I remember once seeing an article about Silicon Valley in a Japanese magazine. The article included a photo of the “Blue Cube” taken at street level along the street at the bottom of the above photo. The photo was taken to favor the large satellite antenna, but in the foreground of the photo was a chain-link fence with a sign posted on it which read, “U.S. Government Property. Photography Prohibited”. I always found it ironic to take a picture of a sign saying “Photography Prohibited”.* I wondered if the magazine editors realized that irony.
I also always wondered what that large blue building was actually for. I knew that the public story was that it was an Air-Force facility for handling military communications satellites. I suspected that this was a not-entirely-accurate cover story. I remembered from my own military service that the government is quite capable of concocting false stories to cover up their secret activities.
I have been lately rereading the book Puzzle Palace by James Bamford, subtitled “A Report on NSA, America’s Most Secret Agency”. I came across this passage in the chapter on spy satellites:
“Once the satellite achieves orbit, responsibility for both the operation of the ground collection stations and their costs is assumed by the NSA, although actual control of the spacecraft is retained by the NRO through its operations center in Sunnyvale, California, near San Francisco.”
We all know that spy satellites collect photos of items of interest on the ground, but the Puzzle Palace also claims that they intercept ground communications (what the NSA calls SIGINT or Signals Intelligence).
Anyway I was intrigued by the reference to Sunnyvale and googled “NRO”. I was surprised to find that the NRO has its own website which includes this article: https://www.nro.gov/News-and-Media/News-Articles/Article/2992528/have-you-heard-of-the-blue-cube/.
So the Puzzle Palace confirms my suspicions about the Blue Cube’s true mission.
*In a conscious mimicking of that photo in the Japanese magazine, I once took a photo at the Taj Mahal that included a sign saying “No photography beyond this point.”