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.
“Burbank”8 pages
005653421 UNCLASSIFIED Chapter 1 32 camera with tremendously improved resolution and film capacity, and the Eastman Kodak company was working on new thin, lightweight film." By October 1954, the Project Three study group had drafted a complete program for an overhead reconnaissance effort based on the CL-282 aircraft. The one remaining question was who would conduct the overflights. The committee's members, particularly Land, were not in favor of the Air Force conducting such missions in peacetime. Firmly believing that military overflights in armed aircraft could pro- voke a war, they argued for civilian overflights in unarmed, unmarked aircraft. In their view, the organization most suited for this mission was the Central Intelligence Agency.6 In late October 1954, the Project Three panel discussed the CL-282 system concept with DCI Allen Dulles and the Secretary of the Air Force's Special Assistant for Research and Development, Trevor Gardner. Dulles was reluctant to have the CIA undertake the project. He did not like to involve the CIA with military projects, even ones that the military had rejected, like the CL-282. Furthermore. the DCI strongly believed that the Agency's mission lay in the use of hu- man operatives and secret communications, the classic forms of intel- ligence gathering. Land came away from this meeting with the impression that Dulles somehow thought overflights were not fair play. Project Three committee members were nevertheless convinced that technology, particularly in the form of the CL-282 and the new camera designs, would solve the nation's intelligence problems." A Meeting With the President Allen Dulles's reluctance to involve the CIA in the CL-282 project did not stop the Project Three committee from pursuing its aims because it was able to go over Dulles's head and appeal directly to the President. Having participated in the BEACON HILL Study and the Intelligence Systems Panel, several Project Three members had definite ideas on how to improve intelligence collection, ideas that they were deter- mined to present to the highest levels of government. They were able " Land interview (TS Codeword). Land interview (TS Codeword): Baker interview (S). " Land interview (TS Cotieword). SJiret 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.