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Coverage of Terrorism
as a device to avoid their own regulations
and thus sidestep the legal challenge
that would almost certainly follow.
“This contract is a way of disguised
censorship aimed at preventing the
media from doing their monitoring
job,” contended Reporters sans
Frontières (Reporters Without Borders)
executive director Robert Menard. The
Guardian (U.K.) characterized the deal
as “spending millions of dollars to prevent
Western media from seeing pictures
of the effects of bombing in Afghanistan.”
Ernest Miller, writing in
Yale University’s LawMeme electronic
newsletter, concluded that preclusive
buying should be understood as “shutter
control by means other than those
enumerated in the current regulations,”
that has added new regulatory and
constitutional law issues to the existing
controversy over the regulations
themselves.
Perhaps most disturbingly, Guardian
correspondent Duncan Campbell
reported that the decision to buy rights
to all satellite imagery appears to have
been made on October 10, then backdated
by a week or more. The date is
significant, he contended, because the
agreement took place soon after news
organizations attempted to purchase
high-resolution images of Daruta, Afghanistan,
to follow up on reports that
bombing raids had killed a large number
of civilians at that settlement. (The
DOD has stated that the raids at Daruta
hit nearby Taliban training camps. The
dispute over the civilian deaths has yet
to be resolved.)
Meanwhile, Spot Image has also declined
to make the most of its current
take of imagery available to news organizations.
Industry insiders contend
that all Spot imagery of Western Asia
gathered since September 11 has gone
to the French government, where it is
said to facilitate French horse-trading
of intelligence concerning terrorism
with U.S. intelligence agencies. For the
moment, at least, the ostensibly civilian
Spot satellites are operating in tandem
with France’s military Helios spy
satellites, which have a very similar
design to Spot’s birds and use much of
the same command and control infrastructure.
Neither Space Imaging nor Spot
have been willing to say much to the
news media. There have been some
interesting exceptions, however. At
SpaceImaging, the company thus far
has made public only one before-andafter
image collected over Afghanistan.
It illustrates a precision airstrike that
effectively destroyed an Afghan airfield
near Kandahar without damaging
nearby homes. The images and the
analysis that accompanied them were
presented to news organizations as the
product of an independent information
company. In reality, the released
image was calculated to be a “big wet
kiss,” as a satellite industry insider put
it, for the U.S. war effort. (It was also
cleared by the DOD prior to release.)
For the moment, the only source of
current, civilian, high-resolution imagery
from Afghanistan appears to be a
remarkable corporate hybrid whose
lineage exemplifies the world of postcold
war intelligence. ImageSat International—formerly
known as West Indian
Space Inc.—is a partnership of the
state-owned Israeli Aircraft Industries
(IAI), a U.S. software company, and a
second major Israeli defense contractor.
The company operates out of
Cyprus and from tax havens in the
Caribbean and launches its birds from
Siberia aboard leased Russian rockets.
The 2.5-meter to three-meter resolution
Eros 1-A satellite is officially a
civilian “earth resources observation”
tool. A closer look reveals this remote
sensing satellite is designed to specs
closely modeled on Israel’s highly secret
Ofeq-3 spy satellites, which are
also built by IAI. The new company
sells imagery worldwide about two
weeks after it is gathered at
www.westindianspace.com or
www.imagesatintl.com.
Controversy still erupts from time
to time over interpretation of some
imagery, or over these satellites’ potential
threat to national security or
personal privacy. But so far, at least, no
serious abuses of these tools by media
organizations have come to light. When
high-quality imagery has been publicly
available, disagreements over its interpretation
have proven to be high-tech
versions of healthy, democratic discussion
in which society’s best approximation
of truth emerges through a
clash of ideas. The Institute for Science
and International Security’s recent
book, “Solving the North Korean
Nuclear Puzzle,” provides an example.
Imagery and information concerning
North Korea’s missile and nuclear
weapons programs is quite sensitive by
any measure. Nevertheless, the informed
public analysis and debate
about Korea that has been spurred by
imagery from civilian remote sensing
satellites has led to more effective
monitoring of arms limitation agreements
and—at least so far—more effective
means to cope with the arms
race in Asia.
Today’s battle over access to current,
accurate satellite imagery from
Afghanistan is new in many ways, of
course. Yet in a certain sense it remains
similar to public debates over earlier
newsgathering technologies in wartime
such as television, radio and—not really
so long ago—the telegraph. Media
organizations have long preferred to
attribute positive effects of open information
to their responsible handling
of news. The armed forces, on the
other hand, have often traced that result
at least in part to military efforts to
shut down unwanted news reports
before they begin.
It seems clear that spy satellite
tools—regarded by some as neutral
news sources—have already adapted
quite easily to modern public relations.
And, like it or not, the fact that today’s
debate about war coverage focuses on
information collected by satellites is a
sure sign that this new information
tool has come of age. ■
Christopher Simpson specializes in
national security and media literacy
issues at the School of Communication
at American University in
Washington, D.C. He directs the
school’s project on Satellite Imagery
and the News Media. Simpson spent
more than 15 years as a journalist
and is author or editor of six books
on communication, national security,
and human rights.
simpson@american.edu
34 Nieman Reports / Winter 2001