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.
“Headquarters”25 pages
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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 4
center that would bring together photointerpreters from the Agency and the military services. The report further recommended that the CIA be placed in charge of the new center. Ignoring Air Force claims that it should head such a center, President Eisenhower approved the report's recommendation, and, on 18 January 1961, National Security Council Intelligence Directive (NSCID) No. 8 established the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC). Henceforth, the director of NPIC would be designated by the DCI and approved by the Secretary of Defense, and the deputy director would come from one of the military services. The first director of NPIC was Arthur S. Lundahl, head of the CIA's Photo-Intelligence Division. $ ^{55} $
One additional major change in the U-2 program in the years immediately following the May Day incident—although not directly related to the loss of Powers' U-2—was the departure of Richard Bissell from the CIA and the subsequent reorganization of the Agency's reconnaissance and scientific activities. The roots of Bissell's downfall went back to 1 January 1959, when he became Deputy Director for Plans and decided to place all Agency air assets in the DDP in order to maintain control of his overhead reconnaissance projects (the U-2 and its two proposed successors, the OXCART aircraft and the reconnaissance satellite). The previously independent Development Projects Staff became the Development Projects Division (DPD) of the DDP and now controlled all Agency air operations, including air support for covert operations. As a result, U-2s were occasionally employed for gathering intelligence to support DDP operations in addition to their primary mission of gathering strategic and tactical intelligence.
Although the reorganization made sense in terms of increasing the efficiency of Agency air operations, the use of the U-2 to support covert action disturbed Bissell's backers among the scientists advising Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, especially James Killian and Edwin Land. They were concerned that Bissell was becoming too involved in covert action and was not able to devote sufficient time to the overhead reconnaissance program. Then came the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961, which discredited Bissell with the Kennedy administration in general and the two scientists in particular. Later that year, Bissell lost another important source of support when Allen Dulles resigned as DCI in November 1961. During his final Not linked to a story yet.
FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 406 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.