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/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. 91 …Early in the program Bissell and Ritland had foreseen such an emergency and, with the cooperation…
  • p. 95 …of their mission kept the level of cooperation high. The group always attempted to reach a…
  • p. 143 …deception project since its early days, he cooperated reluctantly because he disliked adding attachments that made…
  • p. 196 …as possible while giving the appearance of cooperating with his cap- tors. To extract the maximum…
  • p. 287 …by Edgerton, Germeshausen & Grier (EG&G) in cooperation with the Scientific Engineering Institute at a small…
  • p. 302 …Halaby cooperated fully with the Agency and personally briefed all FAA regional chiefs on how to…
  • p. 334 …The cooperation between the Agency and the Air Force that began with the U-2 and…
005653421 UNCLASSIFIED
Se OFORN
Chapter
59
SECURITY FOR THE U-2 PROJECT
On 29 April 1955, Richard Bissell signed an agreement with the Air
Force and the Navy (which at that time was also interested in the U-2)
in which the services agreed that the CIA "assumed primary respon-
sibility for all security" for the overhead reconnaissance project
(AQUATONE). From this time on, the CIA has been responsible for
the security of overhead programs. This responsibility has placed a
heavy burden on the Office of Security for establishing procedures to
keep large numbers of contracts untraceable to the Central
Intelligence Agency. The Office of Security has also had to determine
which contractor employees require security clearances and has had
to devise physical security measures for the various manufacturing fa-
cilities. Keeping the U-2 and subsequent overhead systems secret has
been a time-consuming and costly undertaking."'
The most important aspect of the security program for the U-2
project was the creation of an entire new compartmented system for
the product of U-2 missions. Access to the photographs taken by the
U-2 would be strictly controlled, which often limited the ability of
CIA analysts to use the products of U-2 missions.
129581.6(011>10<25Yrs
(Si
Even the aircraft's onboard equipment required the involvement
of CIA security planners. Thus, when Kelly Johnson ordered altime-
ters from the Kollman Instrument Company, he specified that the
OSA History. chap. 7. pp. 4-6 (TS Codeword).
Information supplied by James Cunningham to Donald E. Welzenbach (S).
Sbiet
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.