Subject: Spysat (Vortex??) mischarging suit blocked
From: thomsona@netcom.com (Allen Thomson)
Date: 1996/02/29
Message-Id: <thomsonaDnK5Fq.H9B@netcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.space.policy,alt.politics.org.cia,alt.politics.org.nsa
You never can tell what you'll read when you open the
paper in the morning...
Lockheed Martin Lawsuit Delayed by Pentagon, CIA
by John Mintz
Washington Post, 28 February 1996
[EXCERPTS]
A lawsuit alleging that Lockheed Martin Corp. overcharged the
government by up to $500 million has been put on hold because
the Pentagon and [CIA] assert that release in court of key
documents would "cause exceptionally grave damage to the
national security."
The pending lawsuit, filed by two former Lockheed Martin
employees in federal court in San Jose, will be delayed while
the judge considers whether to grant a request by CIA Director
John Deutch and Deputy Defense Secretary John White that 24 key
documents be withheld from the plaintiffs...
... CIA and Pentagon officials said the declaration was their
only option because the documents contain specific data on the
nation's most secret spy satellite programs -- code names,
budgets, technical specifications, software packages,
subcontractors and vulnerabilities.
"Adversaries of the U.S. having access to such information
could use it to negate or degrade our systems or to build
competing systems," Deutch said in a statement filed in court
Friday. Release of the papers allows "correlation of previously
unlinked bits of information much like a jigsaw puzzle," he
wrote.
The suit was filed in 1988 by two employees of Lockheed
Corp.'s secret space facility in Sunnyvale, Calif., alleging
that many employees routinely were "non-productive." They also
contended that the firm improperly billed the government for
time spent by employees who were waiting for security and who
were engaged in "makework." The company denies the allegations.
This story (which is the first I've heard of the suit,
despite the fact it was filed eight years ago) has many
fascinating aspects and implications. As Dr. Deutch says, it
allows "correlation of previously unlinked bits of information
much like a jigsaw puzzle," which is what makes analysis such
fun.
First, it looks as if there may be sufficient information
available to identify which satellite program is involved. On
first reading the Post article, I thought that the company
(LMSC) and timing (1988) pointed to 'Improved Crystal,' but
further research proved that wrong. Using Dialog's Knowledge
Index (plug: a most excellent and inexpensive tool), I searched
the San Jose Mercury News and LA Times full-text databases for
earlier stories on the case, and was rewarded with the following
information.
Goofing of on Government Time? Suit Says Millions were Wasted
by Idle Lockheed Workers
San Jose Mercury News - Thursday, July 7, 1988, p. 1A
By Pete Carey
[EXCERPTS]
The lawsuit is one of the first false claims suits involving a
highly secret ''black'' satellite intelligence and surveillance
project for the National Security Agency, a code-breaking and
surveillance branch of the Defense Department.
From 1981 to 1984, [the plaintiffs] worked at Lockheed on the
project, identified in the lawsuit only as 'P285.'
[Plantiff A] began working on the National Security Agency
project in 1977, when Ford Aerospace Corp. in Palo Alto had the
contract.
And in a separate but related case,
NSA Accused of Forbidden Phone Taps
San Jose Mercury News, Saturday, July 2, 1988, p. 1A
By Pete Carey
[EXCERPTS]
Sources familiar with the case said [plaintiff A in the
Lockheed case] alleged that the [unauthorized monitoring of US
citizens] involved overseas telephone calls originating in the
United States and picked up at a military base in England run in
cooperation with the British government. [Plaintiff A] worked
at the base for several years.
From 1974 to 1984, she worked on projects for the NSA, the CIA
and the Air Force while employed by two major Silicon Valley
defense intelligence contractors, Lockheed Missiles & Space Co.
Inc. of Sunnyvale and Ford Aerospace of Palo Alto. Ford helped
manage the base in England.
The customer for the project (NSA), the timeline (mid-'70s to
mid-'80s), the facts that a satellite is involved and that it's
still considered sensitive (and therefore probably still
operational) appear to fit the Chalet/Vortex geosynchronous
SIGINT satellites as described in Jeffrey Richelson's "The U.S.
Intelligence Community, 3rd edition" (ISBN 0-8133-2376-2). The
plaintiff's work at the UK base, which I'd suppose to be Menwith
Hill, shows that she had a SIGINT background with the associated
clearances and would have been likely to be assigned to a
SIGINT-related project at Ford Aerospace and to follow it to
LMSC. It would be interesting to see whether the launch of the
'P285' payload were ever announced publicly -- if it went up on
a launcher and trajectory indicating a GEO final destination,
the Vortex hypothesis would be strengthened.
Next, we see again the claim made by the DCI last week
before the Senate intelligence committee (SSCI) that disclosure
of information about spy satellites would enable enemies to take
actions which would frustrate the spysats' missions -- the term
"deny or deceive" (D&D) was used on the Hill, "negate or
degrade" in the court filing. These are strong words and, if
one takes them at face value, imply that the government really
thinks that there is something about the system designs that is
extraordinarily vulnerable to enemy action. Further, the
enemy's ability to take such action would appear to depend on
his discovery of some secret information. On one hand, it is a
matter of puzzlement that such fragile systems were built in the
first place. On the other, one would have thought that the Ames
case and other similar embarrassments would have taught the
government that relying on long-term secrecy for the success of
programs isn't a particularly good idea.
As for the assertion that "adversaries of the U.S. having
access to such information could use it... to build competing
systems," I know of no country other than the US which has been
claimed to have any interest in geosynchronous SIGINT satellites
(assuming that it really is Vortex that's involved). Even the
USSR, AFAIK, never developed such a system, though they had (and
the Russians still have) a variety of LEO SIGINT satellites.
Finally, if we look at the information which the DCI says
would potentiate enemy D&D if revealed, we find a peculiar
mixture of the defensible and the implausible: "code names,
budgets, technical specifications, software packages,
subcontractors and vulnerabilities" in the court filing, the
overall NRO budget in the SSCI testimony.
Certain technical specifications, vulnerabilities and
system-specific software are, by and large, the kind of things
that it's reasonable to classify (although the above point about
the unwisdom of relying on long-term secrecy applies). On the
other hand, it isn't very clear at all how the opposition would
use knowledge of program ("code") names, budgets and
subcontractors to bring about the grave damage claimed. And the
notion that gross budget figures would give substantial aid and
comfort to the wicked is, to say the least of it, bizarre.
Overall, it appears as if the government has not really come
to grips with the real requirements for and limitations of
classification, but has gone with a "classify everything and
don't ask questions" approach when it comes to spysat programs.
If extreme classification had no downside, this might be
acceptable -- but the recent NRO scandals show that ugly things
grow in the dark, not the least of which is self-deception.