[FPSPACE] "Lifting the Veil": Author's comments

[Peter Pesavento]

Thank you Sven for your first, cursory reactions to the mini-monograph that
was published by the BIS in Space Chronicle last week.

 

I am certain you will have more commentary as you read the text once again.

 

For those of the fpspace readership who have not read the piece, or
anticipate receiving a copy, let me provide you with the bibliographic
citations.  There are two articles, one a shorter piece, and the other, the
longer piece that Sven has been reading.

 

Here they are:

 

The Role of Human Intelligence in the USA's 1960s efforts to understand
Soviet space activities.  J Brit Interplanetary Soc 60:460-62, 2007.

 

Lifting the veil: What US Intelligence knew in the 1960s about the Soviet
space program. Space Chronicle 60(JBIS Supplement 2): 49-87, 2007.

 

I just want to make some "short" comments on a couple of things that Sven
mentioned.

 

--Voskhod flight table.  Sven's surmization that the table is not the
product of HUMINT is correct.  Its classification level is "Secret."  Coming
in a CIA-generated document, HUMINT would never be classified anything less
than "TS SCI"-that is, Top Secret, Sensitive Compartmented Information.  But
since this "Secret" level table is attached to a TS SCI document, it is also
handled via that higher classification level, and not less.  As to
inaccuracies in the table, I have no reactions to that.

 

--Doll, a real spy.  Doll is the codename for a real spy that the US had
inside the Soviet space establishment.  Not hypothetical.  Two documents
based on this person's efforts are discussed in the Space Chronicle text,
and a page from one of them is reproduced, so every reader can see the level
and labeling of these HUMINT documents.   Based on the comments imparted to
me (which I do think I impart in summary form in the text), this person was,
to use the terminology, "high value."  I can add that Doll was not the only
person supplying the United States with information from inside the Soviet
program.  This is partly due to the fact that space rocketry is directly
connected to military missile development in its many facets.  So the US
would expend the effort to gain contacts therein.

 

Because HUMINT is among the USA's most sensitive data acquisition
techniques, much of what has been published prior to 2007 has been affected
by a fairly common view that we didn't have any inside sources, due to a
dearth of information on the topic-although I would proffer that there was
sufficient anecdotal information available to say that the "no inside
information sources" hypothesis was no doubt wrong.  (I think the adage
"Absence of Evidence is NOT Evidence of Absence" is quite apropos here.)  

 

But HUMINT not only encompasses purposeful agents (native Soviets working
for the US on tasks given them by the US), but also sources that
inadvertently weren't realizing that they were part of the "vacuum cleaner
information matrix" effect (as I call it) to gather data from all
points-kind of tangentially connected to the police "All Points Bulletin"
type of report, but in reverse.  I decided, that as part of the
amplification of this specific slice of information gathering, that it
needed to be discussed, and so the highlighting of the US State Dept.'s role
in HUMINT data sourcing was appropriate.  Theirs was engaging everyone that
was anyone in conversations.  As I write in the JBIS short article,
"Everyone was talking, and the 'emboffs' were diligently recording all."  

 

The vast majority of the information in the text, including about HUMINT, is
being published for the first time.  I think at least 30-something documents
were declassified and released that I use in the mini-monograph, that so
happened this year.

 

Like I have mentioned to a number of colleagues before, currently we may
have between 1.5% to 2% of all US intelligence documents relating to Soviet
space activities declassified at this juncture.  This is what I suspect.  I
also address this topic in the JBIS short article as well. Much more
information is due to be disgorged-some with approximately known timetables,
while for other information releases, the timetables are not known at this
juncture. But there is a great deal of material wending its way down the
pipeline.  Some of this material started its declassification protocol
processing in the early 1990s, however.  So it's been quite a long time.

 

But I think we can point to 2007 as the bellwether/benchmark time point of
new, revelatory information being released, and being released in a form
that is of greatest utility for space historians.  

 

More is coming, much more.