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.
“Headquarters”18 pages
005653421 UNCLASSIFIED Chapter 2 73 Not only did the airline pilots report their sightings to air-traffic controllers, but they and ground-based observers also wrote letters to the Air Force unit at Wright Air Development Command in Dayton charged with investigating such phenomena. This, in turn, led to the Air Force's Operation BLUE BOOK. Based at Wright-Patterson, the operation collected all reports of UFO sightings. Air Force investiga- tors then attempted to explain such sightings by linking them to natu- ral phenomena. BLUE BOOK investigators regularly called on the Agency's Project Staff in Washington to check reported UFO sight- ings against U-2 flight logs. This enabled the investigators to elimi- nate the majority of the UFO reports, although they could not reveal to the letter writers the true cause of the UFO sightings. U-2 and later OXCART flights accounted for more than one-half of all UFO reports during the late 1950s and most of the 1960s.49 HIRING U-2 PILOTS In authorizing the U-2 project, President Eisenhower told DCI Dulles that he wanted the pilots of these planes to be non-US citizens. It was his belief that, should a U-2 come down in hostile territory, it would be much easier for the United States to deny any responsibility for the activity if the pilot was not an American. ED 129581.61111111>1010425Yrs IS] In theory the use of foreign pilots seemed quite logical; in prac- tice it did not work out. The and could only fly light aircraft. Language was also a barrier tor the although several were good fliers. Because Lieutenant Lolonet Geary had taken a class of through flying school at he got me joo(raining the Information supplied by James Cunningham to Donald E. Welzenbach (U). E0129581.6(d1(11>10425Yrs E0129581.61d1161>10<25Yrs 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.