Fight Over Secret Satellite Program Is Revived

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http://public.cq.com/docs/cqt/news110-000002537553.html

Fight Over Secret Satellite Program Is Revived
By Tim Starks, CQ Staff

It has been more than two and a half years since John D. Rockefeller IV and Ron Wyden took to the Senate floor to criticize a secret intelligence program that, they said, was inefficient, too expensive and, in any case, unnecessary.

The senators didn’t name the project, but at the time, it was widely identified as the successor to the “Misty” program of stealth satellites that cannot be detected in orbit. Republican leaders considered disciplinary action against the senators for talking about a secret program — even though they didn’t identify it.

Now, Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, has done essentially the same thing the senators did back then: talked about a major spy program without indicating which one.

And McConnell didn’t just criticize it; he said he was killing it.

At a June 19 conference, McConnell told the audience that one piece of advice he had received upon taking the job this year was to “kill a multibillion dollar program. I’ve done that, but word isn’t out yet.” He did not answer a reporter’s question about which program he had killed.

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