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."
“Headquarters”18 pages
""Sigerpr-NOFQM Chapter 4 187 005653421 UNCLASSIFIED the U-2 project under the title Operation Overflight. Later he flew a light plane as a traffic reporter for a Los Angeles radio station and then a helicopter for a television station. On 1 August 1977, he and a cameraman from the station died when his helicopter crashed on the way to an assignmenC CHANGES IN OVERFLIGHT PROCEDURES AFTER MAY 1960 One of the most important changes in the overflight program after the loss of Francis Gary Powers' U-2 was the institution of more formal procedures for the approval of U-2 missions. Durin g, the first four years of U-2 activity, very few members of the Eisenhower adminis- tration had been involved in making decisions concerning the over- flight program. The President personally authorized all tlights over the Soviet Union and was consulted by Richard Bissell and either the DCI or the DDCI about each such proposed mission. In addition to CIA officials, the President's discussions of individual U-2 missions or of the program as a whole generally included the Secretary of State or his Under Secretary, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs_of Staff, the Secretary of Defense or his deputy, and the President's secretary. Colonel (later General) Goodpaster. The approval process under President Eisenhower was thus very unstructured. There was no formal approval body charged with re- viewing overflight proposals; the President kept this authority in his hands and simply consulted with selected cabinet officials and advis- ers before reaching a decision. E0129581.61dlill>101010<25Yrs IS1 The loss of Powers' U-2 in May 1960 led to major changes in the approval process. I- Ithe approval process Beschloss. Mayday, pp. 396-401. Beschloss claims that Powers was fired by Lockheed for criticizing the Agency in his memoirs (which he had shown to the Agency in draft form), but Kelly Johnson's "U-2R Log - records on 25 September 1969: "We have no flight test activity at all. I must let Gary Powers go. Have protected him for about seven years. but he doesn't have an AIR (Air Transport Rating), so we have no other job for him—not even Hying the Beechcraft." UNCLASSIFIED
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 406 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.