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 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.
“Mission Control”28 pages
- p. 9 …The struggle between the CIA and the US Air Force to control the U-2 and…
- p. 72 …2 missions. Access to the photographs taken by the U-2 would be strictly controlled, which…
- p. 73 …This pact gave the Air Force responsibility for pilot selection and training, weather information, mission plotting…
- p. 81 …Before the start of a mission, the ground crew set the counters to indicate the total…
- p. 96 …All of the products from this project would be placed in the new control system. By…
- p. 100 …This was an S-band radar used by Soviet forces for early warning and ground-controlled…
- p. 113 …The President nevertheless maintained tight control over the program and authorized only 10 days of overflights…
- p. 128 …personnel controlling overseas photo processing and interpretation centers, which were normally under Air Force control. Further…
- p. 140 …Although the President would not allow U-2s to fly their primary mission of reconnaissance of…
- p. 142 …of the first series of U-2 missions. The CIA proprietary firm Scientific Engineering Institute was…
- p. 147 …To take advantage of these weaknesses, Detachment C staged three missions from Alaska into the Soviet…
- p. 156 …After these missions, penetration overflights became a rarity. There would be only six more during the…
- p. 167 …U-2 missions. To handle U-2 material, the British created a new control system, which…
- p. 168 …The British missions would be operationally controlled by CIA project headquarters. Soon afterward four British pilots…
- p. 169 …of authority for the joint program: "British missions are carried out on your authority and are…
- p. 170 Secret NOFORN
Chapter 3
May 1959, and used to fly weather missions on 7 and 8…
- p. 180 …As in December, the pilot was British, and the mission had been ordered by Prime Minister…
- p. 188 …some Soviet airborne-missile fire-control systems.
Operation GRAND SLAM, mission 4154 and the 24th deep…
- p. 191 …This revised cover story, along with a mission flight plan consistent with it, was sent to…
- p. 193 …the impression that he was not in control of his administration. On Wednesday, 11 May, the…
- p. 196 …with Abel's "wife" (probably his Soviet control) in East Germany. In November 1961, Acting DCI…
- p. 204 …in the DDP in order to maintain control of his overhead reconnaissance projects (the U-2…
- p. 220 …Strongly favoring Air Force control of the U-2 missions over Cuba, the DOD representatives called…
- p. 237 …In reality, however, the United States would maintain strict control over the missions to be flown…
- p. 335 …The flood of information that the U-2 missions gathered led to a major expansion of…
- p. 340 …In 1959 Bissell became Deputy Director for Plans but kept the reconnaissance projects under his control…
- p. 348 …System-I used S- and X-band ELINT receivers to collect ground-controlled intercept and air…
- p. 400 mission 2023
108
mission 2029
124
mission 3086
200
mission 3088
200
mission 3089
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mission…
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. Not linked to a story yet.
About this file
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.