Documents / FOIA release

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

Central Intelligence Agency · 1900-01-01 · 406 pages · text by GLM-OCR

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.

Open the PDF at page 29 Original source ↗

“Headquarters”25 pages

  • p. 22 …Air Force headquarters soon approved Martin's proposal to modify the B-57 and was very…
  • p. 31 …Their headquarters was located over a secretarial school on Beacon Hill, which soon became the codename…
  • p. 55 Secret NOFORN Chapter 2 42 The Matomic Building total of 357 personnel divided among project headquarters…
  • p. 56 …until it moved into the new CIA Headquarters building at Langley in March 1962. The final…
  • p. 73 …On 3 August 1955, Dulles and Twining met at SAC headquarters in Omaha to sign the…
  • p. 85 …Frequent flights were also necessary to bring in supplies and visitors from contractors and headquarters. Therefore…
  • p. 102 …U-2 project officer, the Air Force Headquarters project officer, and NACA's top official, Dr…
  • p. 107 …did not have to report to higher headquarters. WRSP-1, known within the Agency as Detachment…
  • p. 117 …Late on the evening of 3 July, Bissell went to project headquarters in the Matomic Building…
  • p. 127 …The PARAMOUNT Committee worked inside PID headquarters in the Steuart Building. Composed of members from CIA…
  • p. 128 …Lundahl and Reber flew from the United Kingdom to US Air Force Europe headquarters in Wiesbaden…
  • p. 138 …later and promptly reported the conversation to headquarters. When details of Vito's close call reached…
  • p. 153 …of Detachment A achieved excellent results, project headquarters had already decided that Western Europe was not…
  • p. 168 …The British missions would be operationally controlled by CIA project headquarters. Soon afterward four British pilots…
  • p. 191 …commander at Adana, to Air Force Europe headquarters, to replace the cover story that had been…
  • p. 194 …Because the new government had not been briefed on the U-2, Project Headquarters refused to…
  • p. 205 …its own building to the new CIA Headquarters at Langley. Soon afterward, Col. Stanley W. Beerli…
  • p. 233 …On 6 June 1960, project headquarters decided on a phased-out withdrawal of Detachment C between…
  • p. 235 …Airport, the pilot reported the incident to Headquarters. The Office of Security immediately contacted the Pennsylvania…
  • p. 312 …Project headquarters therefore began preparing contingency plans (Project SKYLARK) for the possible employment of OXCART over…
  • p. 319 …To ensure secure communications between Headquarters and Kadena. A typical mission over North Vietnam required refueling…
  • p. 323 …Project headquarters informed Deputy Defense Secretary Vance on 10 January 1967 that the A-12s would…
  • p. 324 …President Johnson confirmed this decision on 21 May. $ ^{69} $ Project headquarters selected 8 June 1968 as…
  • p. 334 …Air Force personnel served at all levels of the reconnaissance program, from project headquarters to the…
  • p. 365 …Speech given by Richard Bissell at CIA Headquarters, 12 October 1965 (Top Secret Codeword). Interview with…

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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 1

Richard M. Bissell, Jr.

States might use against the Soviet Bloc in the event of another uprising such as the East Berlin riots of June 1953. Bissell quickly concluded that there was not much hope for clandestine operations against Bloc nations. As he remarked later: "I know I emerged from that exercise feeling that very little could be done." This belief would later make Bissell a leading advocate of technical rather than human means of intelligence collection. $ ^{25} $

Bissell joined the Agency in late January 1954 and soon became involved in coordination for the operation aimed at overthrowing Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz. He was, therefore very preoccupied when Philip Strong approached him in mid-May 1954 with the concept of the proposed spyplane from Lockheed. Bissell said that the idea had merit and told Strong to get some topflight scientists to advise on the matter. Afterward he returned to the final planning for the Guatemalan operation and promptly forgot about the CL-282. $ ^{26} $

Meanwhile, Strong went about drumming up support for high-altitude overflight. In May 1954 he persuaded DCI Allen W. Dulles to ask the Air Force to take the initiative in gaining approval for an overflight of the Soviet guided-missile test range at Kapustin Yar. Dulles's memorandum did not mention the CL-282 or any of the other proposed high-altitude aircraft. CIA and Air Force officials met on several occasions to explore the overflight proposal, which the Air Force finally turned down in October 1954. $ ^{27} $

Although Allen Dulles was willing to support an Air Force overflight of the Soviet Union, he was not enthusiastic about the CIA undertaking such a project. Few details about Dulles's precise attitude toward the proposed Lockheed reconnaissance aircraft are available, but many who knew him believe that he did not want the CIA to become involved in projects that belonged to the military, and the Lockheed CL-282 had been designed for an Air Force requirement.

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About this file

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.