Seymour M. Hersh

The KH-11 was at the time known to be the most significant advance in outer- space reconnaissance. The key element of the sixty-four-foot-long satellite was a down- ward-looking mirror in front of the camera that rotated from side to side, like a periscope, enabling the satellite to track a single location as it moved across the atmosphere. p. 5

The Carter administration followed Ford's precedent by tightly restricting access to the high-quality imagery: even Great Britain, America's closest ally in the intelligence world, was limited to seeing photographs on a

America's most important military secret in 1979 was in orbit, whirling effortlessly around the world every ninety- six minutes, taking uncanny and invaluable reconnaissance photographs of all that lay hundreds of miles below. The satellite, known as KH-11, was an astonishing leap in technology: its images were capable of being digitally relayed to ground stations where they were picked up — in "real time" — for instant analysis by the intelligence community. There would be no more Pearl Harbors.