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 Mission folder 4019 (22 December 1956), OSA records. Codewor(1). ITS -seer•444cauxua. Chapter 3 '126 ED 129581.61O1l>11425Yrs [SI Although the U-2 overflights of Eastern Europe in late 1956 caused renewed Soviet protests, the sharpest protest came on 15 December 1956, after three specially modified USAF RB-57D bomb- ers photographed the city of Vladivostok in a high-speed dash over the Far Eastern coast of the Soviet Union (as part of the Air Force's Operation BLACK KNIGHT). President Eisenhower had approved the mission after being told by the Air Force that the high-speed RB-57Ds would probably not be detected.66 Reacting strongly to the Soviet protest, the President told Secretary of State Dulles on 18 December that he was going to "order complete stoppage of this entire business." As for a reply to the Soviet protest, Dulles said, "I think we will have to admit this was done and say we are sorry. We cannot deny it." Dulles noted that "our relations with Russia are pretty tense at the moment." Eisenhower agreed, noting that this was no time to be provocative. He then instructed Colonel Goodpaster to call Secretary of Defense Wilson, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Radford, and DCI Dulles to order: "Effective immediately, there are to be no flights by US recon- naissance aircraft over Iron Curtain countries." 67 Flights along the borders of Iron Curtain countries continued, however, and, on 22 December 1956, Detachment B flew the first mission (4019) by a U-2 equipped for electronic intercept. The elec- tronic-detection equipment known as the System-V unit (see appendix C) was installed in the bay normally used by the main camera, and the plane flew along the Soviet border from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea and on to Afghanistan. The System-V unit worked well.64 Early in 1957, a mission along the Soviet border accidentally turned into an overflight. On 18 March 1957, a U-2 collecting elec- tronic intelligence along the Soviet southern border entered Soviet Goodpaster interview (S). Telephone calls 18 December 1956. DDE Diary. DDEL. (U); Andrew J. Goodpaster. Memorandum for the Record. 18 December 1956. WHOSS, Alpha, DDEL (TS, down- graded to S); the Soviet protest note of 15 December 1956 and the U.S. reply of 11 January 1957 are contained in "Alleged Overflight of Soviet Area by American Planes." US Department of State Bulletin, vol. 36. 28 January 1957. p. 135. Although Dulles's ini- tial inclination had been to offer an apology, the U.S. reply stated that the "only autho- rized United States Air Force flights in the general area of the Sea of Japan were normal training activities." 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.