President Obama’s first brush with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency was ignominious. Out for lunch in May 2009, at a Five Guys burger franchise in Washington, the new president started to shake the hands of other customers, TV cameras in tow. Then he turned to men with government ID badges.
“So, what do you do?” Obama asked. “I work at NGA, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency,” one said.
“Outstanding. How long have you been doing that?” the president wondered. “Six years.” Obama then asked: “So, explain to me exactly what this National Geospatial--” His voice trailed off. “Uh, we work with, uh, satellite imagery.” Obama: “Sounds like good work.” The response is obscured by the audio.
Suffice it to say: Obama knows what the NGA does today.
Any number of officials and agencies have been in the limelight since the raid on Osama bin Laden, including the CIA and the Defense Department. But the little-known and little-heralded work of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, often called the NGA, was central to the demise of the terrorist leader.
The NGA integrates several core intelligence functions. It makes maps and interprets imagery from satellites and drones; it also exploits the electromagnetic spectrum to track terrorists and decipher signatures off of enemy radar. And notably, the NGA is the first intel agency to be headed by a woman: Letitia Long, an intelligence veteran.
The NGA's contributions to the bin Laden mission are substantial. As described to National Journal by senior U.S. policymakers who do not work for the agency, they include:
- Creating three-dimensional renderings of the Abbottabad compound using imagery and laser-based sensing devices—laser radar, or ladar.
- Analyzing data from a sophisticated next-generation drone that kept watch on the compound before, during, and after the raid. The drone was an RQ-170 built by Lockheed Martin.
