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

Secret NOFORN
Chapter 4

denied areas, whether by photographic, ELINT, COMINT, infrared, RADINT, or other means." The only exception to COMOR's area of responsibility was "reconnaissance and aerial surveillance in direct support of actively combatant forces." $ ^{51} $

By this time the Air Force had developed a large overhead reconnaissance program of its own, including a fleet of U-2s, and, occasionally, there were conflicts between the areas of responsibility of COMOR and the military services for collection requirements. The Air Force had already won a major victory in 1958, when it claimed that the White House had given responsibility for peripheral reconnaissance of the Soviet Union to the military. DCI Dulles, who was always reluctant to become involved in matters that seemed to lie in the military's area of responsibility, did not resist this claim, and the Ad Hoc Requirements Committee stopped preparing requirements for peripheral flights. This ended a major requirements committee study, which sought to estimate what could be gained from U-2 oblique photography along the entire border of the Soviet Union. $ ^{52} $ The last CIA U-2 mission along the Soviet Union's coasts occurred on 22 June 1958; thereafter, the only peripheral missions conducted by the CIA were those along the Soviet Union's southern border with Iran and Afghanistan from bases in Pakistan and Turkey under covert arrangements with the host governments.

Until the spring of 1961, there was virtually no coordination of military reconnaissance activities, even within the individual services. Each commander of a Theater or a Unified and Specified Command conducted his own independent reconnaissance activities. To meet the growing need for overall coordination of these activities at the national level, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) established the Joint Reconnaissance Center (JRC) under the J-3 (Operations) of the Joint Staff. The JRC immediately began to coordinate and obtain approval for approximately 500 missions per month, assigning each a risk factor of Critical, Sensitive, Unique, or Routine. The JRC then prepared a monthly Activities Book giving details of the proposed missions and briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the more risky missions. The CIA received a copy of the Activities Book.