Shrouding Space in Secrecy

By Evan Thomas

A hush-hush shuttle mission pits the Pentagon against the press

For the past two decades manned space missions by the U.S. have been the most public of spectacles. To drum up popular support, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration staged space shots as television melodramas. But when Space Shuttle Mission 51-C lifts off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center next month, the flight will be shrouded in secrecy. For the first time in 45 U.S. manned space flights, reporters will not be supplied with the usual fact-stuffed press kits, or allowed to eavesdrop on communications between astronauts and Mission Control, or even permitted to follow the traditional countdown.

At a crowded press conference in Washington last week, Brigadier General Richard Abel, public affairs director for the Air Force, announced a new set of restrictions on press coverage of manned space shuttle flights carrying purely military payloads. Mission 51-C is the first such flight; dozens more are scheduled in coming months and years. The aim of the new rules, declared General Abel, is to "deny our adversaries"--i.e., the Soviets--information about the shuttle launch and its payload. The effort to keep the lid on promptly provoked a rush of news leaks and reignited the simmering debate between the press and the Pentagon about the limits of secrecy.

General Abel did tell reporters that space shuttle Discovery will take off on Mission 51-C some time between 1:15 p.m. and 4:15 p.m. E.S.T. on a day no sooner than Jan. 23. But he refused to say what would be on board or how long the mission would last. He promised that touchdown will be announced 16 hours in advance, and that the press would be informed about any emergencies. Far more ominous was his warning that any "speculation" by the press about the mission and its payload could set off an investigation for breach of national security.

In fact the Defense Department had already set out to pre-emptively plug leaks. At the Pentagon's request, three news organizations--NBC, the Associated Press and Aviation Week & Space Technology, a widely respected industry magazine--held off stories about the military shuttle mission. NBC reported that it had grudgingly acceded to a personal plea from Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger.

Nevertheless, the veil of secrecy was quickly and predictably pierced. Two days after the Pentagon's strictures against speculation, the Washington Post reported that Mission 51-C will launch a military-intelligence satellite called a SIGINT (for "signal intelligence"), which can intercept electronic signals. With the information now in the public domain, A.P. promptly ran with its similar story and NBC aired a watered-down version.

Weinberger angrily denounced the Post story as "the height of journalistic irresponsibility." Publication of such stories, he fumed, "can only give aid and comfort to the enemy." Washington Post Managing Editor Leonard Downie replied that the revelations did not "remotely" threaten national security. "The very sparse information that we published this morning is well known throughout Washington and the world," he insisted. Both the Post and NBC maintained that they continued to withhold technical information about the shuttle mission that was not so widely known.

Actually, much of the information disclosed by the press was readily available from the Pentagon's own testimony before Congress and from technical journals. Both the Soviets and the U.S. have long played a cat-and-mouse game known as "ferreting," in which spy satellites are sent aloft to gather electronic signals of any kind -- microwave, radio, telephone -- for decoding and analysis.

SIGINT satellites are typically equipped with two large dishes, one for collecting signals and the other for sending them back to earth stations. Earlier rocket-launched versions weighed a little more than a ton. The shuttle, with its greater thrust and ample cargo bay, permits the U.S. to launch a satellite three times as large and boost it to a height of 22,300 miles, where it can stay in "geosynchronous" orbit, maintaining its position over the same spot of the earth.

In contrast to the hoopla over NASA's manned missions, the Pentagon has al ways tried to keep secret the launching of its unmanned rockets carrying military satellites. In fact, not until 1978 did the U.S. admit that it flew any spy satellites over the U.S.S.R., even though their existence had been widely known for well over a decade. The Soviet news agency TASS usually announces missions just after they have been completed -- successfully. Last week, the Soviets launched an unmanned model of their own space shuttle, a small, reusable winged space plane that orbited the earth once and splashed down in the Black Sea.

Pentagon experts acknowledge that withholding details about the launch will probably inconvenience Soviet trackers for only an hour or so as they scramble to position radar ships and sensitive antennas. But they maintain that putting the Soviets to the test is a worthwhile exercise.

A more important reason for the secrecy around Mission 51-C, many observers believe, is to set a precedent. Press reports that a shuttle is carrying a spy satellite may not be damaging, but future shuttle payloads may include Star Wars technology that is a far more sensitive secret. Already one-fifth of the next 70 shuttle missions have been booked by the military. The Air Force has even built its own secret launching pad for military shuttles at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, scheduled for its first launch on Oct. 15.

Some critics view the Pentagon restrictions on coverage of the space shuttle as part of a broader effort to restrict the free flow of information on defense policy.

"This Administration is committed to trying to enforce secrecy to the extent no previous Administration has," declares Benno Schmidt, dean of Columbia Law School. The Administration has repeatedly tried to crack down on leakers, restrict press access and draft tighter secrecy laws.

It is not that unusual for Government officials to ask the media to keep secrets voluntarily. The press honored such requests before the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 and on various occasions during the Viet Nam War. However, the Government's legal power to block publication if the press refuses to censor itself remains uncertain. In the celebrated Pentagon Papers case in 1971, the Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. could bar disclosures only if they caused "irreparable damage" to the U.S.

The Administration does have a blunt weapon it can use on Government leakers: the 77-year-old Espionage Act. The act was intended to punish real spies. But now the vaguely worded espionage laws are being used not just against spies but also those who leak defense secrets to the press. Last week the Justice Department began an investigation to find out who leaked information about Shuttle Mission 51-C to NBC.

So far the Administration has never successfully prosecuted a Government official for leaking. But it may be tempted to try as the press begins to cover secret high-tech developments such as laser satellites and other space weaponry. The boundary between the public's right to know and the Government's need to protect national security is a shadowy one. It is sure to be tested further as the legitimate public debate about the "militarization" of space continues to clash with the Pentagon's desire, also quite legitimate, to keep its technology secret. --By Evan Thomas. Reported by Anne Constable and Jerry Hamifin/Washington

With reporting by Anne Constable, Jerry Hannifin