Documents / FOIA release

CIA/CSI/ History Staff Monograph, The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and Oxcart Programs, 16 July 2002.

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, 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."

  • p. 4 …Scientists and Overhead Reconnaissance 17 The BEACON HILL Report 17 Concern About the Danger of a…
  • p. 14 …view of the "other side of the hill." With the advent of dry film, it became…
  • p. 30 …of this new advisory body." The BEACON HILL Report In 1951 the Air Force sought even…
  • p. 31 …Their head- quarters was located over a secretarial school on Beacon Hill, which soon became the…
  • p. 32 …to implement the ideas of the BEACON HILL Report until the summer of 1953. By this…
  • p. 34 …Created in July 1953, the Intelligence Systems Panel (ISP) included several experts from the BEACON HILL…
  • p. 37 …reconnais- sance needs expressed in the BEACON HILL Report. Theoretically, he explained to the panel, any…
  • p. 41 …H. T. Friis R. Mettler A. G. Hill E. Purcell W. H. Radford E. H. Plesset…
  • p. 44 …6(dli1i>10<25Yrs since the BEACON HILL and Intelligence Systems Panel meetings. (Si James Baker…
  • p. 45 …Having participated in the BEACON HILL Study and the Intelligence Systems Panel, several Project Three members…
  • p. 344 …He headed the Beacon Hill Panel in 1952 and later became director of Lincoln Laboratories. PARANGOSKY…
  • p. 345 …of several advisory panels, including the BEACON HILL project. He helped Baker decide what cameras to…
  • p. 364 …BEACON HILL Report: Problems of Air Force Intelligence and Reconnaissance. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 15 June…
Semipalatinsk Nuclear
Weapons Proving Ground,
22 August 1957
CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED
S'erret-NC1BAL-
Chapter 3
138
EO 129581.6191111>101010<25Yrs
part of the world." The Soviet announcement made the intelligence
community want even more information on Tyuratam, and a second
U-2 piloted by flew over the area on 28 August 1957,
just one week alter the Soviet ICBM launch. This mission obtained
excellent vertical photographs of the main launch complex, and
photointerpreters soon determined that the Soviets had only one
launchpad at Tyuratam. The base was not photographed again until 9
July 1959, at which time it still had only one launch pad, although
two more were under construction."
On 20 and 21 August 1957, U-2s conducted the first overflights
of the Soviet nuclear testing grounds at Semipalatinsk, north-north-
west of Lake Balkhash. The first mission, piloted by
passed over part of the proving grounds, tlew on to
iNovoKuznetsk, and then proceeded to Tomsk, where it began its re-
turn leg that included coverage of a very large uranium-processing fa-
cility at the new city of Berezovskiy. In the second mission
flew directly over the Semipalatinsk proving g
only tour hours before a half-megaton device was detonated. In fact,
the U-2 unknowingly photographed the aircraft that was to drop the
"Is Russia Ahead in Missile Race, - US News and World Report, 6 September 1957. pp.
30-33.
" Mission folders 4058 (28 August 1957) and 4125 (9 July 1959), OSA records
ITS Codeword).
SlierdaL,
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.