The BYEMAN Control System, or simply BYEMAN (designated BYE, or B), was a security control system put in place to protect information about the

National Reconnaissance Office The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is a member of the United States Intelligence Community and an agency of the United States Department of Defense which designs, builds, launches, and operates the reconnaissance satellites of the U.S. ...

and its operations.

History

The BYEMAN Control System was put in place in 1961 by the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

. Discussions regarding BCS retirement were held as early as 2003. NRO Director

Peter B. Teets Peter Bartholomew Teets (born February 12, 1942, died November 29, 2020) was the thirteenth Director of the National Reconnaissance Office and the Under Secretary of the Air Force. Mr. Teets engineered the formation of a comprehensive national se ...

spoke at a 2003 NRO Town Hall meeting, mentioning that retiring the BCS would remove barriers that prevented the NRO and U.S. Intelligence Community from working together as a team. The use of BCS was so prevalent throughout the U.S. Intelligence Community, that a handful of websites were set up to direct users through the retirement process.National Reconnaissance Office: "New website invites questions about BYEMAN retirement," The Recon, 26 March 2004
/ref>

Origin of name

An individual inside the CIA's Special Security Center chose the name from a random list of four words drawn from the CIA's codeword file. A ''byeman'' is a man who works underground; it is unknown if the individual knew the word's meaning before its selection.National Security Archive: "The Retirement of BYEMAN"
/ref>

Programs within BYEMAN

This is a small list of the publicly acknowledged programs that were held within the BCS: * CORONA (declassified 1995){{Cite web , url=http://www.nro.gov/news/press/1995/1995-01.pdf , title=National Reconnaissance Office Press Release, "President Orders Declassification of Historic Satellite Imagery Citing Value of Photography to Environmental Science," 24 Feb 1995 , access-date=1 December 2012 , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121016172617/http://www.nro.gov/news/press/1995/1995-01.pdf , archive-date=16 October 2012 , url-status=dead *

ARGON Argon is a chemical element with the symbol Ar and atomic number 18. It is in group 18 of the periodic table and is a noble gas. Argon is the third-most abundant gas in Earth's atmosphere, at 0.934% (9340 ppmv). It is more than twice as a ...

(declassified 1995) *

LANYARD A lanyard is a cord, length of webbing, or strap that may serve any of various functions, which include a means of attachment, restraint, retrieval, and activation and deactivation. A lanyard is also a piece of rigging used to secure or low ...

(declassified 1995) * GAMBIT (declassified 2011) *

HEXAGON In geometry, a hexagon (from Greek , , meaning "six", and , , meaning "corner, angle") is a six-sided polygon. The total of the internal angles of any simple (non-self-intersecting) hexagon is 720°. Regular hexagon A ''regular hexagon'' h ...

(declassified 2011) * GRAB (declassified 1998) *

POPPY A poppy is a flowering plant in the subfamily Papaveroideae of the family Papaveraceae. Poppies are herbaceous plants, often grown for their colourful flowers. One species of poppy, ''Papaver somniferum'', is the source of the narcotic drug o ...

(declassified 2004) *

QUILL A quill is a writing tool made from a moulted flight feather (preferably a primary wing-feather) of a large bird. Quills were used for writing with ink before the invention of the dip pen, the metal- nibbed pen, the fountain pen, and, event ...

(declassified 2012) *

DORIAN Dorian may refer to: Ancient Greece * Dorians, one of the main ethnic divisions of ancient Greeks * Doric Greek, or Dorian, the dialect spoken by the Dorians Art and entertainment Films * ''Dorian'' (film), the Canadian title of the 2004 film ' ...

(partial declassification 2012) *MELVIN (declassified 2011) *UPWARD (declassified 2012) While many other NRO programs resided within the BCS, their codenames have not been made public through proper disclosure or official declassification.

Retirement

By order of the

Director of Central Intelligence The director of central intelligence (DCI) was the head of the American Central Intelligence Agency from 1946 to 2005, acting as the principal intelligence advisor to the president of the United States and the United States National Security ...

(DCI), BYEMAN was retired on 20 May 2005.National Reconnaissance Office: "BYE Control System Retirement Executive Level Overview" Most information held within the BCS was transitioned into the Talent Keyhole Control System.National Reconnaissance Office: "The ONE Book - Implementation Guidance for Retiring the BYE Control System"

In popular culture

In the 1998 blockbuster movie ''

Armageddon According to the Book of Revelation in the New Testament of the Christian Bible, Armageddon (, from grc, Ἁρμαγεδών ''Harmagedōn'', Late Latin: , from Hebrew: ''Har Məgīddō'') is the prophesied location of a gathering of armies ...

'', a misspelling of the word, (i.e. "BYMAN") is used on a cover sheet protecting photos of the incoming asteroid. (the correct spelling, BYEMAN, was still classified "

Confidential Confidentiality involves a set of rules or a promise usually executed through confidentiality agreements that limits the access or places restrictions on certain types of information. Legal confidentiality By law, lawyers are often required ...

" at that time.)

References

National Reconnaissance Office Classified information in the United States