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
Chapter 5 209 005653421 UNCLASSIFIED perceived as a jurisdictional dispute. Presidential Assistant for National Security Affairs McGeorge Bundy told DDCI Carter that "the whole thing looks to me like two quarreling children." 19 Furthermore, no one wanted to speak out against a decision that the President had already made. Once the decision was clearly irrevocable, the Agency gave its complete support to the Air Force in preparing for the upcoming overflight. A SAC U-2 pilot had already arrived unannounced at the CIA's U-2 Detachment at Edwards Air Force Base on 11 October, and the CIA U-2 detachment put him through a hasty training program to familiarize him with the U-2C. By Sunday, 14 October 1962, the weather over Cuba had cleared, and the first SAC overflight of the island took place. When the U-2 returned, its film was rushed to the National Photographic Interpretation Center. By the evening of 15 October, photointerpreters had found evidence of the presence of MRBMs in the San Cristobal area. NPIC Director Arthur Lundahl immediately notified DDI Ray Cline, who in turn notified DDCI Carter (DCI McCone had again left town). As the readout progressed and the evi- dence became firmer, the DDI notified National Security Adviser Bundy and Roger Hilsman of the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, who informed Secretary of State Dean Rusk. On the following morning, 16 October, DDCI Carter briefed the President on the results of the 14 October mission.'" Now that the presence of Soviet medium-range surface-to-sur- face missiles in Cuba had been confirmed, the rules for U-2 mission approval changed. The Strategic Air Command received blanket ap- proval to fly as many missions as needed to cover Cuba completely, without again consulting the Special Group. During the week that fol- lowed the discovery of the missiles, SAC U-2s conducted multiple missions each day (see map on page 203). U-2 photography was sup- plemented by low-level photography taken by high-performance Navy and Air Force aircraft. Throughout the remainder of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Agency's U-2 pilots remained idle, but the photointerpreters at NPIC did yeoman service in studying the E0129581.61[11111>10<25Yrs ES) Telephone conversation between DDC I Carter and McGeorge Bundy, 12 October 1962, DCI records .\ l(TS Codeword). For a more detailed account of NPIC's discovery of the Soviet missiles in Cuba, see Dino Brugioni, The Cuban Missile Crisis—Phase I. 29 August-16 October 1962, DDS&T Historical Series. NPIC-I (CIA: NPIC, 1971) (S). Se UNCLASSIFIED
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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.