National Reconnaissance Office

The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) was created in controversy on 25 August 1960 shortly after the downing of Gary Powers in a U-2 over the Soviet Union.1 It was clear that the Services' working independently towards the same end had many problems. In theory, a common agency would be able to bring programs together that were inherently compartmented from each other. A common agency could ensure the right hand could have some idea what the left was doing and stop creating needless duplication of efforts, and could ultimately bring to bear the Services' combined resources, talents, funding, and personnel under a single roof. While their initial mission was overhead reconnaissance, it rapidly evolved into intelligence and surveillance as well. Their purpose was to streamline acquisition and development outside the normal Department of Defense bureaucracy to bring cutting edge solutions and technology to current Cold War problems. In order to understand the NRO of today we must study the NRO of the past. It's key to understand what was happening in United States history at the time of its inception, the NRO's history, successes, failures, concepts, its declassification, the DoDing of the NRO, its controversies and what its future holds.