U.S. Cutting Spy Satellite Armada by Half, Ex-Chief of CIA Testifies

The number of spy satellites the United States keeps in orbit to look down on America’s enemies and rivals in hot spots around the globe is being cut in half as part of a broader downsizing of the nation’s intelligence apparatus, a former CIA director revealed Monday.

R. James Woolsey, who stepped down as CIA director in January, also told Congress that several CIA field stations, which house the spy agency’s covert operations staff, are being shuttered because of new budget pressures. Other sources said that the CIA offices targeted for closure include several in Africa. Those closures more than offset the opening of new CIA field offices in some of the former Soviet republics, officials said.

The spy satellite program has long been the U.S. national security community’s crown jewel, accounting for many of the greatest intelligence coups of the Cold War.

But it has come under mounting criticism in recent years from specialists who argue that the CIA and the Pentagon had bought far more satellites from the aerospace industry than it could use. With the end of the Soviet threat, critics have argued that the enormous cost of the spy satellite program--estimated to be $15 billion a year to produce and launch the dozens of military spacecraft circling the Earth every hour and $5 billion to operate the systems--has to be reined in.

Woolsey, in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, also conceded that the spy satellite program is badly in need of management reforms to end the bureaucratic bottlenecks that often keep the satellite photos from getting to the right people.

Woolsey’s successor, John M. Deutch, has also proposed a consolidation of the satellite program as one of the first reforms he hopes to impose at the agency.

The CIA and the Pentagon both have satellite operations.