ITEC Study of Zapruder Film

[William Kelly]

One day I got a phone call from Ray Martell, who said he once worked at ITEK, a major technology company that I was familair with from CBS hiring them to do some photo analysis of the Zapruder film to see if the direction of the head shot could be determined.

The ITEC study is mentioned in the transcript of the HSCA Critics Conference 17 Sept. 1977, p. 136.

Martell said that ITEK, when he worked there, analyzed the Zapruder film. He said that while he didn't personally work on this analysis, he knew those who did and they told him that there was some sign of gunsmoke from the grassy knoll.

Martell said that at the very end of the film, where Zapruder pans to the right and follows the Presidential limo into the Triple Underpass, there is a section of the last dozen or so frames that includes the fence on the grassy knoll.

Martell said they looked closely at these frames and discovered that, "There was evidence of a smoke-like presence at the time the Zapruder film was taken."

According to Martell: "I was there (ITEC) in 1963-65, so it must have happened then. Their home office was in Lexington, Massachusetts, but the buildings I worked in were in Burlington, the next town over, the 128^th Aerospace….back in the 1960s. Prior to ITEC I worked for Sylvania and afterward I went to the American Institute of Research."

"Microdensitromity, is an analysis of the pictils," he explained, and that's what they were doing.

"The word around the engineering department was that they had deduced that there was evidence of smoke that could be attributed to a gunshot, that would be the assumption. I believe that it was localized, within a particular locality set up on an x-y coordinate system. They go in and very carefully move their apperatures and very accurately measure light intensity. Today they have various computer techniques."

Martell: "ITEC was in competition with Perk and Elmer down in Connecticut. It was a very high tech company, the U2 cameras, surveillance cameras, early days of telescopes for surveillance systems from space."

Here's some still pictures from Zapruder and we're talking about the last dozen or so frames.

Is there anything to this or is it BS?

http://www.jfkchat.com/zapruder/page_0001.html

http://www.assassinationresearch.com/zfilm/

Martell said he worked on the EGIS project and for the military.

"I was with the Army Security Agency, Ft. Devons, Mass., a training center that has now moved to I think Texas. NSA was basically a holding company. The NSA had three military collectors, Naval Security Service, Army Security Agency and Air Force Security Service. Each of these was a collection agency, each for their own area of interest, and all of their intelligence was funneled back to the National Security Agency. That's the way it was back in the 1960s. After that the CIA and FBI got into the intelligence collection business and then you had the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency. Now in the last 30 years they've developed and you have something like 35 intelligence collection agencies that spend their time falling over each other, obstfuscating whatever is out there. But in the early day there was the NSA, which was a national holding agency, which was separate from the CIA and FBI. It was strictly a national collection agency for the collection of communications intelligence. It is now at Ft. Meade, where they moved in the 1950s, but before that they were in D.C. Arlington Hall Station in Arlington, Virginia, the HQ seat of the Army Security Agency. In those days nobody was suppose to even know of the existence of this, none of my family knew, we just worked for the Army. What it looks like now, I don't know except that it's an organizational mess."

"A lot of countries did not have the technology to do this, though Germany, Great Britain, they did it, but certainly won't admit they did this."

"There's a branch within the security service, COMSEC, Communications Security, there was COMINT, Communications Intelligence, responsible for gathering information from whatever sources they were monitoring. Communications Security was designed to protect the cover of what they were doing, and they did monitor our own stuff. The reason for that was to determine if they were using procedures, to identify whether the lines were being tapped, if there were evesdropper, etc.

Edited April 11, 2009 by William Kelly

[Robert Howard]

One day I got a phone call from Ray Martell, who said he once worked at ITEK, a major technology company that I was familair with from CBS hiring them to do some photo analysis of the Zapruder film to see if the direction of the head shot could be determined.

The ITEC study is mentioned in the transcript of the HSCA Critics Conference 17 Sept. 1977, p. 136.

Martell said that ITEK, when he worked there, analyzed the Zapruder film. He said that while he didn't personally work on this analysis, he knew those who did and they told him that there was some sign of gunsmoke from the grassy knoll.

Martell said that at the very end of the film, where Zapruder pans to the right and follows the Presidential limo into the Triple Underpass, there is a section of the last dozen or so frames that includes the fence on the grassy knoll.

Martell said they looked closely at these frames and discovered that, "There was evidence of a smoke-like presence at the time the Zapruder film was taken."

According to Martell: "I was there (ITEC) in 1963-65, so it must have happened then. Their home office was in Lexington, Massachusetts, but the buildings I worked in were in Burlington, the next town over, the 128^th Aerospace….back in the 1960s. Prior to ITEC I worked for Sylvania and afterward I went to the American Institute of Research."

"Microdensitromity, is an analysis of the pictils," he explained, and that's what they were doing.

"The word around the engineering department was that they had deduced that there was evidence of smoke that could be attributed to a gunshot, that would be the assumption. I believe that it was localized, within a particular locality set up on an x-y coordinate system. They go in and very carefully move their apperatures and very accurately measure light intensity. Today they have various computer techniques."

Martell: "ITEC was in competition with Perk and Elmer down in Connecticut. It was a very high tech company, the U2 cameras, surveillance cameras, early days of telescopes for surveillance systems from space."

Here's some still pictures from Zapruder and we're talking about the last dozen or so frames.

Is there anything to this or is it BS?

http://www.jfkchat.com/zapruder/page_0001.html

http://www.assassinationresearch.com/zfilm/

Martell said he worked on the EGIS project and for the military.

"I was with the Army Security Agency, Ft. Devons, Mass., a training center that has now moved to I think Texas. NSA was basically a holding company. The NSA had three military collectors, Naval Security Service, Army Security Agency and Air Force Security Service. Each of these was a collection agency, each for their own area of interest, and all of their intelligence was funneled back to the National Security Agency. That's the way it was back in the 1960s. After that the CIA and FBI got into the intelligence collection business and then you had the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency. Now in the last 30 years they've developed and you have something like 35 intelligence collection agencies that spend their time falling over each other, obstfuscating whatever is out there. But in the early day there was the NSA, which was a national holding agency, which was separate from the CIA and FBI. It was strictly a national collection agency for the collection of communications intelligence. It is now at Ft. Meade, where they moved in the 1950s, but before that they were in D.C. Arlington Hall Station in Arlington, Virginia, the HQ seat of the Army Security Agency. In those days nobody was suppose to even know of the existence of this, none of my family knew, we just worked for the Army. What it looks like now, I don't know except that it's an organizational mess."

"A lot of countries did not have the technology to do this, though Germany, Great Britain, they did it, but certainly won't admit they did this."

"There's a branch within the security service, COMSEC, Communications Security, there was COMINT, Communications Intelligence, responsible for gathering information from whatever sources they were monitoring. Communications Security was designed to protect the cover of what they were doing, and they did monitor our own stuff. The reason for that was to determine if they were using procedures, to identify whether the lines were being tapped, if there were evesdropper, etc.

Mary Ferrell's website has at least three documents that would appear to be relevant to this thread.

They are listed below.

JOHN KENNEDY ASSASSINATION FILM ANALYSIS 99 Pages

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/....do?docId=60448

JOHN KENNEDY ASSASSINATION FILM ANALYSIS 10 pages

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/....do?docId=60449

JOHN KENNEDY ASSASSINATION FILM ANALYSIS 12 pages

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/....do?docId=60450

I have not viewed these documents, but 121 pages of material, should hopefully provide additional insights into the information you have posted here.

[William Kelly]

One day I got a phone call from Ray Martell, who said he once worked at ITEK, a major technology company that I was familair with from CBS hiring them to do some photo analysis of the Zapruder film to see if the direction of the head shot could be determined.

The ITEC study is mentioned in the transcript of the HSCA Critics Conference 17 Sept. 1977, p. 136.

Martell said that ITEK, when he worked there, analyzed the Zapruder film. He said that while he didn't personally work on this analysis, he knew those who did and they told him that there was some sign of gunsmoke from the grassy knoll.

Martell said that at the very end of the film, where Zapruder pans to the right and follows the Presidential limo into the Triple Underpass, there is a section of the last dozen or so frames that includes the fence on the grassy knoll.

Martell said they looked closely at these frames and discovered that, "There was evidence of a smoke-like presence at the time the Zapruder film was taken."

According to Martell: "I was there (ITEC) in 1963-65, so it must have happened then. Their home office was in Lexington, Massachusetts, but the buildings I worked in were in Burlington, the next town over, the 128^th Aerospace….back in the 1960s. Prior to ITEC I worked for Sylvania and afterward I went to the American Institute of Research."

"Microdensitromity, is an analysis of the pictils," he explained, and that's what they were doing.

"The word around the engineering department was that they had deduced that there was evidence of smoke that could be attributed to a gunshot, that would be the assumption. I believe that it was localized, within a particular locality set up on an x-y coordinate system. They go in and very carefully move their apperatures and very accurately measure light intensity. Today they have various computer techniques."

Martell: "ITEC was in competition with Perk and Elmer down in Connecticut. It was a very high tech company, the U2 cameras, surveillance cameras, early days of telescopes for surveillance systems from space."

Here's some still pictures from Zapruder and we're talking about the last dozen or so frames.

Is there anything to this or is it BS?

http://www.jfkchat.com/zapruder/page_0001.html

http://www.assassinationresearch.com/zfilm/

Martell said he worked on the EGIS project and for the military.

"I was with the Army Security Agency, Ft. Devons, Mass., a training center that has now moved to I think Texas. NSA was basically a holding company. The NSA had three military collectors, Naval Security Service, Army Security Agency and Air Force Security Service. Each of these was a collection agency, each for their own area of interest, and all of their intelligence was funneled back to the National Security Agency. That's the way it was back in the 1960s. After that the CIA and FBI got into the intelligence collection business and then you had the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency. Now in the last 30 years they've developed and you have something like 35 intelligence collection agencies that spend their time falling over each other, obstfuscating whatever is out there. But in the early day there was the NSA, which was a national holding agency, which was separate from the CIA and FBI. It was strictly a national collection agency for the collection of communications intelligence. It is now at Ft. Meade, where they moved in the 1950s, but before that they were in D.C. Arlington Hall Station in Arlington, Virginia, the HQ seat of the Army Security Agency. In those days nobody was suppose to even know of the existence of this, none of my family knew, we just worked for the Army. What it looks like now, I don't know except that it's an organizational mess."

"A lot of countries did not have the technology to do this, though Germany, Great Britain, they did it, but certainly won't admit they did this."

"There's a branch within the security service, COMSEC, Communications Security, there was COMINT, Communications Intelligence, responsible for gathering information from whatever sources they were monitoring. Communications Security was designed to protect the cover of what they were doing, and they did monitor our own stuff. The reason for that was to determine if they were using procedures, to identify whether the lines were being tapped, if there were evesdropper, etc.

Mary Ferrell's website has at least three documents that would appear to be relevant to this thread.

They are listed below.

JOHN KENNEDY ASSASSINATION FILM ANALYSIS 99 Pages

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/....do?docId=60448

JOHN KENNEDY ASSASSINATION FILM ANALYSIS 10 pages

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/....do?docId=60449

JOHN KENNEDY ASSASSINATION FILM ANALYSIS 12 pages

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/....do?docId=60450

I have not viewed these documents, but 121 pages of material, should hopefully provide additional insights into the information you have posted here.

Thanks for those links Robert. I'll check them out when I get a chance.

Where are all the people who make such a fuss over the Zapruder film?

They don't want to look there? Was Martell pulling my leg?

The only reference I could find on ITEK in Mary Ferrell was in the course of G. Robert Blakey's pow wow with some critics - Paul Hoch, Tink Thompson, et al.

I suppose the ITEK records are among the CBS News files, that they were suppose to donate to the NARA JFK Ass Records Collection. Did they ever do that?

Also, I looked up the Venezuelan Arms Cache for NANA records but the only two I found were pretty much unreadable. Both CIA cables, one seems to be incredulous that its being taken seriously and the other a very long 25 page cable calling for Wisner's Wurlitzer to play an Opera.

BK

[John Dolva]

Bill, could you tell how to get a copy of the 25 page opera cable, please?

edit: add: Thank you, Bill. (Still digesting this thread, as likely others are too.)

Edited April 19, 2009 by John Dolva

[William Kelly]

Bill, could you tell how to get a copy of the 25 page opera cable, please?

Hey John,

While I am still anxious to hear from all the Zapruder film advocates on what ITEK studied and concluded, I will post the opera cable in the Venezuelan Arms Cache thread:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...mp;#entry165973

BK

[Craig Lamson]

Bill, could you tell how to get a copy of the 25 page opera cable, please?

Hey John,

While I am still anxious to hear from all the Zapruder film advocates on what ITEK studied and concluded, I will post the opera cable in the Venezuelan Arms Cache thread:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...mp;#entry165973

BK

If I correctly remember my alteration lore, ITEK is a CIA shill, so not reliable?

[sarcasm]In any case I did read the 10 page summary, and it sure seems like CIA shill stuff to me [/sarcasm]

[David G. Healy]

Bill, could you tell how to get a copy of the 25 page opera cable, please?

Hey John,

While I am still anxious to hear from all the Zapruder film advocates on what ITEK studied and concluded, I will post the opera cable in the Venezuelan Arms Cache thread:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...mp;#entry165973

BK

If I correctly remember my alteration lore, ITEK is a CIA shill, so not reliable?

[sarcasm]In any case I did read the 10 page summary, and it sure seems like CIA shill stuff to me [/sarcasm]

A bit off topic, sorry Bill: have you Craig, ever started a thread of your own (other than one showing off limited photo & lighting skills, of course)?

[Craig Lamson]

Bill, could you tell how to get a copy of the 25 page opera cable, please?

Hey John,

While I am still anxious to hear from all the Zapruder film advocates on what ITEK studied and concluded, I will post the opera cable in the Venezuelan Arms Cache thread:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...mp;#entry165973

BK

If I correctly remember my alteration lore, ITEK is a CIA shill, so not reliable?

[sarcasm]In any case I did read the 10 page summary, and it sure seems like CIA shill stuff to me [/sarcasm]

A bit off topic, sorry Bill: have you Craig, ever started a thread of your own (other than one showing off limited photo & lighting skills, of course)?

Showing the world the depth of your ineptitude again. That's why you are no longer relevent. Crawl back into the doghouse, mutt.

Research is your friend, do some sometime....

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?act=Search

And of course my photo skills are so limited that I have buried old John Costella PhD, under a rock somewhere in OZ and you smucks can't find a single person to dig his butt out of the hole he dug...

www.craiglamson.com/costella.htm

www.craiglamson.com/apollo.htm

Edited April 19, 2009 by Craig Lamson

[William Kelly]

Is it ITEC or ITEK?

Did the government engage them or did CBS?

Is there anything to the "smoke on the grassy knoll", or what?

And is there a connecton between ITEC/K and the U2 camera?

Thanks,

to anybody who knows or cares,

BK

[Joel D. Gruhn]

Is it ITEC or ITEK?

Did the government engage them or did CBS?

Is there anything to the "smoke on the grassy knoll", or what?

And is there a connecton between ITEC/K and the U2 camera?

Thanks,

to anybody who knows or cares,

BK

I believe it would have been Itek, a bunch of very savvy optical engineers; they designed photo reconnasence cameras such as the CORONA. I had a friend who worked there in mid '70's at the California office near Moffitt Field where they serviced the U2 cameras. They would be good at microdensitometry, where the pixels are very very small.

The wikipedia page offers a fairly complete history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itek

Joel

[William Kelly]

Is it ITEC or ITEK?

Did the government engage them or did CBS?

Is there anything to the "smoke on the grassy knoll", or what?

And is there a connecton between ITEC/K and the U2 camera?

Thanks,

to anybody who knows or cares,

BK

I believe it would have been Itek, a bunch of very savvy optical engineers; they designed photo reconnasence cameras such as the CORONA. I had a friend who worked there in mid '70's at the California office near Moffitt Field where they serviced the U2 cameras. They would be good at microdensitometry, where the pixels are very very small.

The wikipedia page offers a fairly complete history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itek

Joel

Hey, Thanks Joel,

But as Don Bohning says in Distorting History, "The same erroneous information on Operation 40 and Goss - including the alleged picture - found on the Simkin website, also has been posted on the website of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. (Many universities will not accept any references in student research papers attributed to Wikipedia because of its factual unreliability. Florida International University in Miami, for example, has a banner hanging in its student union building informing students of that.)"

This information on the company history is certainly interesting, and certainly confirms that if they discovered evidence of a grassy knoll gunshot, then it must be true.

Now there's going to be a banner at U of M that reads: "Sparticus and the Education Forum are not reliable sources for term papers."

Itek

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Itek Corporation was a former US defense contractor that initially specialized in the field of camera systems for spy satellites. In the early 1960s they built a conglomerate in a fashion similar to LTV or Litton, during which time they developed the first CAD system and explored optical disk technology. These efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, and the company shed divisions to various companies, returning to its roots in the reconnaissance market. The remaining portions were eventually purchased by Litton in 1983, and then Hughes in 1996.

History

Beginnings

Richard Leghorn was a former US Air Force aerial reconnaissance expert who had first proposed flying reconnaissance missions over enemy territory in peacetime.[1] Leghorn left the Air Force to become head of Eastman Kodak's European division,[2] and started writing about the "Open Skies" proposal, which he strongly supported.

Open Skies proposed to allow any signing nation to overfly any other, which Leghorn believed would lower international tensions by allowing countries to verify the actions of their adversaries. Eisenhower raised the issue at the 1955 Geneva summit meetings as a way to reduce mutual fears of a surprise attack.[3] At the time, the US would have had a huge advantage if Open Skies was adopted, as their numerous European and Asian airbases would allow them access to the Soviet heartland, while the lack of USSR bases in the Americas - this being prior to the Cuban Revolution - would have made the treaty an empty promise. Unsurprisingly, the Soviets opposed Open Skies, something Eisenhower later admitted he fully expected.

While Leghorn's writings on the topic were being widely read, he was secretly informed that the US had already taken him up on his initial proposal, and the US Air Force (and Royal Air Force) were in the process of flying reconnaissance flights over the USSR.[1]

Aware that this would generate vast amounts of photography over long periods of time, Leghorn realized that a major problem would be storing the resulting imagery and allowing it to be easily retrieved for study. Kodak was in the process of introducing its "Minicard" aperture card product, and Leghorn felt this was a natural solution for the problem.[4]

Leghorn felt he could do one better by combining it with machinery dedicated to the task of indexing the information required for reconnaissance. Leghorn contacted his long-time friend Theodore "Teddy" Walkowicz about forming a new company to build such a machine for the Air Force. Walkowicz was an associate of venture capitalist Laurance Rockefeller, and eventually secured a seed loan for $600,000 in exchange for a directorship. Leghorn became president of the new company, whose ITEK name was a phonetic short form of "information technology".[2] Since Leghorn formerly worked at Kodak, there is speculation that the company name was an acronym for "I Took Eastman Kodak".[5]

CORONA

Only weeks after the company formed in late 1957, Leghorn took it in an entirely different direction by purchasing the Boston University Physical Research Laboratory (BUPRL), which researched reconnaissance cameras. BURPL was designing the HYAC-1 camera for the USAF's reconnaissance balloon efforts, cameras that would eventually fly on the WS-461L balloons during 1957.[6] NOo at Itek, the company won contracts for similar cameras for aircraft like the U-2 and SR-71.

The CIA quickly informed them of their top secret CORONA to produce the first spy satellites, and asked them to bid on the camera systems. Itek returned a design that used a rotating mirror to record panoramic swaths of the ground. Film was delivered from a canister and wrapped around a cylindrical window that allowed the maximum length of film to be used in a single exposure, increasing resolution. The rotation of the mirror was timed to properly account for the movement of the satellite to avoid stretching out the images on-film. The result was a single long photograph showing a "strip" of land. At the time, the CIA had already contracted Fairchild Camera and Instrument to supply cameras, but Itek's submission was technically superior and won them the contract in March or April 1958.[7] In order to soften the blow, the CIA had Fairchild build the devices until Itek could bring up its own manufacturing capabilities.

Leghorn was upset by the terms of the agreement, and at one point in 1959 issued a "stop work" order on the project in order to change its terms.[8] The CIA quickly acquiesced, although they were spooked by the event. Had Itek lost the CORONA contract, it was highly likely that the company would have collapsed. This possibility so worried the CIA that they arranged a personal meeting between Rockefeller and the CIA's chief of technical development, Richard Bissell, to inform Rockefeller of the CORONA project and make him aware that national security rested on the company's well-being.

Shortly after winning CORONA, Itek also won the contract for the Air Force's own satellite program, SAMOS. SAMOS originally envisioned a semi-real-time system that downloaded imagery via an onboard scanner, but later expanded to envision a number of different imaging systems based on a single airframe. One of these, E-5, was a project to provide low-resolution wide-area imagery for mapping purposes, which the Air Force needed to plan ingress routes for their bombers during a hot war. The SAMOS project was eventually abandoned, leaving several of the E-5 cameras in storage at a Lockheed facility.[9]

Diversification efforts

After winning the CORONA contract, Itek quickly grew from the executive staff to a company employing over a hundred scientists, engineers, and technicians. After only a year its revenues were in the millions, and the company started the process of raising an initial public offering. In public the company stated that while their work was classified, they were working in the field of "information management" (some writers have commented that this may be the first use of the term).[1] The real reasons for this growth - the BURPL purchase - remained secret, so on paper it appeared that Itek's information systems were generating huge orders that demanded a large staff. Writers speculated that the military might allow the company to release their work to the public, making the company highly valuable. Over the space of a few months, the value of the stock grew from $2 to $255, triggering a 5-for-1 split.[2]

Using the newly inflated value of their stock, Leghorn started an aggressive diversification effort. In 1960 Leghorn agreed to fund development of a computerized drafting system, EDM, based on the PDP-1 that had earlier been experimented on at MIT.[10] The same year he arranged a merger with Hermes Electronics (originally Hycon Eastern), makers of various military communications systems. This was followed by the 1961 purchase of Photostat Corp., maker of offset printing systems using Kodak patents.[2] In 1962 he lured Gilbert King away from IBM, where he had worked on the Automatic Language Translator and had developed the world's only working optical disk.[11] Meanwhile, work continued on the original archiving system, but the company proved unable to deliver a working product.

Meanwhile none of Itek's purchases turned into commercial successes, and in 1961 Itek reported a $2,500,000 loss. Its stock began to drop, hitting a low of $9.50.[2] In spite of the CIA's warnings, Rockefeller did little to address these problems, which grew out of control. Frustrated by Leghorn ignoring the reconnaissance side of the company in favor of the continuing string of information projects, the engineers revolted and demanded that Leghorn be removed. Instead, Walkowicz brought in Franklin Lindsay, a former CIA operative, to help Leghorn get the company back on track.[2] This effort backfired, and in May 1962 Leghorn was pushed out in favor of Lindsay, who became Itek's president and CEO.

With Lindsay at the helm, Itek returned to focussing mostly on reconnaissance efforts, although by this point their photocopying machines were starting to become successful as well.[2] As a side-effect of this newfound focus, Lindsay shed a number of Leghorn's acquisitions. The first to go was the EDM project in 1962, which ironically became a profitable division of Control Data as their Digigraphics system.[10]

By 1964 Lindsay had returned the company to profitability. By this time the CORONA program had overcome its initial failures and turned into an enormous success. Itek would eventually deliver about 200 panoramic cameras for the CORONA program. A further success involved the E-5 cameras originally built for the SAMOS project. In 1961 CORONA delivered low-resolution imagery of a new installation that became known as the "Tallinn line". A debate broke out over their significance; some suggested that it was an antiballistic missile installation using the SA-5 Gammon missile, while others pointed out that the resolution was too low to say anything of the sort. A rush effort started at Lockheed to adapt the E-5 missile to the existing CORONA airframe, resulting in the LANYARD project, today known as the KH-6 "Hexagon". The project was, generally, a failure.[9]

Formation of the NRO

Both the CIA and Air Force continued development of new satellite systems, which led to concerns about the proper use of these exothermally valuable, and expensive, resources. These concerns eventually led to the formation of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in 1961, with the overall mission of ensuring that satellite data was distributed properly, and that the satellite time was not wasted, either by photographing the same area twice, or by allowing an area of interest to be photographed by the first available means. Although the Air Force was able to work within the new environment without any apparent problems, creation of the NRO led to serious political infighting with the CIA.[12]

In 1963 Albert "Bud" Wheelon took over from Bissell as the CIA's chief of technology development. Unlike Bissell, who worked almost entirely with outside contractors, Wheelon started internalizing the process and built up a much larger department.[1] In October 1963 he suggested forming the "Satellite Photography Working Group" to study their current efforts and suggest improvements. Under the new agreements, the NRO was supposed to supply funding for the effort, and on 18 November they agreed. In a following experiment the team attempted to determine the optimal resolution for satellite photography, degrading a series of high-quality photographs in stages to see how much information could be pulled from them at different levels of detail. The results strongly suggested building a new satellite with a 2 foot resolution, something what would not be able to be done by improving the existing CORONA system, which offered 10-25 foot resolution. The NRO declined to offer funding for the satellite, however, so Wheelon arranged funding from its own budget and started the "FULCRUM" effort.[13]

When news of the FULCRUM efforts later found their way to the NRO, a major fight broke out that eventually landed on the desk of Robert McNamara. NRO was supposed to be in charge of coordinating development, and was at that point funding development of the Air Force's 18-inch resolution design, KH-7 "GAMBIT". Stung by the outcome, the project suffered a further setback when Itek announced that they would no longer work on FULCRUM's camera because of a demand that they felt was unreasonable,[14] although other sources suggested it was the final result of a long stream of demands and design changes coming from the newly-enlarged CIA division. Wheelon retaliated by handing the contract to Perkin-Elmer, which delivered the cameras for what would become the successful KH-9 "HEXAGON", better known as "Big Bird".[1]

There are two different versions of the story of what followed. Richelson states that the NRO quickly handed Itek a contract for their own "S-2" system, a follow-on to the Air Force's troubled SAMOS program. This project had originally selected a Kodak camera, and changed to an Itek design after their FULCRUM announcement.[15] He notes the suggestion that the offer was pre-arranged, in order to deprive the CIA of their camera, and thereby doom the FULCRUM effort. Lewis states that both the FULCRUM and S-2 projects had already been handed to Itek, and it was the internal power struggles between the CIA and NRO that led to Wheelon's stream of demands as punishment for accepting the S2 work.[1] Whatever the story, Itek was no longer the CIA's primary supplier after CORONA and LANYARD ended, allowing Perkin-Elmer to become a major supplier. S-2 was later downgraded.

Through the 1970s

Into this void came a number of different projects. One of these was the KA-80 "Optical Bar Camera" that flew on both the U-2 and SR-71, as well as a further development of the mapping camera from SAMOS/LANYARD that was used on some of the Big Birds. Itek also found a customer for their panoramic cameras with NASA, who used them both on Project Apollo for mapping the lunar surface,[16] as well as Project Viking's Mars landers.[17] Later they built the back-up mirror for the Hubble Space Telescope as well as portions of the Keck Telescope and similar projects.

During the same period, Itek's Graphic Systems division, originally supplying the printing systems, had greatly diversified....

Litton purchase

In 1982 Litton Industries was attempting to diversify their military holdings, and engaged Lehman Brothers to arrange the purchase of a company specializing in electronic warfare. Lehman found a number of companies that Litton might be interested in, including Itek, presenting a report on 20 September 1982. In October, Litton started purchasing Itek stock in the market in an effort to gain control of about 4.9% of the common shares before making a friendly takeover offer.[18]

On 23 November the chairmen of the two companies met, and by January 1983 the negotiations had progressed to the point of making a formal offer. At the advice of Lehman Brothers, Litton made an offer of the current market price plus a 50% premium. During this period the value of Itek stock was rising, so Litton had to up their offer on several occasions. Finally, on 12 January 1982, Litton made an offer of $48, which succeeded on 4 March 4 1983.[18] Itek became Litton's Itek Division, although the Itek Graphic Systems division was sold off in 1985.[19]

In 1986 it was revealed that a Lehman Brothers trader had been purchasing Itek stock during the negotiations, part of a wider insider trading scandal. Ira Sokolow, part of the Lehman team arranging the Itek purchase, had leaked information about the deal to another Lehman employee, Dennis Levine. They agreed to make insider trades to drive up the stock price and then split the profits. Levine and other traders at Lehman (either tipped off or simply following Levine's trades) started collecting Itek stock and were thus rewarded with part of the 50% premium when the deal closed.[20]

Litton later sued Lehman, claiming that their purchase would have been at a lower price had the insider trading not occurred. The stock price rose from $26 to $33 during this period, meaning that had the price stayed at $26 a fair offer would have been $39. A lengthy series of court cases followed.[18]

[edit]Hughes purchase

Litton downsized dramatically in the 1990s, selling off many of its components. In 1996 Hughes Electronics purchased what was then left of Itek, Itek Optical Systems.[21] At the time they announced that Itek's own facilities in Lexington, MA and fold it into their own Hughes Danbury Optical Systems in Danbury, CT.

References

Notes

^ Lewis, 2002

^ Time, 1963

^ "This Day in History 1955: Eisenhower presents his 'Open Skies' plan"

^ Tyler et all

^ DeepChip, Howard Landman

^ Robert Craig Johnson, "Genetrix, WS-461L, and Chaika: Cold War Balloons and Balloon Fighters", 1999

^ Richelson, pg. 24

^ Richelson, pg. 25

^ a b Richelson, pg. 57

^ a b Kosowsky, 2006

^ John Hutchins (ed), "Gilbert W. King and the IBM-USAF Translator", Early Years in Machine Translation, Joh Benjamins, 2000, ISBN 902724586X (RADC-TDR-62-105)

^ Richelson, pg. 122

^ Richelson, pg. 125

^ Richelson, pg. 127

^ Richelson, pg. 127

^ "The ITEK Panoramic Camera", NASA

^ "SP-425 The Martian Landscape - Cameras Without Pictures", NASA

^ a b c 967 F.2d 742

^ "Litton Set to Sell Itek Graphic Unit", The New York Times, 14 February 1985

^ Ronald Sullivan, "Litton Wins Court Round In Itek Case", The New York Times, 19 June 1992

^ "Hughes acquires Itek Optical Systems from Litton Industries", Laser Focus World, 1 January 1996

Bibliography

Jonathan Lewis, "Spy Capitalism: Itek and the CIA", Yale University Press, 2002, ISBN 0300091923

Jeffrey Richelson, "The Wizards of Langley: Inside the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology", Westview Press, 2002, ISBN 0813340594

"LITTON INDUSTRIES, INC., v. LEHMAN BROTHERS KUHN LOEB", 967 F.2d 742

"Itek Refocused", Time 8 November 1963

"Litton's Itek division revealed as supplier of space cameras for first U.S. spy satellites", Business Wire, 23 May 1995

David Weisberg, "The First Commercial CAD System", The Engineering Design Revolution, 2006

David Kosowsky, "Alumni Profiles", RLE currents, MIT, Fall 1996 pg. 10

[edit]Further reading

A.W. Tyler, W.C. Myers and J.W. Kuipers, "The Application of the Kodak Minicard System to Problems of Documentation", American Documentation, 6:1, (January 1955), pp. 18-30

James Marquardt, "Transparency and Security Competition: Open Skies and America's Cold War Statecraft, 1948-1960", Journal of Cold War Studies, Volume 9 Number 1 (Winter 2007), pp. 55-87

Categories: Defense companies of the United States | Defunct companies

[William Kelly]

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB...index.htm#doc35

Document 3: Richard Leghorn, "Political Action and Satellite Reconnaissance," April 24, 1959. Unclassified

Source: Dwight D. Eisenhower Library

The R.S.L. at the end of the memo refers to Richard S. Leghorn, one of the fathers of strategic aerial and satellite reconnaissance. Leghorn at this time was head of the Itek Corporation - the contractor that developed the reconnaissance camera for the CORONA system. As did SNIE 100-6-58 (Document 2), this memo addresses the issue of the possible political vulnerability of U.S. reconnaissance satellite programs. Leghorn argues that the "espionage" context in which U.S. programs were viewed - a result of the secrecy attached to the programs - is the "worst possible" context from the standpoint of political vulnerability and suggests the need for an "imaginative political action program" as a means of reducing the program's political vulnerability.