Furnishing cover stories for covert operations, monitoring Soviet missile tests, and supplying weather data to the U.S. military have been part of the
secret side of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) since its inception in 1958, according to declassified documents posted for the
first time today by the National Security Archive at The George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org).
James E. David, a curator in NASA's Division of Space History, obtained the documents in the course of researching his critically praised book, Spies and Shuttles: NASA's Secret Relationships with the DoD and CIA (University Press of Florida, 2015). David has compiled, edited and introduced more than 50 of these records for today's posting.
Even though Congress's intention in forming NASA was to establish a purely civilian space agency, according to David a combination of circumstances led the
agency to commingle its activities with black programs operated by the U.S. military and Intelligence Community. This often tight cooperation did not,
however, keep disputes from bubbling over on issues such as cost sharing, access to classified information, encryption of data originally intended for
civilian use, and delays to military satellite launches caused by the Challenger disaster.
Over the years, classification restrictions have kept most of the story of NASA's secret activities out of the public eye. Today's posting brings to light
previously unpublished primary source material that underpins Spies and Shuttles and other important literature on the subject. The records were
acquired through agency declassification review procedures, specific declassification requests, and archival research.