In his paper, Brothers in Arms: The CIA and the American Civilian Space Program, 1958-1968, Dwayne Day, an independent U.S. policy expert, spells out the interactions between two different bureaucratic weapons in the American arsenal during the space race with the Soviet Union.

Day observes that NASA and the CIA had a close relationship in the early formative years of the agency. After all, NASA played a key role in advancing American propaganda. "As such it was simply another means of countering the communist threat to American interests," he explains.

The CIA, as well as the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and other groups, monitored various Soviet space efforts in the 1960s. For example, transmissions from Yuri Gagarin the first human to soar into orbit were monitored. So too were radio signals from numbers of unpiloted Soviet satellites. Evaluating progress in the USSRs building of a powerful Moon rocket was also a top priority for the CIA, with NASA hungry to be advised of the latest spy tips.

High-level intelligence briefings on Soviet space advances were routinely given to top NASA brass, such as then NASA chief, James Webb, as well as the space agencys leading planner, Wernher von Braun. Backed by such data, NASA turned up the volume in requests to Congress to seek larger budgets, Day notes.

The CIA-NASA relationship was not simply a one-way street, Day points out. In 1960, the spy organization sought to receive something from NASA.

The downing of Gary Powers U-2 spy plane within the Soviet Union was first billed as an off-course NASA research craft. CIA operatives quickly painted a fictitious serial number and NASA tail band on a U-2, rolling it over from a secret desert locale onto the main part of Edwards Air Force Base in California. This was done as part of a media campaign to counter Soviet allegations of U.S. wrong doing.

But as the Soviet Union let it be known that wreckage, a healthy pilot, and U-2-taken high-altitude images were in their possession, NASA was caught in an embarrassing lie, exposed as a front for the CIA, Day explains.

NASA itself requested intelligence information from the CIA regarding Soviet space prowess. On a want-to-know-more wish list, civilian space experts requested better data on Soviet space electronics, life support hardware, heat shield and launch vehicle technologies.

This information was sought by NASA in order to plan American responses, Day details. Moreover, NASA expertise in rocketry and space hardware assisted the CIA in its mission of collecting and assessing data facts and figures that then would filter back and be shared with the civilian space agency.

In the mid-1960s, key NASA personnel were tasked to special CIA panels, all geared to help advise and hone the spy agencys overall space knowledge base. In addition, NASA conducted studies for the CIA, although the nature of these studies is unknown, Day adds.

The results of U.S. satellite snooping of Soviet launch facilities were made available to NASA. In another instance, the CIA briefed NSA-intercepted Soviet satellite weather photos to NASA. This gave the space agency a leg-up in its international role of entering an agreement with the Soviet Union to share weather data.

Day has also documented that NASA used its extensive network of radio dishes around the world built to handle outbound U.S. interplanetary probes to intercept Soviet telemetry. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California conducted some of this eavesdropping work, he reports.

It is likely that the CIA and NSA supplied NASA specialized equipment and computers to analyze Soviet signals, Day suggests.

During the flight of Voskhod 2 in March 1965, as example, NASA picked up Alexei Leonovs heart rate and intercepted television signals from the spacecraft transmissions that were unintelligible, however.

Days World Space Congress paper notes that both NASA and the CIA benefited by their alliance. Intelligence information did impact civilian space program planning in the decade spanning 1958 through 1968.

However, this data was much less useful for day-to-day operational decisions, Day contends. "Even the best intelligence information had gaps and frequently arrived too late for real-time decisions," he writes.

"In NASAs case, the agency was usually moving as fast as it could to beat the Soviet Union to the Moon and did not have much additional flexibility in its schedule. Better intelligence was not going to allow NASA to move any faster," Day concludes.