Documents / FOIA release
This is a CIA History Staff monograph by Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, written in 1992 and approved for release in 2011. It covers the CIA's manned overhead reconnaissance program from 1954 to 1974 and its two aircraft, the U-2 and the A-12 OXCART. It follows their development, the overflights of the Soviet Union, the downing of Francis Gary Powers in 1960, and later operations. One section is titled "U-2s, UFOs, and Operation BLUE BOOK."
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005653421 UNCLASSIFIED Secret Chapter 3 122 RENEWED OVERFLIGHTS OF THE SOVIET UNION Throughout the fall of 1956, U-2s provided valuable coverage of the Middle East crisis, but they were not conducting their original mission of strategic reconnaissance of the Soviet Union. President Eisenhower had halted all such overflights by his order of 10 July, and, in the months that followed, he remained unconvinced by CIA arguments in favor of a resumption of overflights. On 17 September 1956, DDCI Cabell and Richard Bissell went to the White House to ask President Eisenhower to authorize more flights over the Soviet Union. Adm. Arthur W. Radford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also at- tended the meeting. Bissell and Defense Department representatives reviewed the valuable intelligence from the July U-2 flights, and Bissell then informed Eisenhower that many important intelligence re- quirements remained unfilled. To fill these requirements, Bissell not- ed, would require photography of approximately 15 separate areas of the Soviet Union. Pleading for the authority to resume overflights. Bissell stressed that conditions for photography were becoming less favorable as the days grew shorter. While the U-2 was then still safe from interception, he added, it might not be in the future.58 President Eisenhower acknowledged the value of the U-2 but emphasized that the international political aspects of overflights re- mained his overriding concern. He said he would talk further with John Foster Dulles about the matter, noting that the Secretary of State had at first seemed to belittle the political risk but had later found it increasingly worrisome. A little more than two weeks later, on 3 October, when the President again met with Bissell, Cabell, and Radford, John Foster Dulles was also present. In opening the meeting, Eisenhower said he had become discouraged regarding Project AQUATONE. Although he had been assured that "there would be a good chance of not being discovered on most, if not all, operations, just the opposite had proved true." The President observed that arguments in favor of re- suming U-2 operations did not take world opinion into consideration. He added that great efforts had been made for many years "to create an opinion in the world that we are not truculent and do not want war," and, if knowledge of the U-2 overflights got out, world opinion would view them as "provocative and unjustified." 59 " Andrew J. Goodpaster, Memorandum of Conference, 17 September 1956, WHOSS, Alpha, DDEL (TS). " Andrew J. Goodpaster, Memorandum for the Record, 3 October 1956, WHOSS, Alpha, DDEL (TS). Se et 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.