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
146
Equipment from a WS-461L balloon on display in Moscow, 11 October 1958
Goodpaster on 29 July 1958 to tell the Air Force that "the project is to be discontinued at once and every cent that has been made available as part of any project involving crossing the Iron Curtain is to be impounded and no further expenditures are to be made." 98
Two days later Eisenhower followed up this order with a formal memorandum to Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy telling him that "there is disturbing evidence of a deterioration in the processes of discipline and responsibility within the armed forces." He cited, in particular, "unauthorized decisions which have apparently resulted in certain balloons falling within the territory of the Communist Bloc" and overflights over routes "that contravened my standing orders."
On 2 September 1958, there was another violation of Soviet airspace when an unarmed Air Force EC-130 on an electronic intelligence collection mission crossed from Turkey into Soviet Armenia and was shot down by Soviet fighter aircraft. Six of the men on board were killed and the remaining 11 were never heard from again, despite State Department attempts to get the Soviet Union to reveal their fate. $ ^{100} $ 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.