Informed Sources Ever Have the Feeling Someone's Watching You?

WASHINGTON -- Eyebrows went skyward in Washington last week when CIA Director James Woolsey, testifying before an open session of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, raised no objection to suggestions that private firms be allowed to collect and sell satellite-observation photos that can distinguish objects 1 m in size from about 300 km up. Reason: 1-m resolution, which used to be the supreme achievement of sky spies, is passe. Air Force General Frank Horton, also testifying at the hearings, quietly dismissed that as only "medium" capability. In fact, the American intelligence community within the past two years has achieved what President Dwight Eisenhower once prematurely claimed: the capacity to spot a golf ball on the links. This means the agencies really do have the spy sight beloved of scriptwriters: they can read the license plates on cars. That eye in the sky has finally become a microscope in the cope.