People knew the NRO existed a long time before it was publicly acknowledged, you can't have an office building of that size, parking and sheer number of people commuting to it daily in a regular pattern in a Washington DC suburb without some people starting to talk.

It was kind of a "yeah of course, what do you expect, we don't have this capability?" rhetorical question.

It was known in much the same way Janet flights are known.

Thinking that nasa leadership wouldn't be aware of its existence at all is not accurate, I think, any more than thinking people at certain aerospace contractors didn't know it existed... More like, it was metaphorically over on the other side of a fence that people were not allowed to touch.

Therefore, NASA leadership and strategists wouldn't have even known that the NRO existed, and independently came up with their lesser satellites, no agenda needed to pretend to have an inferior space sector.

That seems unlikely because they'd have been recruiting from the same pool of talent. They'd have been wondering where the best people from specializing in space tech, optics, etc went, and being leadership at NASA means you're probably not stupid, and you go to the same events as them. Also as NASA leadership, it would have been a pretty logical next step for your own career.

I don't doubt that people outside of the NRO had no idea what they do there, and that people lower down the hierarchy didn't know about it, but NASA leadership must have known there was a shadowy org working on cool satellites.

It was accidentally revealed in 1973 (though known since 1971, just not acknowledged), and officially declassified in 1992. It's been around for 66 years now, so more than half its existence was declassified, and realistically it's been known for 55 of its 66 years.

> NASA's employees to have clearances.

Launch vehicles are effectively ICBMs and a significant body of NASA staff is former USAF. I wouldn't say there's "no reason" A huge number of NASA employees and contractors absolutely have clearances (even if just incidentally.)

???

Hans Mark

Director of NASA Ames 1969-1977

Director of the NRO 1977-1979

Deputy Director of NASA 1981-1984

Plenty of other similar examples.

How is NASA leadership not supposed to know about the NRO when they worked for the NRO?

I think you are missing the point they were trying to make.

If NASA was having visible issues and difficulty in trying to get something like Hubble working in space, then perhaps the US’s spy agencies (known or not) also had the same difficulties. NASA employees wouldn’t need to have known about the NRO to help provide cover for their capabilities. Just publicly showing their struggle - for transparency - would have been enough.

(If NASA had a clue about the NRO capabilities or not, I doubt they would have cared. They still got their space telescope!)