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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. 11 …At great risk, US Air Force and Navy aircraft had been conducting peripheral reconnaissance and shallow…
  • p. 16 …As a result, in the late 1940s, the US Air Force and Navy began trying to…
  • p. 17 …Two months later, on 7 October 1952, Soviet fighter aircraft stalked and shot down a US…
  • p. 72 …agreement with the Air Force and the Navy (which at that time was also interested in…
  • p. 147 …turned to the Navy, which granted permission for Detachment C to use the Naval Air Station…
  • p. 180 …The Army, Navy, and CIA, however, doubted that any had been deployed, because none could be…
  • p. 223 …by Air Force and Navy reconnais- sance aircraft. President Kennedy used NPIC photographs to illustrate his…
  • p. 273 …Charyk, and his Navy counterpart, Garrison Norton. Designers from several air- craft manufacturers also attended some…
  • p. 283 …This engine had originally been developed for the Navy's large, jet-powered flying boat, the…
  • p. 297 …The need for additional buildings on the base was met by the Navy. Three surplus Navy…
  • p. 298 …After hearing Bissell and Holcomb's suggestion that the J58 might be used in future Navy…
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Photograph of Dodonovo Atomic
Energy complex taken by a
Project GENETRIX balloon
All of this publicity and protest led President Eisenhower to con-
clude that "the balloons gave more legitimate grounds for irritation
than could be matched by the good obtained from them," and he or-
dered the project halted. On 7 February 1956 Secretary of State
Dulles informed the Soviet Union that no more "weather research"
balloons would be released. but he did not offer an apology for the
overt' ights.7u
Despite the furor caused by GENETRIX, Air Force Chief of
Staff Twining proposed yet another balloon project only five weeks
later, in mid-March 1956. This project would employ even higher fly-
ing balloons than GENETRIX and would be ready in 18 months.
President Eisenhower informed the Air Force, however, that he was
"not interested in any more balloons." 'I
Andrew J. GoocIpaster, Memorandum for the Record, -10 February 1956 Conference of
Joint Chiefs of Staff with the President." WHOSS, Alpha. DDEL (TS, declassified 1980):
Stephen E. Ambrose. Eisenhower. The President vol. 2 (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1984), p. 310.
Quoted in Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President. p. 310.
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.