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

Helen Hill Kleyla and Robert D. O'Hern. This 16-volume Top Secret Codeword study of the Agency's reconnaissance aircraft provides a wealth of technical and operational information on the two projects but does not attempt to place them in their historical context. Without examining the international situation and bureaucratic pressures affecting the president and other key policymakers, however, it is impossible to understand the decisions that began, carried out, and ended the CIA's reconnaissance aircraft projects.

In preparing this study of CIA's overhead reconnaissance program, the authors drew on published sources, classified government documents, and interviews with key participants from the CIA, Air Force, contractors, scientific advisory committees, and the Eisenhower administration. The interviews were particularly important for piecing together the story of how the CIA became involved in overhead reconnaissance in the first place because Agency documentation on the prehistory of the U-2 project is very sketchy and there are no accurate published accounts. Research on the period of actual reconnaissance operations included the records of the Director of Central Intelligence, the Office of Special Activities in the Directorate of Science and Technology, and the Intelligence Community Staff, along with documents from the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas, and additional interviews.

Both authors are grateful for the assistance they have received from many individuals who played important roles in the events they recount. Without their help a good deal of this story could never have become known. The assistance of Agency records management officers in the search for documents on the overhead reconnaissance program is also greatly appreciated.

To ensure that this study of the Agency's involvement in overhead reconnaissance reaches the widest possible audience, the authors have kept it at the Secret classification level. As a result, some aspects of the overhead reconnaissance program, particularly those involving satellites and related interagency agreements, have had to be described in very general terms. The omission of such information is not significant for this book, which focuses on the Agency's reconnaissance aircraft.