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."
CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED "weret-NOEQBa. Chapter 4 172 ED 129581.6Idlill>1010<25Yrs Is] deployed SS-6 site because it could provide exemplars for photointerpreters to use in searching subsequent overhead photogra- phy for similar installations:3 The two proposed overflights that would cover the northern rail- road lines received the strongest consideration. Both plans contained new features. Operation TIME STEP called for a U-2 to take off from the USAF base at Thule, Greenland, The aircraft would then fly over Novaya Zemlya on its way to cover the railroad lines from the Polyarnyy Ural Mountains to Kotlas. Tother proposed overflight, Operation GRAND JLHIV1, was we first U-2 mission planned to transit the Soviet Union; all previous missions had penetrated not more than halfway and then left in the general direction from which they came. GRAND SLAM proposed to fly across the Soviet Union from south to north, departing I Bissell in- fled the White House that neither mission could be flown before 19 April. Once the maneuvers ended, bad weather over the Soviet Union kept the mission from taking place when it was originally scheduled. Richard Bissell, therefore, asked President Eisenhower for more time, and, on 25 April, General Goodpaster relayed the President's instructions to Bissell that "one additional operation may be undertaken, provided it is carried out prior to May 1. No operation is to be carried out after May 1." 24 The President did not want to fly missions any later than that because the Paris Summit was scheduled to be g in on 16 May 1960. By this time, CIA planners were concentrating on Operation GRAND SLAM as the most likely route for the proposed mission be- cause it offered the best chance of photographing suspected locations OSA History, chap. 12. pp. 35-36 (TS Codeword). Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President, p. 569; Beschloss, Mayday, p. 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.