PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
April 2017
263
BOOK
REVIEW
NPIC: Seeing the Secrets and Growing
the Leaders
Jack O’Connor
Acumensa Solution 2015, 298 pp, photos, index
Paperback $25, Print ISBN: 0692454535, ISBN 13:
9780692454534, $6.99, eBook Amazon ASIN: B0160P195G
Reviewed by:
Harold W. Rempel, Senior Geospatial
Manager, E.S.P. Associates, P.A., Fort Mill, SC, USA
While military efforts during World War II highlighted the
importance of intelligence derived from aerial photography
and accelerated technology in related disciplines such as
photogrammetry, it was the advent of the Cold War (1947 –
1991) that precipitated some of the most important changes
in the tradecraft of imagery analysis. With the unveiling
of the Truman Doctrine in 1947 the foreign policy of the
United States shifted to a focus on containment of the Soviet
geopolitical spread. Over the course of the Cold War, numerous
proxy conflicts and crises (such as the Cuban Missile Crisis)
and high-level diplomatic efforts such as the SALT (Strategic
Arms Limitation Talks/Treaty) negotiations necessitated
the collection of intelligence on the former Soviet Union in
order to help form policy and ensure that efforts supporting
a policy of deterrence were successful for the United States.
Intelligence derived from imagery sensors and platforms such
as the U-2, the film-based Key Hole (KH) satellites and later
the electro-optical (digital) KH satellites became some of the
most importance sources of intelligence on the former Soviet
Union. The men and women that interpreted this imagery and
provided the analysis became instrumental in determining the
outcome of the Cold War. Born out of the Central Intelligence
Agency’s (CIA) Photographic Intelligence Division, the
National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) came
into being in the 1950’s expressly to address the need to find
what the Soviet Union and its proxies were attempting to hide.
From its inception in the 1950’s to its eventual absorption
by the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) in
1996, NPIC’s history was marked by spectacular successes
and failures, and an enduring culture that developed future
leaders who later went on to affect other organizations within
the Intelligence Community in a positive way. This book is a
comprehensive accounting of the history and culture of NPIC
through most of that period to 1988.
This book is an unclassified story about how NPIC’s culture,
committed analysts, and strong leaders would come to produce
more leadership material over a 20-year period than any other
organization within the CIA. The author ties this success
primarily to two key figures in NPIC’s history: Art Lundhal
(NPIC’s founder and first director) and the fourth director,
Robert Huffstutler. Both directors, during their tenure, were
also officers in the ASP - American Society for Photogrammetry
(now known as ASPRS) Intertwined with this main theme of
the story, is a detailed historical account of the technology,
personnel, external and internal organizational strife, culture,
and even management styles that came to shape NCPIC over
its 30 plus-year history.
The front of thebookcontainsapreface, foreword, introduction,
chronology of important events, and a coda which describes
the last visit of the founder to NPIC. The author underlines
the importance of the individuals associated with NPIC in
these first pages. The book then sets the stage in Chapter 1
with NPIC’s impact on the reporting and monitoring of the
Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union in 1986 and how
the Chernobyl analysis demonstrated NPIC’s professionalism,
teamwork, and thinking outside of the box mentality. The
development of these characteristics of NPIC over the years is
described in great detail in the remaining chapters.
The book is highly detailed in its description of daily life
at NPIC, down to the work habits and appearance of staff,
the softball games, and numerous acronyms in use by the
organization over the years. It is bluntly descriptive of some
of the more mundane aspects of life at NPIC as well as the
organization’s cultural adaptation to not only events on the
Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing
Vol. 83, No. 4, April 2017, pp. 263–266.
0099-1112/17/263–266
© 2017 American Society for Photogrammetry
and Remote Sensing
doi: 10.14358/PERS.83.4.263
