The Houston Chronicle February 06, 2003
Top secret part somewhere among shuttle debris
By Dan Feldstein
A piece of debris classified "top secret" is somewhere among the thousands of shards of the space shuttle Columbia spread across Texas.
The communications device handles encrypted messages between the shuttle and the ground. According to its serial number, it is in a class of equipment labeled "TSEC" -- telecommunications security -- that must be handled with strict chain-of-command documentation.
Experts differed on the importance to national security of recovering the device, which was "keyed," or prepared for use with mathematical algorithms.
"Better safe than sorry," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org and an expert on intelligence policy.
One encryption expert said if the box were keyed it could be valuable to a foreign intelligence agency, if it survived the accident.
The U.S. government uses such equipment for defense and other classified communications.
For spaceflights such as rocket trips that are not expected to be retrieved, NASA rules call for TSEC equipment to have its nameplate stripped off. But shuttle flights are normally expected to be recovered.
A NASA spokesman said Wednesday evening that he had no information about the device.
David Hess, a Department of Defense shuttle payloads specialist, said it was not used on the lone Defense experiment on the shuttle -- an Air Force "miniature satellite threat reporting system."
More likely, the TSEC equipment is the encryption box routinely used to receive messages from Mission Control in Houston. NASA codes its messages to the shuttle so no one can intercept them and play them back later to the shuttle, fouling its flight control.
The shuttle's main mission was science, and its payload included more than 80 experiments.
NASA also scrambled to recover classified communications gear after the Challenger shuttle disaster in 1986, Pike said.
"With Challenger you were talking about Soviet frogmen. Now you're talking about souvenir hunters on eBay," he said.
When Challenger exploded its debris dropped into the Atlantic Ocean.
Hundreds of volunteers and federal, state and local officials were fanning out over the East Texas countryside this week in search of all manner of debris. Pieces large and small have been found on roofs, in streets, in woods and water.
On Wednesday, two local residents were indicted for illegally removing material, indicating how serious officials were about recovering all of it.
Pike said the real prize for a spy would be keying, or coding, materials that would be left on the ground. The box on the shuttle would have some protections, such as a style of computer chip that would crumble if someone tried to take it apart layer by layer.
Many searchers said Wednesday that they hadn't been made aware of the classified nature of the debris they might find, but they weren't surprised.
"There are numerous items that are high priority for them," said Greg Cohrs, a ranger at Sabine National Forest and one of the search directors.
Chronicle reporter James Kimberly contributed to this story.
Copyright © 2003, Houston Chronicle
