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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…
Equipment from a WS-461L
balloon on display in Moscow,
11 October 1958
CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED
Streret-NerreallL.
Chapter 3
146
Goodpaster on 29 July 1958 to tell the Air Force that "the project is
to be discontinued at once and every cent that has been made avail-
able as part of any project involving crossing the Iron Curtain is to be
impounded and no further expenditures are to be made."
Two days later Eisenhower followed up this order with a formal
memorandum to Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy telling him that
"there is disturbing evidence of a deterioration in the processes of
discipline and responsibility within the armed forces." He cited, in
particular, "unauthorized decisions which have apparently resulted in
certain balloons falling within the territory of the Communist Bloc"
and overflights over routes "that contravened my standing orders." 99
On 2 September 1958, there was another violation of Soviet air-
space when an unarmed Air Force EC-130 on an electronic intelligence
collection mission crossed from Turkey into Soviet Armenia and was
shot down by Soviet fighter aircraft. Six of the men on board were
killed and the remaining 11 were never heard from again, despite State
Department attempts to get the Soviet Union to reveal their fate.""
" Andrew J. Goodpaster, Memorandum for the Record. 29 July 1958, WHOSS, Alpha,
DDEL (S); Goodpaster interview (S).
" Quoted in Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President, pp. 475-476.
"US Representations to the Soviet Government on C-130 Transport Shot Down by
Soviet Fighter Aircraft," US Department of State Bulletin, 23 February 1959, pp. 262-271;
Beschloss, Mayday. p. 159.
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.