Story about the Perkin-Elmer spymasters talking about their contribution to making the world safe for democracy...
- while the KH spy satellite program was a kind-of open secret, the workers were only released from their secrecy oaths a few months ago. (modulo certain aspects, of course).
So they're now blabbing to their bartenders:
Ice Station Zebra was published in 1963, so it was a /very/ open secret to judge from that and other novels that described super- capable spy satellites. One of the central elements of Alistair MacLean's plot hinged on the inability of the Soviets to recover film canisters in mid-air the way the U.S. did, so neither the satellites nor the recovery method were all that "secret".
The only /real/ secret that the satellites revealed was that the Soviet Union's terrifying "Red Menace" war machine was, as almost every defector told them for nothing, "painted rust". The CIA chose to keep /that/ secret /very/ well, since it endangered the incredible profits that Bush 42 and his friends were making from armaments, from aircraft, and from incredibly expensive spy satellites.
Bill Horne Moderator
Moderator's Note Copyright (C) 2011 E. William Horne. All Rights Reserved.