Fox News Network January 30, 2003
The Big Story With John Gibson (17:00): Interview With John Pike
Transcript # 013001cb.263
GIBSON: February 5th of course the big day when Colin Powell will reveal what information the U.S. has and the White House is trying to decide whether to release some classified satellite photos of Iraq to our allies and maybe even to the public.
They supposedly show Iraqis cleaning up several weapons sites before the U.N. inspectors get there as Eric was just describing. We've got an expert here to talk about satellite photos, how they can be used.
John Pike is the director of globalsecurity.org and a Fox News contributor. So, John, we're all a little confused about what you can really see with satellite photos. We have this -- I think a lot of us have this picture in our minds of something blurry on the ground and a guy with a magnifying glass trying to figure out what it is. What is the state of the technology now?
JOHN PIKE, GLOBALSECURITY.ORG: Well unfortunately the state of the technology is not the sort of thing that's depicted in movies like "The Enemy of the State." You can get that sort of full motion of video off of a Predator drone but not off of a reconnaissance satellite.
And what I got here this afternoon are basically three sets of images to contrast to the commercial imagery that is publically available with some of the classified imagery that the U.S. government uses. Now we're just simulating that imagery.
The problem, of course, is that Saddam Hussein understands how to do the same sort of simulation and that's one of the reasons that the classified satellites have had such a hard time tracking down his facilities.
GIBSON: The picture we're looking at, John, on the left hand side of the screen is just a picture of that thing, and on the right hand side its significantly blown up, much more detail, you can tell what it is. Are you saying...
PIKE: And it's in black and white and the -- the commercial ones are frequently in color.
GIBSON: Are you saying though that -- that -- that black and white picture that shows more -- much more detail -- is kind of like what our satellite imagery would be able to show?
PIKE: Right. Roughly equivalent to what you're going to get from a classified system that's going to be able to see objects a few inches across rather than a few feet across. Overall the interpretability about a hundred times better. And this is where you can really tell the difference.
Again, the image on the left is sort of commercial imagery that's publically available. On the right what we've done is taken an aerial photograph of -- cars in a parking lot and you can clearly tell the difference between the delivery van, small car, sports utility vehicle and that's the sort of thing that we may be seeing in the imagery that Secretary Powell will be releasing next week.
Seeing some of these vehicles moving around in Iraqi parking lots. And, of course, you can -- it really hits home when you're looking at the difference between being able to see airplanes parked out on a ramp and then the difference with that one airplane, the way you see it in a commercial image and then this is the way the classified satellite would be able to look at that.
GIBSON: All right John, but there's just one other consideration. Apparently the argument in the White House is if we release these satellite photos to the Security Council, Powell waves them around and it's an Adlai Stevenson moment -- the Russians, the Chinese, and others who are our potential adversaries in other situations can figure out how our satellites work, where they are, how low they are, and how good the imagery is. Is that stuff worth giving up to prove this case?
PIKE: Well I think in this case they're not going to be doing that because the case that they're going to be making to show the Iraqis running out the back door just before the inspectors run in the front door -- that's the sort of thing that they can do with fuzzing up the images so that they're not going to disclose the full capabilities of those satellites in order to make that case.
GIBSON: Why is that showing those images does disclose the capabilities of the satellites? For instance, I read this morning that a good analyst can look at that picture and tell you where that satellite is.
PIKE: Well they would -- if you had additional information about where the satellite was, what time of day it was taken, you would be able to get some classified information about it. I think that one of the concerns that the administration has, though, is that on the one hand you would be giving out some of that information.
On the other hand, the question is if you don't have that smoking gun moment that Adlai Stevenson had with the Cuban missile crisis, are people going to be disappointed and not convinced of the administration's case. But the U.S. has been releasing fuzzed up satellite imagery ever since the attacks on al Qaeda back in 1998 so they know how to release this imagery without compromising security.
GIBSON: John Pike, Director of globalsecurity.org. John thanks very much.
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