962, that it would list all of its satellites.

From time to time knowledgeable space watchers in the United States and Europe noted, sometimes in print, that
more objects were in space than had been reported to the UN. Playing upon the deep secrecy surrounding the
SAMOS program, the Russians alleged that the United States was concealing some of its launches.

These allegations imposed a nasty dilemma upon the United States Government. If it were to dispose effectively
of suggestions that it was cheating, it would have to open up the SAMOS firings to much greater publicity. But
this would run counter to the basic policy decision not to provoke the Russians.

Or the United States could publicly produce evidence that the unlisted objects in space were of Soviet origin. But
this would expose the fact that the United States possessed a vast electronic network which kept a precise watch
on all Soviet space operations. And the CIA and the Pentagon were opposed to providing the slightest help to the
Russians in compromising the network.

Their opposition was twofold. First, if it were officially admitted that the United States was eavesdropping along
the Iron Curtain, nations providing the clandestine facilities might be subjected to severe Russian pressure, as they
were after the U-2 incident.

The second argument was expressed in a news conference on December 6, 1962, by Arthur Sylvester: "We are
trying to keep intelligence [secret], not only what we gather but how we gather it ... We know that lots of things
that two years ago we assumed our adversaries had, they did not have. We know this by what they're spending
money to get. What we are trying to do in this field is to make it as difficult as possible for them. We are trying
not to wrap it up, put it on a silver platter and hand it to them. We are trying to make them spend as much time
and effort as we have to."

Defense Secretary McNamara was particularly jealous of the secrecy policy. He was incensed when Hanson
Baldwin, the military-affairs analyst of the New York Times, disclosed in June, 1962 -- clearIy on the basis of
SAMOS reports -- that the Soviets were erecting concrete storage "coffins" for their ICBMs. McNamara was
disturbed that Baldwin's report might have given the Russians an indication of the excellence of SAMOS. He
apparently did not comprehend that he himself had exposed SAMOS' effectiveness when he announced the month
before that the United States was in a position to locate and destroy Soviet missile sites.

Arrayed against McNamara and the secrecy policy were those in the State Department who saw great propaganda
value in destroying the myth that the Soviets could do no wrong in space and that they had suffered fewer failures
than the United States. This viewpoint prevailed in September, 1962, when the government claimed that in the
two previous years the Russians had failed in five attempts to reach the planets -- two to Mars and three to Venus.