The CIA saved Steve Jobs - and history is in your pocket
A report reveals a secret 1985 meeting between Steve Jobs and CIA officials, which provided critical financial oxygen to his NeXT company through orders for computers used to scan satellite images. The deal helped Jobs' comeback at Apple and the birth of the operating system that became the basis for the Mac and iPhone.
A report in the Wall Street Journal, covered by Maariv, reveals a secret 1985 meeting between Steve Jobs and CIA officials. Mutual interest overcame cultural gaps: Jobs, a flower child and Buddhist, found a partner in the closed intelligence community. For NeXT, his company, the secret deal was a critical lifeline. The company suffered from financial difficulties and poor sales in academia. NeXT computers were transported in secret trucks to facilities of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), where they were used to scan high-resolution satellite images and share data on an early military network. NeXT's operating system, developed and partially funded by black intelligence budgets, became the basis for Mac and iPhone operating systems. Without the CIA orders, Jobs might not have found his way back to the top.