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
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mission 2029
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mission 3086
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mission 3088
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mission 3089
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mission…
Secret NOFORN
Chapter 1
to do so because the Land committee was part of a panel commissioned by President Eisenhower to examine the nation's intelligence community and recommend changes. The committee thus had a direct line to the White House through James Killian's contacts there.
Land described the [CL-282] system using an unarmed plane and recommended that its development be undertaken. After listening to our proposal and asking many hard questions, Eisenhower approved the development of the system, but he stipulated that it should be handled in an unconventional way so that it would not become entangled in the bureaucracy of the Defense Department or troubled by rivalries among the services.58
Early in November 1954, Land and Killian met with President Eisenhower to discuss high-altitude reconnaissance. Killian's memoirs contain an account of this crucial meeting:
Meanwhile Edwin Land and his Project Three colleagues were working to convince Allen Dulles that the CIA should run the proposed overflight program. On 5 November Land wrote to the DCI strongly urging that the CIA undertake the CL-282 project:
The scientists from the advisory committees and the President were thus in agreement that the new reconnaissance program should be controlled by the CIA, not the military.
## ClA and Air Force Agreement on the CL-282
Here is the brief report from our panel telling why we think overflight is urgent and presently feasible. I [Land] am not sure that we have made it clear that we feel there are many reasons why this activity is appropriate for CIA, always with Air Force assistance. We told you that this seems to us the kind of action and technique that is right for the contemporary version of CIA: a modern and scientific way for an Agency that is always supposed to be looking, to do its looking. Quite strongly, we feel that you must always assert your first right to pioneer in scientific techniques for collecting intelligence—and choosing such partners to assist you as may be needed. This present opportunity for aerial photography seems to us a fine place to start. $ ^{59} $ 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.