American Cartographic Transformations During the Cold War John Cloud

American Cartographic Transformations during the Cold War John Cloud ABSTRACT: A great convergence of cartography, secrecy, and power occurred during the Cold War. In the American case, a complex series of interactions between secret and classified programs and institutions and their publicly accessible counterparts accomplished both traditional and novel objectives of military geographic intelligence. This process also yielded the World Geodetic System, a mass- centered “figure of the earth” at accuracies adequate for warfare with intercontinental ballistic missiles. A structural and institutional separation developed between enterprises charged with overhead data acquisition systems, which were classified at increasingly high levels of secrecy, and those responsible for data reduction, analysis, and mapping systems, which remained largely unclassified and publicly accessible, in part to conceal the classified data acquisition systems. This structural separation desta- bilized photogrammetric mapping by displacing systems that privileged dimensional stability with systems that privileged novel sensor types more appropriate to Cold War geo-political objectives and constraints. Eventually, photogrammetric mapping systems were re-stabilized by successfully implement- ing analytical solutions imposed in digital mapping and data management systems. This achievement re-privileged dimensional stability, now redefined to the new media of geo-referenced digital data. In the early 1970s these developments culminated in advanced research projects of Military Geographic Intelligence Systems (MGIS). Their deployment in the Vietnam War was both their apex and their undoing. In the aftermath, classified mapping and database systems diverged from civilian versions of MGIS, which became known as Geographic Information Systems (GIS). KEYWORDS: Military geographic information; panoramic cameras; terrain analysis; World Geodetic System; analytical solutions; photogrammetry; Intelligence Community; Cold War; Vietnam War; Military-Industrial-Academic Complex; Talent-Keyhole; Corona; data acquisition; data reduction Cartography, Secrecy, • The rapidly evolving technologies of photogrammetry and overhead observation, the latter and Power variously termed reconnaissance, earth-resource surveys, and finally remote sensing; and ost of the fundamental technologies • National and international mapping programs of contemporary American cartogra- of the U.S. military and intelligence community phy were devised in the last half of during the period between the Korean War and Mthe twentieth century and shaped by the exigen- the Vietnam War, with particular regard to the cies and opportunities of the Cold War. The tech- convergence of geo-positioning, photogramme- nologies and their data sources were often secret, try, and observation systems, which culminated at least initially. The organizations that developed in projects of Military Geographic Intelligence and used these technologies evolved from clas- Systems (MGIS). sified programs to increasingly unclassified and Three critical themes organize the disparate accessible enterprises. This essay explores the his- enterprises, programs, and objectives of this great tories of three closely related suites of geo-spatial endeavor. The first of these is the complex rela- sciences and technologies and their applications: tionship between cartography and secrecy. It has • The technologies for extending geodetic control been argued that cartography is primarily a form and geo-positioning, which culminated in the of political discourse concerned with the acquisi- World Geodetic System (WGS) terrestrial refer- tion and maintenance of power (Harley 2001, p. ence frame and its associated technologies for 85). Harley analyzed early modern maps and accurate point positioning and targeting; their “silences,” which were both intentional and epistemological. The Cold War was prosecuted by John Cloud is a postdoctoral research associate in the Science a complex array of institutions and programs with and Technology Studies Department and the Peace Studies differing access to secret data. In the American Program at Cornell University, 130 Uris Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853, case, an intelligence organization is designated USA. E-mail: <[email protected]>. as such because it possesses the legal authority to Cartography and Geographic Information Science, Vol. 29, No. 3, 2002, pp. 261-282 classify and declassify information. Intelligence at The third theme of the essay is that of power and a certain level of classification can be SECRET1, but its own undoing. This accounts for the subsequent one of the major themes of this story is that by no divergence of the geo-spatial disciplines once means were American secrets confined to intelli- again, and also for the confounding of their Cold gence organizations. Instead, a complex and quite War origins that is at the heart of the incomplete productive ethnography of exchanges between and often erroneous histories that dominate con- unclassified, declassified, and classified programs temporary American cartography and geographic and institutions evolved in spite of, and to some information science. The great Cold War geo-spa- extent precisely because of, the division between tial convergence was designed to fight nuclear war them. These exchanges culminated in a system, but also to preclude it. In obligatory and, therefore, still in place, in which the products of highly clas- ironic collaboration with the parallel cartographic sified technologies are displayed candidly as com- enterprise in the Soviet Union, the geo-spatial pletely unclassified maps and data, a process that convergence prevented global war for nearly half renders the entire map a kind of “silence” insofar a century; that was and is its greatest triumph. The as the map effectively conceals its secret roots as it deployment of the American geo-spatial conver- reveals that secret’s fruits. gence in hot war, particularly in Vietnam, led to The second major theme is the reconfiguration its undoing. of the geo-spatial sciences in their entirety, which was both the trigger and the ultimate product of this interplay of cartography and secrecy. Prelude: American Cartography Cartographic historians addressing different his- torical eras have used disparate terms to describe in 1944 these recurrent configurations and their distinctly In 1944 the first nuclear bomb had not yet been different yet related characteristics. Forbes (1980) detonated at Alamagordo, New Mexico, and the described the milieu of eighteenth-century “math- systematic dismantling of German science and ematical cosmography” from which emerged technology by Allied and Soviet forces had only Edney’s (1993) complex amalgam of nineteenth- just begun. On that eve, what was the status of the century cartographic modes. Similarly, Godlewska interconnected systems for geo-positioning, over- (1989; 1997, p. 24) has identified a scientific head observation, and systematic mapping? divergence that occurred in the late eighteenth World War II was a global conflict fought with century after the successful realization of west- national maps based on different map datums ern European national-level mapping programs. and different reference ellipsoids. The demands Once the objectives of the mapping programs of weapons systems like bombers and missiles had been substantially realized and they no longer with vastly increased ranges made the mismatches occupied the frontiers of research, the unified between national mapping systems quite evi- discipline of geography split into the disciplines dent. One solution to the problem was to expand of geodesy, cartography, and geography, now national datums to include the territory of other redefined as written descriptions of regions and nations, but in 1944 this presented enormous states. Godlewska notes that, from the divergence technical and political challenges. Extending first- onwards, the specific histories of the disciplines order geodetic control for any geodetic network were not synonymous with each other. I argue that required incremental advances at the edge of the a great re-convergence of these disciplines occurred network in question and a physical presence on during the Cold War, at the suites of spatial scales, the surface for at least the instant that any given extents, and tolerances necessary to either wage geodetic point was “occupied.” Without excep- or prevent nuclear war. This convergence was a tion, the technologies for point geo-positioning relatively short but enormously productive period by any other means were insufficiently accurate to of technological innovation coupled to major allow geodetic control to be extended beyond the advances in geographical theory, concentrated in boundaries of the network. However, SHORAN the 1950s and 1960s. In the decades that followed, (Short Range Navigation) radio navigation sys- the enriched sub-disciplines that participated in tems, devised around 1943 for approximate geo- the convergence diverged again. positioning for “blind-bombing” missions, held 1 In the American Intelligence Community, SECRET, TOP SECRET, and even more highly classified CODEWORD programs are indicated by the obligatory full capitalization of their names at all times. In this essay the programs will be capitalized that way only initially, to indicate that they were (or remain) classified. Full capitalization will be dropped for subsequent uses of the word, lest the text appear like a kidnapper’s

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