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.
“Hill”13 pages
CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED Z;ZRTI,F4I2N Chapter 7 318 The U-2 program not only provided information on individual Soviet weapons systems, but also helped analysts assess basic Soviet intentions, particularly during crisis situations, as Dulles wrote in May 1960: Whenever the international situation becomes tense because of a problem in some particular area, we are concerned whether the situation might get beyond control—that someone on the other side might suddenly and irrationally unleash big war.... Our knowledge of Soviet military preparations, however, result- ing from the overflight program, has given us an ability to dis- count or call the bluffs of the Soviets with confidence. We have been able to conclude that Soviet statements were more rhetori- cal than threatening and that our courses of action could be carried through without serious risk of war and without Soviet inte Ife re nce.4 Dulles closed his report on the U-2's accomplishments by put- ting the program in perspective as part of the entire national intelli- gence effort, noting that "in terms of reliability, of precision, of access to otherwise inaccessible installations, its contribution has been unique. And in the opinion of the military, of the scientists and of the senior officials responsible for our national security it has been, to put it simply, invaluable." The impact of the U-2 overflights on international relations is harder to measure. On the one hand, the intelligence they gathered was a major factor in keeping the United States from beginning a costly and destabilizing arms race in the late 1950s and early 1960s by showing that the Soviet Union was not engaged in major buildups of strategic bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles. On the other hand, violations of Soviet airspace by U-2s strained relations with Moscow at times and led to the collapse of the 1960 summit meeting. On balance, however, the impact of the U-2 on superpower relations was positive. Without the intelligence gathered by the U-2, the Soviet Union's strategic military capabilities would have remained a mystery, making it very difficult for the President to resist pressure from the military, the Congress, and the public to carry out major increases in strategic weapons, which would have poisoned relations with the Soviet Union far more than the small number of overflights did. Ibid.. pp. 9-10 (TS Codeword). ret 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.