Online NewsHour: Satellite Shutter Control -- September 30, 1999



	EYES IN THE SKY

September 30, 1999

Should the government limit the scope of new satellites producing ultra-detailed images? After a background report, media correspondent Terence Smith leads a discussion of so-called "shutter control."

The NewsHour Media Unit is funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Sept. 30, 1999:
A background report on "shutter control."

Sept. 24, 1999:
A look at violence in the media.

Sept. 9, 1999:
The 20th anniversary of ESPN.

Aug. 23, 1999:
Diversity in the newsroom.

May 4, 1999:
NATO bombs Serbian television off the air.

April 6, 1999:
The Pentagon release little information during the Serbian air strikes.

Browse the NewsHour's coverage of the media.

Space Imaging Web site

Microsoft's TerraServer

NOAA's Geostationary Satellite Server

Satellite Remote Sensing and Archaeology

TERENCE SMITH: We'll continue the debate about shutter control and the uses of satellite imaging with three people close to the subject: James Woolsey, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and a Washington attorney; Barbara Cochran, former Washington Bureau Chief of CBS News who is the president of the Radio Television News Directors Association; and Senator Bob Kerrey, a Democrat from Nebraska, who is Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Welcome to you all.

Prying eyes

Jim Woolsey, let me begin by asking you: What are the dangers from the government's point of view?

Woolsey JAMES WOOLSEY: I think the main thing that was going through people's minds when they came up with this in the early 1990's, this shutter control business, was protecting Schwarzkopf - in the future or future Schwarzkopf's ability to execute the "Left Hook" that won the ground war against Iraq. You don't want imagery of that being disseminated while he's pulling his forces together. But I think the government - although it was on to an important principle - as sometimes happens, it has overdone it here. By giving the responsibility to the Secretary of Commerce and letting him consider things from other agencies, they've got a situation such that this camera could theoretically be turned off if there were demonstrations in Tiananmen Square and the Chinese weren't letting anybody see them and the Secretary of State should recommend that well, it's not in the country's foreign policy interest for this to be broadcast, so I don't think that would occur, but this is worded much too broadly for the limited and important purpose of protecting troop movements in wartime and the like.

TERENCE SMITH: Senator Kerrey, that does sound like broad language. Do you believe that the administration truly needs shutter control?

Kerrey SEN. ROBERT KERREY: I think they need it. I agree with Jim. I think that's much too broad, however, I would prefer to have some kind of statutory board where you could get an up or down vote, you don't - it would be a bit more in public - as opposed to something that's sort of driven inside the bowels of bureaucracy. You get a "no" decision, and you never know exactly why. And let me praise Jim Woolsey again. I mean, I worked very closely with him when he was DCI to try to get this policy changed so that we could get one-meter images available to the public. And I think it's going to vastly improve the quality not just of images but the quality of decision making that the public makes as a consequence of having this kind of information available to them.

TERENCE SMITH: Barbara Cochran, what sort of conflicts do you expect to arise over this between the media and between those who would exercise shutter control?

Cochran BARBARA COCHRAN: Well, sometimes the media does voluntarily exercise restraint and for example, in the case of Schwarzkopf's "Left Hook," most of the media knew about it and did not report on that. But there will be times - and I think Jim Woolsey gave a very good example -- where a foreign policy embarrassment would be the reason that the executive branch would want to prevent these images from being shown or being made available to the public. Our position is that all of these disputes between the news media and the government should be resolved the same way these matters have always been resolved under our Constitution. We will go to the Judiciary. The government will be required to present evidence of why this kind of release would represent a clear and present danger to national security, and the Judiciary will decide these matters.

Who decides when the cameras are turned off?

TERENCE SMITH: Right. Although the clear and present danger, that more specific language is not actually in there. Let me ask Jim Woolsey, who is going to decide when to turn the cameras off?

JAMES WOOLSEY: First of all, the way these rules are written now, the Secretary of Commerce, based on advice of the Secretary of State and Defense - and I think that's the wrong person. I think this ought to be the President of the United States. It ought to be a very serious circumstance, and I think Senator Kerrey has a good point, perhaps pursuant to some type of statutory standard. One reason why I don't think it will work for people - the government to have to go into court in order to exercise prior restraint under the clear and present danger standard -- is once these images are down they're not just in the hands of the Lehrer NewsHour and CNN and the New York Times, you can buy them for a couple of hundred dollars on the Web and put them on your Web site, I mean, you know - Terrorist.org might well be delighted in putting these out. So, you've got to do something at the camera level I think, not at the court level, but they've gone too far in what they're trying to do.

Smith TERENCE SMITH: Senator Kerrey, is it - is it realistic in an age when we expect other countries to have similar capacities very soon within the year, France, Israel, there's one in the Cayman Islands that is going to launch - does that - does shutter control make sense in those circumstances?

SEN. ROBERT KERREY: Well, I think it still makes sense. I mean, we have responsibilities that France and Israel do not have, responsibilities that not only will keep the people of United States of America safe but the world safe as well. So I don't object to the United States saying that we ought to have shutter control, but we need to do it in a way that enables the decision to be made relatively quickly, as opposed to it being made and nobody knowing what's going on. Yet, and I think Jim's right that you probably ought to drive it over to the President of the United States, so that he has the ultimate and final decision. But let me make it clear, it's a very exciting thing that's going to happen when these images become available that we're not talking about, and that is that you're going to see an increased capacity of citizens to make decisions about a whole range of things as a result of getting those images, and I wish we could get further action on the part of NIMA and other federal agencies to declassify and bring these images out to the American people because it makes it easier for citizens to make decisions when they get good geographical pictures. And any shot at the news today will tell you how far behind we are today in having good geographical images.

Smith TERENCE SMITH: Jim Woolsey.

JAMES WOOLSEY: That's a very important point, and it's also the case that the closed societies have a lot more to fear from this than the open societies. We have a few things that we occasionally need to protect from space like Schwarzkopf's "Left Hook," but the Iranians and Iraqis and North Koreans, and, for that matter, the Chinese have a lot more things that they want to keep from the rest of the world. This is a much bigger problem for them than it is for us.

SEN. ROBERT KERREY: That's a very good point.

Protecting a free press

TERENCE SMITH: Barbara Cochran, I assume that one central issue for the media is this notion of prior restraint, a very sensitive point, in other words, stopping the reporting before it begins.

Cochran BARBARA COCHRAN: That's right. And under our Constitution the government has always had a very heavy burden of proof before they are allowed to exercise prior restraint, and again, I would - I think that the courts are the right place to settle this, that this is - we shouldn't leave the third branch of government out and I believe the third branch of government will not react well to being left out. But what Senator Kerrey was saying about the usefulness of this material to citizens is absolutely correct. And the government doesn't have a very good track record in making this material available. The agency that he mentioned has been keeping declassified images secret for a long, long time, and those images could be used now to help assist in coverage of stories like Hurricane Floyd.

SEN. ROBERT KERREY: We are having a meeting with General King to try to get that changed in the next couple of days.

BARBARA COCHRAN: We'd be glad to help.

TERENCE SMITH: Do you plead guilty to that - not you personally but the government, the agency?

JAMES WOOLSEY: The National Conference Office and the Director of Central Intelligence - the people who have had that job - have gone through a rather substantial evolution on this issue I think from the late 80's till today. I tried to make a number of changes when I was DCI, and we do have, for example, now archaeologists in Iraq sending word back that they are delighted with the older imagery that we've turned loose from Corona, because they're able to look at imagery of some of the ancient cities there. There are a lot of changes that are taking place, but everything was not turned loose immediately that could have been turned loose if the CIA and the National Conference Office had had the manpower to screen everything.

TERENCE SMITH: All right. Senator Kerrey, you said you're trying to get that change done in the next few days?

Sen. Kerrey SEN. ROBERT KERREY: Well, we're having a meeting with General King; we actually initiated a program called Imaging for Citizens that I had hoped would make these five-meter images more available to the public and quicker, but Barbara's exactly right; they've been withheld and we're trying to get that changed. But I could not underscore more strongly what Jim Woolsey said earlier about the closed nations of this world having a lot more at risk than the United States of America. And that's one of the big advantages - especially in a country where we are the leading democracy, the leading military and the leading economy, we have a lot of responsibility, but our citizens are the ones that have to make those decisions.

TERENCE SMITH: Well, the Israel exclusion is an interesting case. That's written into legislation in 1997. Won't that invite other countries to ask for similar privileges?

SEN. ROBERT KERREY: Well, it's a very interesting provision, especially since Israel is going to be launching commercial satellites, going to be selling the very same thing; we've got a provision that doesn't allow us to sell them, and they'll be selling them. Yes, it's a very interesting provision. I don't think it's a very sound provision.

Living in a global information age

TERENCE SMITH: All right. Barbara Cochran, what would prevent the media - if denied images here in the United States - from simply purchasing them abroad and putting them on the air or in newspapers in the United States?

BARBARA COCHRAN: Absolutely nothing. And that's the shame of these rules, as they're presently constituted. The companies that they hurt are U.S.-based companies.

SEN. ROBERT KERREY: That's exactly right. And it hurts the citizens' ability to make good decisions, because they don't get these images, and, as a consequence, they're not able to become as informed as a picture can inform you.

TERENCE SMITH: Jim Woolsey, a final word. Diplomatic embarrassment - you mentioned that before - that's not legitimate.

Woolsey JAMES WOOLSEY: I don't think that's legitimate. I think it ought to be national security and really in the military sense something that is going to run the risk of killing a lot of people, American soldiers, or - or a terrorist incident or something like that. There needs to be something that rises to the President's level of consideration to save American lives, and I think under those type of circumstances some type of shutter control is certainly warranted.

TERENCE SMITH: Okay. Senator Kerrey, Barbara Cochran, Jim Woolsey, thank you very much.