Page 195 - Gobierno ivisible

Date: 4/5/2011 Page: 195 of 237

In trying to substantiate the claim, the fears of the CIA and the Pentagon were realized. A Pandora's box of black
electronic arts was opened. Out of it came revelations of a world that was unknown to the vast majority of
Americans, if not to the Soviet leaders.

The United States had detected the Russian space failures through a surveillance system known as SPADATS
(Space Detection and Tracking System). It was a complicated network of electronic fences, stretching across the
United States, and sensitive radios and radars hidden along the perimeter of the Soviet Union. The network was so
effective that no Soviet rocket could get off the ground without its being known within a few minutes at the North
American Air Defense Command in Colorado Springs and at the CIA and the White House.

The first point of detection was a radar and communications system in the Middle East. It was centered in Turkey
at small Black Sea towns such as Zonguldak, Sinop and Samsun. There, powerful radars and listening gear
monitored the countdowns and rocket launchings at the main Soviet missile sites near the Aral Sea.

The radars, which went into operation in 1955, could reach at least 3,000 miles. The scope of the listening
gear was suggested by an advertisement which slipped uncensored into Aviation Week on February 25, 1963:

Modern electronic counter-measures are an important deterrent and intelligence tool for the military
services. "Ferreting" ECM systems -- for the detection, location and analysis of foreign electromagnetic
radiation associated with radar, missile command and communications -- are a demonstrated capability
of Babcock's military products division, where operational ferreting systems are in production ...

Another indication of the potential of the eavesdropping equipment got out the following month. Senator Barry
Goldwater, a general in the Air Force Reserve, disclosed that an "electronic ear," operating in planes off Cuba,
was so sensitive that it could pick up the sound of various machines to the point of detecting a small generator in
operation.

At the same time, the Pentagon was perfecting super-range "over the horizon" radar and the Air Force had
installed highly sensitive atmospheric pressure gear which could provide instantaneous indications of a Soviet
missile launching.

After a rocket had been detected by the Middle East system, it would next be picked up by the BMEWS radar in
Greenland, which kept watch over the Arctic, or by the large saucer-like radar at Shemya in the Aleutians, which
tracked Soviet test rockets as they flew out over the Pacific.

The third point of detection and the most precise was NAVSPASUR (Naval Space Surveillance System), an
electronic fence stretching from Georgia to Southern California. Transmitters in Alabama, Texas and Arizona
created the fence by sending out a beam of radio signals which were deflected back to one of four receiving
stations when an object passed through them.

By running the angles of deflection through a massive computer at Dahlgren, Virginia, it was possible to
determine a satellite's orbit, position, size and weight (NAVSPASUR was so sensitive that a piece of wire one-
sixteenth of an inch in diameter was detected in 1960 when it separated from a U.S. satellite). It was also
possible to calculate the exact time and place of launch and predict the future path of the satellite.

Many officials felt that too much was being revealed about these secret electronic systems. Nevertheless, NASA
continued until April, 1963, to list Soviet launchings in the Satellite Situation Reports it issued twice a month.