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CNN Live At Daybreak
Look Inside National Imagery and Mapping Agency
Aired December 12, 2002 - 05:49 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And now our "Secret Mapmaker" series. This week we've been bringing you an exclusive look inside a little known government spy agency. One of the departments focuses on future technology.
Our national security correspondent David Ensor has details for you.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the 1998 film "Enemy of the State," private citizen Will Smith finds himself targeted by an all-knowing big brother rogue spy agency.
GENE HACKMAN, ACTOR, "ENEMY OF THE STATE": You're transmitting. You live another day, I'll be very impressed.
ENSOR: The imaginary agency uses satellites and other high tech gear to chase people down.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, satellite imagery coming through.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Roger that. Patch visual my location. Confirm visual. Thank you much.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everyone there.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All units, target heading north on rooftop.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Boy, I thought it was a very entertaining movie which was -- but far removed from the actual reality.
ENSOR (on camera): The film is far removed from reality because U.S. intelligence agencies are strictly forbidden to spy inside the United States and also because Hollywood's fantasy goes well beyond existing technology.
ROBERT ZITZ, NIMA INNOVISION DIRECTOR: We're nowhere near what's laid out in "Enemy of the State," but we are moving in that direction.
ENSOR (voice-over): In what's called the After Next Department of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, Rob Zitz and his team are trying to turn some of that fantasy into reality. Take the GEOSAR plane packed with what is called PBAN (ph) radar equipment. The prototype aircraft can see what is hidden to the spy satellite or to the naked eye. ZITZ: It gives us the ability to peer through clouds, through nightfall and to look through trees, and in fact through tree trunks, down to the bare earth.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So it gives us a stereo effect.
ENSOR (on camera): All right. Yes, it does.
(voice-over): Wearing special goggles, we can see three dimensional images of terrain made by combining GEOSAR's intrusive radar and other technologies. In the next three years, the U.S. is planning to put PBAN radar onto unmanned drone aircraft, like the Global Hawk, for use tracking the enemy in war zones even at night under clouds and tree cover.
And just as in the movie, NIMA's After Next team is working with partners at the National Security Agency, the nation's eavesdroppers, on better, faster ways for U.S. intelligence to see and hear a location at the same time.
ZITZ: If you walked into a building and you were looking to find a person or find an object, you wouldn't walk into that building with your eyes closed and just listen, you would want to go in and use your eyes and your ears together. And so we know that that's the same with the intelligence capability. We do, today, bring the power of signal's intelligence (ph) where we're listening, together with imagery where we're seeing, but it's on a smaller scale than we would desire.
ENSOR: One of the most promising areas is a new kind of spy satellite that can take pictures, not just in color, but showing minute differences in color caused by something as subtle as a little vapor, a trace of a chemical in the air. It is called hyperspectral imagery.
JOHN PIKE, GLOBALSECRUITY.ORG: A regular satellite is going to be looking at a warehouse district, see a lot of buildings. The hope is that with hyperspectral imagery you're going to be able to see that one of those buildings has some very peculiar chemicals leaking out of it and that that's the hidden chemical factory that you're looking for.
ENSOR: Such a system would allow the U.S. to hunt the globe for illegal facilities producing chemical or other weapons of mass destruction. It's the kind of capability the U.S. may need in an ever more dangerous world of terrorists and well-armed dictators.
ZITZ: We need to be able to see things that we haven't seen before. We have to be able to move more quickly as we process that information. We've got to extract the true secrets and we've got to be able to get that into the hands of the person that's going to take action as fast as we can.
ENSOR: In the real spy world, they are working hard to imitate fiction.
David Ensor, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired December 12, 2002 - 05:49 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And now our "Secret Mapmaker" series. This week we've been bringing you an exclusive look inside a little known government spy agency. One of the departments focuses on future technology.
Our national security correspondent David Ensor has details for you.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the 1998 film "Enemy of the State," private citizen Will Smith finds himself targeted by an all-knowing big brother rogue spy agency.
GENE HACKMAN, ACTOR, "ENEMY OF THE STATE": You're transmitting. You live another day, I'll be very impressed.
ENSOR: The imaginary agency uses satellites and other high tech gear to chase people down.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, satellite imagery coming through.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Roger that. Patch visual my location. Confirm visual. Thank you much.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everyone there.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All units, target heading north on rooftop.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Boy, I thought it was a very entertaining movie which was -- but far removed from the actual reality.
ENSOR (on camera): The film is far removed from reality because U.S. intelligence agencies are strictly forbidden to spy inside the United States and also because Hollywood's fantasy goes well beyond existing technology.
ROBERT ZITZ, NIMA INNOVISION DIRECTOR: We're nowhere near what's laid out in "Enemy of the State," but we are moving in that direction.
ENSOR (voice-over): In what's called the After Next Department of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, Rob Zitz and his team are trying to turn some of that fantasy into reality. Take the GEOSAR plane packed with what is called PBAN (ph) radar equipment. The prototype aircraft can see what is hidden to the spy satellite or to the naked eye. ZITZ: It gives us the ability to peer through clouds, through nightfall and to look through trees, and in fact through tree trunks, down to the bare earth.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So it gives us a stereo effect.
ENSOR (on camera): All right. Yes, it does.
(voice-over): Wearing special goggles, we can see three dimensional images of terrain made by combining GEOSAR's intrusive radar and other technologies. In the next three years, the U.S. is planning to put PBAN radar onto unmanned drone aircraft, like the Global Hawk, for use tracking the enemy in war zones even at night under clouds and tree cover.
And just as in the movie, NIMA's After Next team is working with partners at the National Security Agency, the nation's eavesdroppers, on better, faster ways for U.S. intelligence to see and hear a location at the same time.
ZITZ: If you walked into a building and you were looking to find a person or find an object, you wouldn't walk into that building with your eyes closed and just listen, you would want to go in and use your eyes and your ears together. And so we know that that's the same with the intelligence capability. We do, today, bring the power of signal's intelligence (ph) where we're listening, together with imagery where we're seeing, but it's on a smaller scale than we would desire.
ENSOR: One of the most promising areas is a new kind of spy satellite that can take pictures, not just in color, but showing minute differences in color caused by something as subtle as a little vapor, a trace of a chemical in the air. It is called hyperspectral imagery.
JOHN PIKE, GLOBALSECRUITY.ORG: A regular satellite is going to be looking at a warehouse district, see a lot of buildings. The hope is that with hyperspectral imagery you're going to be able to see that one of those buildings has some very peculiar chemicals leaking out of it and that that's the hidden chemical factory that you're looking for.
ENSOR: Such a system would allow the U.S. to hunt the globe for illegal facilities producing chemical or other weapons of mass destruction. It's the kind of capability the U.S. may need in an ever more dangerous world of terrorists and well-armed dictators.
ZITZ: We need to be able to see things that we haven't seen before. We have to be able to move more quickly as we process that information. We've got to extract the true secrets and we've got to be able to get that into the hands of the person that's going to take action as fast as we can.
ENSOR: In the real spy world, they are working hard to imitate fiction.
David Ensor, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
