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

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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 3
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the United States delivered an oral protest concerning overflights of Poland on 20 June and 2 July. This was followed by a protest note from the Czechoslovak Government on 21 July. No formal reply was sent to the two Soviet satellite states. $ ^{37} $

The details of the flightpaths listed in the Soviet and Polish protests, along with the subsequent photographic evidence of Soviet interception attempts, made it clear that U-2s could not fly undetected over the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe and could even be tracked for extended periods of time. This news greatly disturbed President Eisenhower. In a meeting with Allen Dulles on 19 July 1956, the President recalled how he had been told that "not over a very minor percentage of these (flights) would be picked up." He went on to question "how far this should now be pushed, knowing that detection is not likely to be avoided." After discussing the possibility of basing U-2s in the Far East, President Eisenhower went on to say that he had "lost enthusiasm" for the U-2 activity. He noted that, if the United States were on the receiving end of a Soviet overflight operation, "the reaction would be drastic." The President was also concerned that the American public might learn of the overflights and be shocked that their country had violated international law. He stated, "Soviet protests were one thing, any loss of confidence by our own people would be quite another."38

The President's rapid disenchantment with the project was not lost on Richard Bissell. Fearing for the U-2 program's survival, he met with the Land committee in early August 1956 to urge them to help make the U-2 less vulnerable to radar pulses. His goal was to reduce the aircraft's radar cross section so that it would be less susceptible to detection. Edward Purcell had some ideas on this and suggested that he supervise a new project in the Boston area to explore them. At the direction of the Land committee, Bissell set in motion a project known as HTNAMABLE to establish a proprietary firm called the Scientific Engineering Institute (SEI) in Cambridge. Former Air Force Col. Richard S. Leghorn headed the SEI operation for the Agency when it began on 26 November 1956. SEI was staffed by several MIT scholars who conducted studies and experiments into