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.
“RAF”18 pages
and plan missions in view of priority and feasibility, to maintain the operation on a continuing basis, and to carry out the dissemination of the resulting information in a manner consistent with its special security requirements. $ ^{61} $
When the U-2's development and testing approached completion, Land's recommendation was put into effect. Following a meeting with Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald Quarles and Trevor Gardner (who had been promoted from his special assistant post to become Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Research and Development), Richard Bissell established an Ad Hoc Requirements Committee (ARC) on 1 December 1955. He then named James Q. Reber to be Intelligence Requirements Officer for the U-2 project and chairman of the ARC. Reber was already experienced in coordination with other intelligence agencies, for he had headed the Directorate of Intelligence DI Office of Intelligence Coordination for four years. The first full-scale ARC meeting took place on 1 February 1956 with representatives from the Army, Navy, and Air Force present. Attending for the CIA were representatives from the Office of Research and Reports (ORR) and the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI). The CIA membership later expanded to include the Office of Current Intelligence (OCI) and a representative from the Directorate of Plans. In 1957 the National Security Agency (NSA) also began sending a representative. The State Department followed suit in 1960, although it had been receiving reports from the committee all along. $ ^{62} $
ARC's main task was to draw up lists of collection requirements, primarily for the U-2, but also for other means of collection. These lists prioritized targets according to their ability to meet the three major national intelligence objectives concerning the Soviet Union in the mid-1950s: long-range bombers, guided missiles, and nuclear energy. The committee issued its list of targets for the use of the entire intelligence community using all available means of collection, not just for the CIA with the U-2. $ ^{63} $
James Q. Reber 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.