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.
“The Advance”35 pages
of the nature of the Soviet buildup in Cuba. Two days after the mission, the CIA reported in the President's Intelligence Checklist that there were at least eight surface-to-air missile (SA-2) sites in the western half of Cuba. $ ^{8} $ (The map on page 202 shows the routes taken by the two August overflights.)
On 5 September the next U-2 overflight (mission 3089) provided more evidence of the Soviet buildup. The mission's photography showed three more SAM sites and also revealed a MiG-21, one of the newest Soviet fighter aircraft, at the Santa Clara airfield.
The discovery of SAMs in Cuba had a twofold effect on the US reconnaissance effort over Cuba. First, it added substance to DCI McCone's fears that Cuba might become a base for Soviet medium-range ballistic missiles (he argued that SAM sites would only be set up to protect high-priority facilities such as missile bases). At this time, however, McCone's suspicions were not shared by other officials in the Agency or the administration. The second and most significant effect of the discovery of SAMs in Cuba was to make the administration far more cautious in its use of U-2s for reconnaissance of the island. As the loss of Francis Gary Powers' U-2 in May 1960 had demonstrated, the U-2 was very vulnerable to the SA-2 missile.
Within the administration, concern mounted about the U-2's vulnerability to SAMs in Cuba and the possibility that a loss could cause a major diplomatic crisis. Such fears increased as the result of two incidents in other parts of the world. On 30 August 1962, a SAC U-2 on a peripheral reconnaissance mission overflew Sakhalin Island in the Far East, prompting a Soviet protest on 4 September. The United States apologized for the intrusion. Then on 8 September, a U-2 with a Nationalist Chinese pilot was shot down over the People's Republic of China (this CIA reconnaissance program is discussed later in this chapter in the section on Asian operations). Increasing concern about U-2 vulnerability led to an impromptu meeting on 10 September 1962 of Secretary of State Dean Rusk, National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, and DDCI Marshall S. Carter (in place of the DCI, who was on his honeymoon in France). The Secretary of State objected to the CIA's plans for two extended overflights covering the remaining areas of Cuba not covered by the last two missions. Rusk wanted peripheral flights over international waters kept separate from
DCI John A. McCone 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.