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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."

Chapter 4
171
SA-2 surface-to-air missile
khcst
005653421 UNCLASSIFIED
strengthened when the Soviet Union did not protest the 9 April mis-
sion. As Presidential science adviser George Kistiakowsky later re-
marked about the lack of protest, "This was virtually inviting us to
repeat the sortie."2'
Although President Eisenhower had authorized another over-
flight for April, he left the designation of its targets up to the experts
at the CIA. Of the three missions that remained under consideration.
one—Operation SUN SPOT—would overfly southern targets,
Tyuratam and Vladimirovka, while the other two would cover rail-
road networks in the north-central portion of the Soviet Union. The
intelligence community had been interested in this area ever since late
1959, when there were indications that the Soviets were building an
SS-6 launch facility there. This was the first indication that SS-6s
might be located anywhere other than Tyuratam testing facility, where
the missiles were launched from a general purpose launching pad.
The intelligence community was anxious to obtain photography of a
George B. Kistiakowsky. A Scientist at the White House (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press. 1976), p. 328.
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.