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.
“Edwards Air Force Base”7 pages
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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 5
perceived as a jurisdictional dispute. Presidential Assistant for National Security Affairs McGeorge Bundy told DDCI Carter that "the whole thing looks to me like two quarreling children." $ ^{19} $ Furthermore, no one wanted to speak out against a decision that the President had already made.
Once the decision was clearly irrevocable, the Agency gave its complete support to the Air Force in preparing for the upcoming overflight. A SAC U-2 pilot had already arrived unannounced at the CIA's U-2 Detachment at Edwards Air Force Base on 11 October, and the CIA U-2 detachment put him through a hasty training program to familiarize him with the U-2C. By Sunday, 14 October 1962, the weather over Cuba had cleared, and the first SAC overflight of the island took place.
When the U-2 returned, its film was rushed to the National Photographic Interpretation Center. By the evening of 15 October, photointerpreters had found evidence of the presence of MRBMs in the San Cristobal area. NPIC Director Arthur Lundahl immediately notified DDI Ray Cline, who in turn notified DDCI Carter (DCI McCone had again left town). As the readout progressed and the evidence became firmer, the DDI notified National Security Adviser Bundy and Roger Hilsman of the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, who informed Secretary of State Dean Rusk. On the following morning, 16 October, DDCI Carter briefed the President on the results of the 14 October mission. $ ^{20} $
Now that the presence of Soviet medium-range surface-to-surface missiles in Cuba had been confirmed, the rules for U-2 mission approval changed. The Strategic Air Command received blanket approval to fly as many missions as needed to cover Cuba completely, without again consulting the Special Group. During the week that followed the discovery of the missiles, SAC U-2s conducted multiple missions each day (see map on page 203). U-2 photography was supplemented by low-level photography taken by high-performance Navy and Air Force aircraft. Throughout the remainder of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Agency's U-2 pilots remained idle, but the photointerpreters at NPIC did yeoman service in studying the 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.