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.
“RAF”18 pages
Secret NOFORN
Chapter 3
117
The Anglo-French military buildup greatly irritated President Eisenhower, who considered these activities a violation of the 1950 Tripartite Declaration, in which the United States, the United Kingdom, and France had agreed to maintain the status quo in armaments and borders in the Middle East.
U-2 photography continued to keep the President and other key officials well informed about the progress of the crisis.
of State John Foster Dulles told the President on 28 October that he believed an Israeli attack on Jordan was imminent, adding that he thought the British and French would take advantage of such an attack to occupy the Suez Canal. $ ^{52} $
The 10-day Middle East war began on the afternoon of 29 October 1956 with Israeli paratroop drops in the Sinai peninsula, followed by mobile columns striking deep into Egyptian territory. The next day, 30 October, Francis Gary Powers conducted mission 1314. where he photographed black puffs of smoke from the fighting between Israel and Egypt. Adana-based U-2s were in the air for the next two days filming the Suez Canal area
The United Kingdom and France entered the fray on the evening of 31 October with bombing raids against major Egyptian airfields. The Anglo-French bombing campaign continued for the next 48 hours. Early on the morning of 1 November, an Adana-based U-2, piloted by William Hall, took off to gather intelligence on the Hall flew south where he made several passes to obtain complete coverage of the Israeli-Egyptian fighting there. He then headed west to Cairo passing directly over the main Egyptian airbase 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.