Documents / FOIA release
This is a 1992 CIA History Staff monograph by Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, originally classified Secret NOFORN and approved for release in 2013. It covers the CIA's manned overhead reconnaissance program from 1954 to 1974 and the two aircraft it developed, the U-2 and the A-12 OXCART. The history covers the U-2 overflights of the Soviet Union, the 1960 downing of Francis Gary Powers and later operations in Asia and Latin America. It also includes a section on U-2s, UFOs and Operation BLUE BOOK.
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reconnaissance program offers no tidy model for imitation, it does reveal how resourceful managers coped with unprecedented technological challenges and their implications for intelligence and national policy. For this reason, the program's history provides profitable reading for intelligence professionals and policymakers today. Many people made important contributions to the production of this volume. In the History Staff's preparation of the manuscript, Gerald Haines did the final revision, again demonstrated her high talent as a copy editor, and provided staunch secretarial support throughout. As usual, we are indebted to more members than we can name from the Publications, Design, and Cartography Centers in the Office of Current Production and Analytic Support, whose lively interest in the publication went far beyond the call of duty. Their exceptional professional skill and the masterly work of the Printing and Photography Group combined to create this handsome volume. Donald E. Welzenbach, who began this study, and Gregory W. Pedlow, who completed it, brought complementary strengths to this work. A veteran of CIA service since 1960, Mr. Welzenbach began research on this study in 1983, when he joined the DCI History Staff on a rotational assignment from the Directorate of Science and Technology. After tireless documentary research and extensive interviewing, he finished a draft manuscript of the history before returning to his directorate. In early 1986, Gregory W. Pedlow, a new member of the DCI History Staff, was assigned to complete the study. A Johns Hopkins University Ph.D. who has served as an Army intelligence officer and University of Nebraska professor of history, Dr. Pedlow undertook important research in several new areas, and reorganized, edited, and revised the entire manuscript before leaving CIA to become NATO Historian in late 1989. The final work, which has greatly benefited from both authors' contributions, is the CIA's own history of the world's first great overhead reconnaissance program. ## J. Kenneth McDonald April 1992 Chief, CIA History Staff Secret
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 406 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.