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.
“The Pentagon”10 pages
military and foreign policy planners needed immediate information about developments in the eastern Mediterranean. Detachment A was, therefore, assigned the first Middle East overflights. On 29 August, U-2 missions 1104 and 1105 left Wiesbaden and overflew the eastern Mediterranean littoral, starting with Greece, then Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey. Because these target areas were beyond the round trip range of the Wiesbaden-based U-2s, the planes landed at Adana for refueling. The next day, the same two planes, with different pilots, took off from Adana and overflew the same Middle East territory, this time including the Gaza Strip, before returning to Wiesbaden. The film contained evidence of large numbers of British troops on Malta and Cyprus and
As the situation around Suez grew more tense, the Eisenhower administration decided to release some of the U-2 photos to the British Government. On 7 September, James Reber, chairman of the Ad Hoc Requirements Committee, and Arthur Lundahl, chief of the Photo Intelligence Division, flew to London, taking with them photos of the eastern Mediterranean area, including the Suez Canal, taken on 30 August. These were the first and the only photos of the Middle East that the President authorized to be given to the British during the 1956 crisis. $ ^{45} $
The Eisenhower administration viewed the developments in the eastern Mediterranean with great concern. To keep the President and Secretary of State abreast of developments in the area, Deputy Director for Intelligence Robert Amory established on 12 September a multiagency group known as the PARAMOUNT Committee to monitor the situation on a round-the-clock basis. The PARAMOUNT Committee worked inside PID headquarters in the Steuart Building. Composed of members from CIA, State, NSA, Army, Navy, and Air Force, this committee met daily—frequently several times a day—to produce reports based on information obtained from U-2 photography, communications and electronic intelligence, and agents. The photointerpreters working for the PARMOUNT committee also came from several agencies: the CIA, the Army, and the Navy. $ ^{46} $ Not linked to a story yet.
FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 406 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.