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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et NOFORN Chapter 168 CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED (012958 1.6(dli1l>1010<25Yrs (Si In authorizing another overflight of the Soviet Union, President Eisenhower directed that it be conducted before 30 March. Because of in getting permission from Pakistan to use the airfield however, the mission could not be staged in March, and agreed to extend his deadline until 10 April 1960. One day before the ex• • deadline, a U-2 equipped with a B-camera took off en the last successful overflight of the Soviet Union, Iperation SI RE DEAL. As had been the case during the previous two overflights, a second U-2 flew a diversionary mission along the Soviet-Iranian border.\ mis- sion 4155 headed first for Saryshagan, where it obtained the first pic- tures of two new Soviet radars, the HEN HOUSE and HEN ROOST installations. The U-2 then flew to the nuclear testing site at Semipalatinsk. Returning to the Saryshagan area, it crisscrossed the railroad network there and then proceeded to Tyuratam, where it pho- tographed a new two-pad, road-served launch area that suggested a new Soviet missile was in the offing." In his memoirs Nikita Khrushchev remarked that this U-2 should have been shot down, "but our antiaircraft batteries were caught nap- ping and didn't open fire soon enough." Khrushchev explained that Soviet missile designers had developed a high-altitude antiaircraft missile and batteries of this missile had been deployed near known targets of the U-2.'9 The CIA already had strong indications of improvements in the Soviet air defense system, and early in 1960 the Development Projects Division had asked Air Force experts at the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) for a frank assessment of Soviet capabili- ties against the U-2. On 14 March 1960, Col. William Burke, acting chief of the DPD, relayed the ATIC assessment to Richard Bissell: The greatest threat to the U-2 is the Soviet SAM. Although the ATIC analysis concedes a remote possibility that the SAM may be less effective than estimated, their present evaluation is that the SAM (Guideline) has a high probability of successful inter- cept at 70,000 feet providing that detection is made in sufficient time to alert the site." '" Mission folder 4155.9 April 1960, OSA records.] 1(TS Codeword). " Nikita S. Ithrushche y, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament (Boston: Little, Brown. & Co., 1974), pp. 443-444. x Memorandum for Richard M. Bissell, Deputy Director (Plans). from Col. William Burke, Acting Chief, DPD, "Evaluation of Proposed CHALICE Operations," 14 March 1960, IC Staff, COMIREX records CHALICE (General)" (TS Codeword). 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.