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.
“Cooper”11 pages
Nationalist Chinese U-2R
March 1972, when the President's visit took place, Detachment H ceased all operational missions. $ ^{67} $
In March 1973, the TACKLE agreement with the Nationalist Chinese was renegotiated. Although no end date was set, the agreement contained a termination clause that would become effective three months after notification by either party. This clause provided more flexibility to the United States, which could now end the Nationalist Chinese U-2 program whenever US foreign policy considerations made such a step desirable.
## Operation SCOPE SHIELD Over North Vietnam
In addition to the Project TACKLE peripheral missions against the PRC, Detachment H (with Agency rather than Nationalist Chinese pilots) flew a series of missions known as Operation SCOPE SHIELD to gather intelligence on activities in North Vietnam. The Indochina area had become the responsiblity of the Air Force in 1964, but, under the terms of the cease-fire agreement negotiated with North 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.