Secret Spy-in-the-Sky Agency Disclosed : Intelligence: Pentagon acknowledges National Reconnaissance Office, the brain center of the nation’s data gathering satellite network.

In a bow to post-Cold War openness, the Pentagon on Friday revealed one of its longest and most closely held secrets, acknowledging for the first time the existence of the National Reconnaissance Office, the brain center of the nation’s spy satellite network.

Deputy Defense Secretary Donald J. Atwood, in a terse statement released at the Pentagon, called the office the center of a “single national program to meet U.S. government intelligence needs through space borne and assigned airborne reconnaissance.”

While mention of the widely reported office has long drawn a crisp “no comment” from Pentagon officials, Friday’s release not only named the office and its director, Martin C. Faga, but even released a phone number.

The office was created in 1960 under the organizational umbrella of the U.S. Air Force. Since its inception, however, it has been under the control of the director of central intelligence. A large number of the satellite agency’s hundreds of employees work out of its operational center at Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo, home to the ambiguously named “Air Force Office of Special Projects.”

Experts saw Friday’s disclosure as part of a concerted campaign by the nation’s intelligence agencies to open its operations to further public scrutiny--and to justify its budgets in an age of deep cutbacks. The reconnaissance office’s annual budget, which rises above $5 billion, was slashed for the first time ever earlier this year in Congress. Intelligence officials feared there would be more to come if it remained a crime even to mention the office in an open hearing.

Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D-Colton) said the surprise move “officially ends the fiction that the United States does not have a multibillion-dollar agency responsible for operating our reconnaissance satellite program.” Brown, a member of the House committee on space technology and a persistent gadfly of the U.S. intelligence community, called the Pentagon’s admission “inevitable and long overdue.”

The organization’s secrecy stems from fears in 1960, after the downing of Gary Francis Powers’ U-2 spy plane, that the Soviet Union would also try to shoot down satellites.

“While secrecy has served this community well for the past three decades, it was becoming counterproductive,” said John Pike, a space analyst for the Federation of American Scientists in Washington. “The Cold War is over, and the National Reconnaissance Office is entirely a product of the Cold War. So they really face questions about what they’re going to do when they grow up.”

Experts said that several of the agency’s post-Cold War missions did indeed make it virtually inevitable that it would be forced to step into the light of day.

The Bush Administration in recent years has promised to make more satellite images available to civilian scientists, including those working on environmental problems. Since the satellites operated by the reconnaissance office will be key to such plans, it had become increasingly awkward for the government to continue to deny its existence, said Jeffrey Richelson, the author of a book titled “America’s Eyes in Space.”

Since the office’s declassification will make easier such sharing arrangements with civilian scientists, it is nearly certain to help justify the agency’s future budgets, Richelson added.

But Pike noted that the Pentagon’s move Friday fell short of declassifying other key details of the office’s work, including its budget and the programs that it oversees. Although much information about those also is widely known among the community of intelligence-watchers, Pike said the Pentagon’s latest decision will almost certainly pave the way for further revelations.

“There certainly is a significant amount of what they do that is properly classified. But we now will be waiting for the other shoe to drop,” said Pike. “It’s certainly a major milestone in truth in government, but it’s not like they’ve told us anything we didn’t know.”