Documents / FOIA release

/specialCollection/MissileGap/1992/1992-04-01.pdf

Central Intelligence Agency · 406 pages · text from the file's own layer

This is a CIA History Staff monograph by Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, published in Washington in 1992 and approved for release in 2011. It covers the CIA's manned overhead reconnaissance program from 1954 to 1974, which developed and flew the U-2 and the A-12 OXCART. It traces the U-2's development, the overflights of the Soviet Union, the downing of Francis Gary Powers on 1 May 1960, and later operations. One section is titled U-2s, UFOs, and Operation BLUE BOOK.

  • p. 18 …This search soon led him to a British twin-engine medium bomber— the Canberra—built by…
  • p. 19 CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED ."-ge""011-141 Chapter 1 6 '• Q.., ./ • „„, a • • ..a■ ...A • - at -... .441 RAF Canberra…
  • p. 22 …al- titude performance of the B-57 Canberra. By January 1954 all three firms had submitted…
  • p. 36 …The RAF equipped the new Canberra PR7 with Rolls- Royce Avon-109 engines and gave it…
  • p. 37 …altitude flight being made to the US Canberra, the B-57.3' The Intelligence Systems Panel…
  • p. 80 …production was needed to power specially configured Canberra RB-57Ds for the Air Force. The first…
  • p. 122 …a reconnaissance version of the twin-engine Canberra bomber, similar to the RAF overflight of Kapustin…
  • p. 175 …2 and an Air Force RB-57D Canberra. The two air- craft cruised along the Soviet…
Khrushchev and the U-2
wreckage
CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED
180
This revelation completely demolished the US cover story, and
senior administration officials then debated what the appropriate
course of action should be. Allen Dulles offered to take responsibility
for the overflight and resign, but President Eisenhower did not want
to give the world the impression that he was not in control of his ad-
ministration. On Wednesday, 11 May, the President read a statement
to the press in which he assumed full responsibility for the U-2 mis-
sion but left open the question of future overflights, even though four
days earlier he had approved the recommendation of his key foreign
policy advisers to terminate all provocative intelligence operations
against the Soviet Union."
The U-2 affair had its greatest consequences when the
long-awaited summit meeting in Paris began less than a week later on
16 May. Soviet Premier Khrushchev insisted on being the first
speaker and read a long protest about the overflight, ending with a de-
mand for an apology from President Eisenhower. In his reply
" OSA History, chap. 14, pp. 14-16 (TS Codeword): Beschloss, Mayday, pp. 43-66.
/43-158
UNCLASSIFIED

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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 406 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.