Documents / FOIA release
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.
“Mission Control”17 pages
005653421 UNCLASSIFIED Chapter 4 189 denied areas, whether by photographic, ELINT. COMINT, infrared, RADINT, or other means." The only exception to COMOR's area of responsibility was "reconnaissance and aerial surveillance in direct support of actively combatant forces." 5' By this time the Air Force had developed a large overhead re- connaissance program of its own, including a fleet of U-2s, and, occa- sionally, there were conflicts between the areas of responsibility of COMOR and the military services for collection requirements. The Air Force had already won a major victory in 1958, when it claimed that the White House had given responsibility for peripheral recon- naissance of the Soviet Union to the military. DCI Dulles, who was always reluctant to become involved in matters that seemed to lie in the military's area of responsibility, did not resist this claim, and the Ad Hoc Requirements Committee stopped preparing requirements for peripheral flights. This ended a major requirements committee study, which sought to estimate what could be gained from U-2 oblique pho- tography along the entire border of the Soviet Union. 5 The last CIA U-2 mission along the Soviet Union's coasts occurred on 22 June .1958: thereafter, the only peripheral missions conducted by the CIA were those along the Soviet Union':s Until the spring of 1961, there was virtually no coordination of military reconnaissance activities, even within the individual services. Each commander of a Theater or a Unified and Specified Command conducted his own independent reconnaissance activities. To meet the growing need for overall coordination of these activities at the na- tional level, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) established the Joint Reconnaissance Center (JRC) under the J-3 (Operations) of the Joint Staff. The JRC immediately began to coordinate and obtain approval for approximately 500 missions per month. assigning each a risk fac- tor of Critical, Sensitive, Unique. or Routine. The JRC then prepared a monthly Activities Book giving details of the proposed missions and briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the more risky missions. The CIA received a copy of the Activities Book. " DOD 217, effective 9 August 1960 (S). Memorandum for DCI McCone from James Q. Reber, Chairman. COMOR. "Proposed Procedures for Approval of Critical Reconnaissance." 21 March 1962, COMIREX records (TS Codesvord). UNCLASSIFIED E0 12958 1.6191111>1010<25Yrs is]
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 406 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.