The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance; the U-2 and Oxcart Programs, 1954-1974

## PREFACE

When the Central Intelligence Agency came into existence in 1947, no one foresaw that, in less than a decade, it would undertake a major program of overhead reconnaissance, whose principal purpose would be to fly over the Soviet Union. Traditionally, the military services had been responsible for overhead reconnaissance, and flights deep into unfriendly territory only took place during wartime. By the early 1950s, however, the United States had an urgent and growing need for strategic intelligence on the Soviet Union and its satellite states. At great risk, US Air Force and Navy aircraft had been conducting peripheral reconnaissance and shallow-penetration overflights, but these missions were paying a high price in lives lost and increased international tension. Furthermore, many important areas of the Soviet Union lay beyond the range of existing reconnaissance aircraft. The Air Force had therefore begun to develop a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft that would be able to conduct deep-penetration reconnaissance missions over the Soviet Union. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his civilian scientific advisers feared that the loss of such an aircraft deep in Soviet territory could lead to war and therefore authorized the development of new nonmilitary aircraft, first the U-2 and later the A-12 OXCART, to be manned by civilians and operated only under cover and in the greatest secrecy. Primary responsibility for this new reconnaissance program was assigned to the Central Intelligence Agency, but the Air Force provided vital support.

The Agency's manned overhead reconnaissance program lasted 20 years. It began with President Eisenhower's authorization of the U-2 project in late 1954 and ended with the transfer of the remaining Agency U-2s to the Air Force in 1974. During this period the CIA developed a successor to the U-2, the A-12 OXCART, but this advanced aircraft saw little operational use and the program was canceled in 1968 after the Air Force deployed a fleet of similar aircraft, a military variant of the A-12 called the SR-71.

Neither of these aircraft remains secret today. A great deal of information about the U-2 and its overflight program became known to the public after 1 May 1960, when the Soviet Union shot down a CIA U-2 and publicly tried its pilot, Francis Gary Powers. Four years