Cable News Network December 14, 2002
New Spying Technology Will Help Military Detect Chemicals
JAMES HATTORI, HOST: With the debate continuing over military action in Iraq intelligence gathering is more critical than ever. A little known agency created just six years ago is helping to meet those intelligence needs. CNN's David Ensor takes us inside the National Imagery and Mapping Agency for a look at some futuristic spy technology that may remind you of science fiction.
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DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the 1998 film "Enemy of the State" private citizen Will Smith finds himself targeted by an all-knowing big brother rogue spy agency.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're transmitting. If you live another day, I'll be very impressed.
ENSOR: The imaginary agency uses satellite and other high tech gear to chase people down.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All units targeted heading north on rooftop.
LT. GEN. JAMES CLAPPER (RET.): Well, I thought it was a very entertaining movie which was -- but far removed from the actual reality.
ENSOR: The film is far removed from reality because U.S. intelligence agencies are strictly forbidden to spy inside the United States and also because Hollywood's fantasy goes well beyond existing technology.
ROBERT ZITZ: We're nowhere near what's laid out in "Enemy of the State" but we are moving in that direction.
ENSOR: In what's called the after next department of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency Rob Zitz and his team are trying to turn some of that fantasy into reality. Take the Geosar Plane (ph) packed with what is call P-Van (ph) radar equipment, photo type aircraft can see what is hidden to the spy satellite or to the naked eye.
ZITZ: It gives us the ability to peer through clouds, through nightfall and to look through trees and, in fact, through tree trunks down to the bare earth.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So it gives us a stereo effect, right?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right. Yes, it does.
ENSOR: Wearing special goggles we can see three dimensional images of terrain made by combing Geosar's (ph) intrusive radar and other technology.
In the next three years the U.S. is planning to put P-Van (ph) radar onto unmanned drone aircraft like the Global Hawk for use tracking the enemy in war zones even at night under clouds and in tree cover.
And just as in the movie, Neeman's (ph) after next team is working with partners at the National Security Agency, the nation's eavesdroppers, on better, faster ways for U.S. intelligence to see and hear a location at the same time.
ZITZ: If you walked into a building and you were looking to find a person or find an object, you wouldn't walk into that building with your eyes closed and just listen, you would want to go in and use your eyes and your ears together. And so we know that's the same with the intelligence capability.
We do today bring this power of signals intelligence where we're listening together with imagery where we're seeing but it's on a smaller scale than we would desire.
ENSOR: One of the most promising areas is a new kind of spy satellite that can take pictures not just in color but showing minute difference in color caused by something as subtle as a little vapor -- a trace of a chemical in the air. It is called hyper-spectral imagery.
JOHN PIKE. GLOBAL SECURITY ORG.: A regular satellite is going to be looking at a warehouse district, see a lot of buildings. The hope is that with hyper-spectral imagery you're going to be able to see that one of those buildings has some very peculiar chemicals leaking out of it and that that's the hidden chemical factory that you're looking for.
ENSOR: Such a system would allow the U.S. to hunt the globe for illegal facilities producing chemical or other weapons of mass destruction. It's the kind of capability the U.S. may need in an ever more dangerous world of terrorists and well-armed dictators.
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