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. 24 …Advanced Development Projects Division, Burbank. California. ED 129581.131011>10<25Yrs IS1 UNCLASSIFIED
  • p. 58 …Pedlow, Burbank, California, 26 August 1988. Sbc.et UNCLASSIFIED
  • p. 85 …how to transfer Lockheed employees from Burbank to Iwithout arousing a great deal of curiosity. The…
  • p. 273 …SP-1362, "History of the OXCART Program," Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, Burbank, CA. 1 July 1968, p…
  • p. 287 …designed trailer truck that carried it from Burbank By 18 November 1959, the mockup was in…
  • p. 297 …Construction began in September 1960; a C-47 shuttle service ferried work crews from Burbank to…
  • p. 299 …The plane left Burbank on 26 February 1962 and arrived at two days later. After the…
  • p. 304 …into the engine nacelles during assembly at Burbank were sucked into the power plant during initial…
Khrushchev and the U-2
wreckage
CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED
180
This revelation completely demolished the US cover story, and
senior administration officials then debated what the appropriate
course of action should be. Allen Dulles offered to take responsibility
for the overflight and resign, but President Eisenhower did not want
to give the world the impression that he was not in control of his ad-
ministration. On Wednesday, 11 May, the President read a statement
to the press in which he assumed full responsibility for the U-2 mis-
sion but left open the question of future overflights, even though four
days earlier he had approved the recommendation of his key foreign
policy advisers to terminate all provocative intelligence operations
against the Soviet Union."
The U-2 affair had its greatest consequences when the
long-awaited summit meeting in Paris began less than a week later on
16 May. Soviet Premier Khrushchev insisted on being the first
speaker and read a long protest about the overflight, ending with a de-
mand for an apology from President Eisenhower. In his reply
" OSA History, chap. 14, pp. 14-16 (TS Codeword): Beschloss, Mayday, pp. 43-66.
/43-158
UNCLASSIFIED

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About this file

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.