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.

  • 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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Engineering Institute, an Agency proprietary working on ways to reduce the U-2's vulnerability to radar detection. In 1957 he founded Itek Corporation.

## LUNDAHL, Arthur E.

A Navy photointerpreter during World War II and afterward. Lundahl became the chief of the Photo-Intelligence Division in 1953. To support the U-2 project, he established a separate photointerpretation center under Project HTAUTOMAT. Under his leadership the Photo-Intelligence Division grew rapidly and achieved office status as the Photographic Intelligence Center in 1958. In 1961 Lundahl became the first head of the National Photograhic Interpretation Center, which combined the photointerpretation efforts of the CIA and the military services.

## McCONE, John A.

DCI from 1961 to 1965. A strong supporter of the CIA's manned reconnaissance program, McCone presided over the OXCART's main period of development and pushed for a greater role for the CIA in its joint reconnaissance programs with the Department of Defense.

## MILLER, Herbert I.

Miller worked in the Office of Scientific Intelligence's nuclear branch and became Richard Bissell's first deputy for the U-2 project. He later left the Agency to work for the Scientific Engineering Institute.

## NORTON, Garrison

An assistant to Trevor Gardner, Norton became an early supporter of the Lockheed CL-282 and started the CIA's interest in overhead reconnaissance by informing Philip Strong about the aircraft. Norton later became Navy Assistant Secretary for Research and Development and was involved with the OXCART program.

## OVERHAGE, Carl F. J.

After working on the development of Technicolor, Overhage went to work for Kodak. He headed the Beacon Hill Panel in 1952 and later became director of Lincoln Laboratories.

## PARANGOSKY, John N.

Parangosky worked for Richard Bissell's Development Projects Staff in the mid-1950s. He served as deputy chief of the Adana U-2 unit in 1959 and became project manager of the OXCART program from its inception through the test flight stage.

Secret NOFORN
Appendix B
221

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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.