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.
“RAF”18 pages
Secret NOFORN
Chapter 6
304
hoped that the A-12's passage would provoke Soviet air defense personnel to activate the Tallinn system radars in order to track the swift OXCART aircraft. As the A-12 made its dash down the Baltic, its Type-I camera would be filming the entire south coast. If Agency analysts were correct in their assumption that the Tallinn system was designed to counter high-altitude aircraft at long ranges, then the OXCART would be in jeopardy during this dash down the Baltic. Nevertheless, Agency weapons experts believed that the A-12 aircraft's speed and suite of electronic countermeasures would keep it safe from the standard Soviet surface-to-air missile installations.
While the A-12 was conducting its high-speed dash along the Baltic coast of Eastern Europe, the U-2 would be flying farther out to sea, safely beyond the range of all Soviet SAMs. The U-2 would be able to collect the Tallinn radar installation's ELINT emanations.
Agency and Defense Department officials supported the proposed mission, but Secretary of State Dean Rusk strongly opposed it and the 303 Committee never forwarded the proposal to President Johnson. $ ^{59} $ The Tallinn radar installation remained of great interest to the intelligence community, and in the late 1960s the CIA attempted to develop a small, unmanned reconnaissance aircraft that could photograph Tallinn and other coastal areas. The project (AQUILINE) was abandoned in 1971 (see appendix E).
## FIRST A-12 DEPLOYMENT: OPERATION BLACK SHIELD
Although the Tallinn mission was still being considered in May 1967, another possible employment for the OXCART came under discussion. This time the proposal was for OXCART to collect tactical rather than strategic intelligence. The cause was apprehension in Washington about the possible undetected introduction of surface-to-surface missiles into North Vietnam. When President Johnson asked for a proposal on the matter, the CIA suggested that the OXCART be used. While the State and Defense Departments were still examining the proposal's political risks, DCI Richard Helms 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.