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.
“Nevers”34 pages
James A. Cunningham, Jr.
sat down with a group of key Air Force officials that included Trevor Gardner and Lt. Gen. Donald L. Putt. The participants spent very little time delineating Air Force and Agency responsibilities in the project, taking for granted that the CIA would handle the security matters. Much of the discussion centered on methods for diverting Air Force materiel to the program, particularly the Pratt & Whitney J57 engines, because a separate contract for the engines might jeopardize the project's security. The Air Force promised to turn over a number of J57 engines, which were then being produced for B-52s, KC-135s, F-100s, and RB-57s. Eventually Bissell asked who was going to pay for the airframes to be built by Lockheed. His query was greeted with silence. Everyone present had their eyes on him because they all expected the Agency to come up with the funds. Bissell rose from his chair, said he would see what he could do, and the meeting adjourned. $ ^{3} $
After the meeting, Bissell told Dulles that the CIA would have to use money from the Contingency Reserve Fund to get the project going. The DCI used this fund to pay for covert activities, following approval by the President and the Director of the Budget. Dulles told Bissell to draft a memorandum for the President on funding the overflight program and to start putting together a staff for Project AQUATONE, the project's new codename.
At first the new "Project Staff" (renamed the Development Projects Staff in April 1958) consisted of Bissell, Miller, and the small existing staff in Bissell's Office of the Special Assistant to the DCI. During the months that followed the establishment of the project, its administrative workload increased rapidly, and in May 1955 the project staff added an administrative officer, James A. Cunningham, Jr., a former Marine Corps pilot then working in the Directorate of Support. Cunningham stayed with the U-2 project for the next 10 years. Two other key project officials who began their duties early in 1955 were the finance officer, and the contracting officer. $ ^{4} $ 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.