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

Secret NOFORN
Chapter 3
121

facilities available, and the film had to be flown to Wiesbaden, adding a 10- to 15-hour delay. During the gradual buildup of the crisis, this delay had been tolerated, but, once actual hostilities broke out, US decisionmakers needed a more rapid response. On 29 October, Richard Bissell ordered Lundahl to establish a film-processing facility at Adana. Two PID employees went to Adana on 13 November to set up the facility, and two photointerpreters moved from Wiesbaden to Adana to help in the effort. Forward processing was, however, hampered by the location of the Adana facility on a flat, arid plain in southern Turkey, 35 miles from the Mediterranean at the very end of a long supply line.

The PID team obtained and outfitted a trailer for film processing, but many problems had to be overcome. The first major problem was obtaining enough clean water. Detachment B personnel, therefore, purchased large amounts of borax locally for use in purifying water. In fact, they bought so much borax on the local market that one of them was arrested by the Turkish police, who believed he was using the chemical to make drugs. It was also difficult to obtain a constant source of developers and fixers for processing the U-2 film, since the large Air Force supply facility at Wheelus AFB in Libya refused to provide the needed photographic chemicals. When PID personnel accompanied processed film from Turkey to the United States, they returned to Turkey sitting atop cartons of chemicals for the next day's processing. At first, film was developed in improvised tanks using flimsy wooden spools and hand-turned cranks to move the film through the solutions. Later, the Adana facility moved from its trailer to a building and received more up-to-date processing equipment. As was the case with the photo lab in Germany, the Adana lab's personnel came from the Agency and the armed forces. $ ^{57} $

The need to produce very timely intelligence diminished after the British and French agreed to a cease-fire on 7 November 1956. By the end of the month, foreign troops began evacuating Egyptian territory, and the pressure on the Adana photointerpretation unit eased. The facility remained in existence, however, and was used twice in December 1956 and 11 times in the first half of 1957. It was then placed in caretaker status, for emergency use only.