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.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
Secret NOFORN
Chapter 1
## The Air Force Intelligence Systems Panel
Even before the publication of photographs of the Bison raised fears that the Soviet bomber force might eventually surpass that of the United States, the Air Force had already established a new advisory body to look for ways to implement the main recommendation of the BEACON HILL Report—the construction of high-flying aircraft and high-acuity cameras. Created in July 1953, the Intelligence Systems Panel (ISP) included several experts from the BEACON HILL Study Group: Land, Overhage, Donovan, and Miller. At the request of the Air Force, the CIA also participated in the panel, represented by Edward L. Allen of the Office of Research and Reports (ORR) and Philip Strong of the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI). $ ^{36} $
The chairman of the new panel was Dr. James G. Baker, a research associate at the Harvard College Observatory. Baker had been involved in aerial reconnaissance since 1940, when he first advised the Army Air Corps on ways to improve its lenses. He then established a full-scale optical laboratory at Harvard—the Harvard University Optical Research Laboratory—to produce high-quality
Soviet Myasishchev-4 bomber (the Bison) 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.