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.

  • p. 11 …At great risk, US Air Force and Navy aircraft had been conducting peripheral reconnaissance and shallow…
  • p. 16 …As a result, in the late 1940s, the US Air Force and Navy began trying to…
  • p. 17 …Two months later, on 7 October 1952, Soviet fighter aircraft stalked and shot down a US…
  • p. 72 On 29 April 1955, Richard Bissell signed an agreement with the Air Force and the Navy…
  • p. 94 …The committee issued its list of targets for the use of the entire intelligence community using…
  • p. 147 …The Agency then turned to the Navy, which granted permission for Detachment C to use the…
  • p. 180 …James Doolittle urged President Eisenhower to use overflights of the Soviet Union to the maximum degree…
  • p. 223 …returned by Air Force and Navy reconnaissance aircraft. President Kennedy used NPIC photographs to illustrate his…
  • p. 273 …Charyk, and his Navy counterpart, Garrison Norton. Designers from several aircraft manufacturers also attended some of…
  • p. 283 …This engine had originally been developed for the Navy's large, jet-powered flying boat, the…
  • p. 297 …The need for additional buildings on the base was met by the Navy. Three surplus Navy…
  • p. 298 …After hearing Bissell and Holcomb's suggestion that the J58 might be used in future Navy…
  • p. 348 …Following modifications to make System-VII suitable for use by the Navy, the designation was changed…
  • p. 353 …AQUILINE prototype at Randsburg Wash on the US Navy's Naval Ordnance Test Station at China…
  • p. 401 …328 US Marine Corps Reserve 14 US Military Academy at West Point 329 US Navy Chief…
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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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.