NGOs as intelligence agencies: The empowerment of transnational advocacy networks and the media by commercial remote sensing in the case of the Iranian nuclear program

Abstract

In December 2002 the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a Washington-based nongovernmental organization, announced that it had found two previously undisclosed nuclear facilities in Iran. Using information provided by a dissident group called the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), ISIS was able to pinpoint the two suspect sites by using general geographic descriptions provided by NCRI to find more precise mapping coordinates. Using these coordinates as guides, ISIS purchased commercial high-resolution remote sensing satellite images from DigitalGlobe, a leading imaging data provider. Next, working with the news network CNN, ISIS announced its findings to a global television audience on December 12, 2002, some three months before the US invasion of neighboring Iraq. ISIS’s disclosure forced the Bush administration to acknowledge the Iranian nuclear enrichment program, something it had been aware of but kept secret for over a year. It may have also forced Iran to allow international inspectors into the two sites the following February, something it had previously refused to do. ISIS’s disclosure brought an end to a policy of willful public silence about the nuclear enrichment programs in Iran by both the Bush administration and the government of Iran. Bringing a political communication perspective to geography studies, these events are used to illustrate the way new technologies may empower transnational advocacy networks and media while challenging state control of information.