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.
“Cooper”11 pages
Secret NOFORN
Chapter 2
42
The Matomic Building
total of 357 personnel divided among project headquarters, a US testing facility, and three foreign field bases. CIA employees represented only one-fourth (92) of the total. The Air Force personnel commitment was larger, with 109 positions on the 1955 table of organization (this total does not include many other Air Force personnel, such as SAC meteorologists, who supported the U-2 project in addition to their other duties). The largest Project AQUATONE category was contract employees, with 156 positions in 1955. This category included maintenance and support personnel from Lockheed (five per aircraft), the pilots, and support personnel from other contractors for items such as photographic equipment. $ ^{6} $
The first project headquarters was in CIA's Administration (East) Building at 2430 E Street, NW. Continued growth caused the AQUATONE staff to move several times during its first two years. On 1 May 1955, the project staff moved to the third floor of a small red brick building (the Briggs School) at 2210 E Street, NW. Then on 3 October, the staff moved to Wings A and C of Quarters Eye, a World War II "temporary" building on Ohio Drive, NW, in the West Potomac Park area of Washington. On 25 February 1956, the project staff moved again, this time to the fifth floor of the Matomic Building 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.