Word: klass
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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RICHARD L. KLASS...
Neither country, naturally, is very talkative about its espionage system. But in a new book, Secret Sentries in Space (Random House; $7.95), Philip J. Klass, senior avionics editor of Aviation Week & Space Technology, offers a first, fascinating look at the space hardware that has, so far, contributed to global stability. By allowing the two major nuclear powers to examine one another's military installations in exact detail, the satellites have considerably diminished the danger of war through miscalculation...
Florida Force. During the 1961 Berlin crisis, the "first generation" of Discoverer satellites was aloft, and John Kennedy was able to show Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko photographs indicating exactly how few iCBMs the Soviets really had. "I believe," says Klass, "that after Gromyko saw those pictures he persuaded Khrushchev to back down...
Similarly, Klass writes, "the President entered the Cuban missile crisis with a very precise inventory of Soviet strategic missile and bomber strength, thanks to U.S. satellite photos." At the same time, the Soviets undoubtedly used their Cosmos satellites to watch the buildup of U.S. aircraft in Florida and the American task force assembled in the Caribbean. "What role, if any, Russian satellite pictures played in convincing Kremlin leaders that the U.S. was prepared to go the limit," Klass writes, "probably is known only to a few Russian leaders...
...Klass submitted proofs of his book to the CIA and the Pentagon; they objected to its publication but made no move to stop it. No one else has written in comparable detail about spy satellites. Klass describes, for example, the nation's latest SAMOS (satellite and missile observation system), "the Big Bird," launched just two months ago. A giant, twelve-ton spacecraft capable of working aloft for at least several months, the Big Bird combines the capabilities of several earlier satellites. It can transmit high-quality pictures by radio, and eject capsules of exposed film which then drop...