Why The Sky Spies Missed The Desert Blasts

By DOUGLAS WALLER/WASHINGTON

The two $1 billion-apiece KH-12 satellites the Pentagon has in orbit are like Hubble space telescopes pointed back to earth. From 164 miles up, their optical sensors can snap clear photographs of objects no larger than a paperback novel on the ground. The two Lacrosse satellites, same price tag, with solar-power panels that stretch the length of half a football field, have radar-imaging cameras that can see through clouds and even the dust storms that swirl around India's Pokhran test site. In a crisis, at least one of the four birds can be positioned over a target 24 hours a day, sending photos that can be on the President's desk within an hour.

But the fast service doesn't happen "if your consumers aren't asking for it," says John Pike, an intelligence analyst at the Federation of American Scientists. With the Administration convinced that India had no plans to explode a nuclear device, the satellites were snapping photos of Pokhran only once every six to 24 hours. Indian scientists, who knew the satellites' schedule, concealed their preparations so the photos CIA analysts scanned in the weeks before Monday's blasts showed what appeared to be routine maintenance.

Satellite photos taken of the site six hours before the blasts finally revealed clear evidence of the preparations. They were beamed back to the National Imagery and Mapping Agency in Fairfax, Va. But the agency was on a routine schedule for processing photos from India. Congressional investigators will now probe whether that Pentagon agency was paying too much attention to foreign military bases instead of political targets like India. CIA photo analysts got their first glimpse of the incriminating shots when they strolled into work Monday morning. By the time they delivered their first report that Pokhran was being prepared for a test, the Indian government had already announced the detonations.

--By Douglas Waller/Washington