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James E. David

Spies and Shuttles: NASA's Secret Relationships with the DoD and CIA Hardcover – January 27, 2015

by James E. David (Author)

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“A pioneering work. David has performed a herculean task by pulling together for the first time hundreds of formerly classified documents to tell the fascinating story of NASA’s intimate and extremely sensitive relations with the CIA and other branches of the intelligence community over the past fifty-plus years.”—Matthew M. Aid, author of Intel Wars: The Secret History of the Fight against Terror

“Reveals the long, complicated, and fascinating relationship between NASA, the Department of Defense, and the intelligence community.”—Jeffrey T. Richelson, author of Defusing Armageddon

“Casts light on a hitherto deeply shadowed portion of America’s spaceflight history.”—Rick W. Sturdevant, deputy director of history, USAF Space Command at Peterson AFB

“Everyone who’s interested in space history has always known there was a relationship between the U.S. defense community and NASA. The shuttle era was the heyday of that relationship. For the first time, this book really captures just how deep that relationship was even before the shuttle era and how the defense and intelligence communities cooperated with and influenced NASA.”—David Christopher Arnold, editor of Quest: The History of Spaceflight Quarterly

In this real life spy saga, James David digs through newly declassified documents to ultimately reveal how NASA became a strange bedfellow to the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Central Intelligence Agency. Beginning with the establishment of NASA in 1958, he follows the agency through its growth, not only in scope but also in complexity, exposing the ties between spaceflight and the intelligence community that have historically remained unexplored.

David tracks NASA’s early cooperation—supplying cover stories for covert missions, analyzing the Soviet space program, providing weather and other scientific data from its satellites, and monitoring missile tests—and reveals how these extensive interactions eventually devolved into NASA’s reliance on DoD for political and financial support for the Shuttle. This riveting book aptly demonstrates that the hidden connections between these entities were far greater and deeper than previously known.

Print length

370 pages
Language

English
Publisher

University Press of Florida
Publication date

January 27, 2015
Dimensions

6.13 x 0.75 x 9.25 inches
ISBN-10

0813049997
ISBN-13

978-0813049991
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Provides a valuable window into the workings of NASA and the impact that defense and intelligence efforts have on civilian science. . . .A must read for those interested in space history, Cold War security issues, and twentieth-century science and technology.”—H-Net Reviews

“Offers one of the best analyses to date of the long, and often difficult, history of interaction between NASA and the national security community.”—The Space Review

About the Author

James E. David is a curator in the Division of Space History at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ University Press of Florida; Illustrated edition (January 27, 2015)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 370 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0813049997
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0813049991
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.15 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.13 x 0.75 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,539,591 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #922 in Astronautics & Space Flight
- #1,412 in Espionage True Accounts
- #1,886 in Aeronautics & Astronautics (Books)

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Tech Historian

Great research, terrible integration of the facts

Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2015

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This book could have been great.
Five plus stars for the extensive research on the DOD influence on NASAs programs.
If I was grading a thesis it would get an A+ - it provides a comprehensive description of NASA/DOD interactions from the birth of the space age through the shuttle.

The bad news is that the author makes little effort in interpreting the data he has. Most of the text reads like paraphrases of the footnotes. Readers are left to figure out what vague phrases like "strategic operational needs, imagery intelligence platform" were (yes I know, but it surely limits the audience). The same is true for the listing of each sensor on spacecraft - what was the purpose - why did DOD object - what were they doing at the time? Halfway through the book you are left wondering what was the purpose of including every detail of every DOD or NASA meeting. By the end it was simply exhausting. It felt like the author saying, "I found this out so you should read about it."

The notes and bibliography are extensive. Yet it's pretty telling that there's not a single interview listed. The book would have been helped tremendously if the author had talked to some of the players involved (or at least had Jeff Richelson give him some context.) Given most of these systems were over 40 years old quite a few of them have been declassified or at least written about. It could have made a much richer book.

All it would have taken to make this a spectacular book was in each chapter for the author to step back and say, "here's what the CIA/NSA/NRO/Navy, etc. were trying to collect in this timeframe and here's why they objected to these NASA programs." (The information is publicly available. The author has the sources in his bibliography.)

That said, while not a history for a general audience, those who are familiar with DOD jargon, understand the Intelligence Community and are interested in NASA/DOD interactions will get a lot out of the book.

11 people found this helpful

Helpful

Not What I Expected, but Still a Great Book

Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2015

Verified Purchase

When I bought "Spies and Shuttles," I thought it was about the classified Department of Defense (DoD) Space Shuttle missions that successfully deployed several "spy satellites" until the 1986 Challenger disaster forced DoD to move its missions back onto expendable launch vehicles. If I had paid more attention to the subtitle ("NASA's Secret Relationships with the DoD and CIA"), I might have realized that my expectations were false.

First, the Space Shuttle doesn't even appear until over halfway into the book. Up to that point, the story is about the NASA/DoD programmatic, administrative and technical relationships on the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Skylab programs, as well as a vast array of unmanned satellites such as Tiros and Landsat. This is interesting stuff, true, but it's not what the title led me to expect. Second--and I always do this immediately with any spaceflight book I buy--I checked the index for the names of certain classified spacecraft that I know were launched on the Shuttle. I found none of them--not even the one or two that are in the public record (although not really declassified). This quote from page 240 pretty much captures the level of detail included for DoD Shuttle missions: "The DoD also flew its final eight dedicated missions from December 1988 until December 1992. The first five reportedly launched imagery or signals intelligence satellites."

While I was expecting, and hoping for, an entire book expounding on the topic of those two sentences, "Spies and Shuttles" is not such a book. Of course, I realize most of the information on DoD Shuttle flights remains highly classified. Nevertheless, I expected something along the lines of " Deep Black: Space Espionage and National Security " or " Guardians: Strategic Reconnaissance Satellites " in terms of "newly declassified" technical detail on these missions.

However, with that said, and judging it by what it IS and not by what I thought it would be, "Spies and Shuttles" is an extremely good book that fills in gaps in the historical record of how NASA and the U.S. military and intelligence communities worked together behind the scenes since virtually the inception of spaceflight. On its own terms, "Spies and Shuttles" deserves a place in every space enthusiast's bookcase.

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