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."
“Hill”13 pages
3■it 005653421 UNCLASSIFIED —STEret-P4Q4C1BN Chapter 4 190 Most military reconnaissance missions were approved or disap- proved at the JCS level, but the most sensitive missions were submit- ted through the Secretary of Defense to the Special Group for approval. In addition to this Department of Defense approval path, the military services could also submit requirements through the DCI us- ing their representatives on COMOR. As a result, the military ser- vices had two channels for submitting reconnaissance missions to the Special Group. The Agency had only one—COMOR." The main conflicts between the requirements committee and the military services arose over missions in the Far East. In the early 1960s. North Vietnam had not been designated a denied area by the US Intelligence Board (USIB), so the military services could plan missions there without consulting COMOR. Such missions, however, came very close to China, which was a denied area and, therefore, came under COMOR's area of responsibility. Once the war in Southeast Asia escalated in 1964, the military services received re- sponsibility for the entire area (see chapter 5). To reduce the number of disputes between the competing CIA and Air Force reconnaissance programs and to manage the growing satellite program, the two agencies worked out an agreement to pro- vide overall coordination for reconnaissance activities at the national level. The first such interagency agreement came in the fall of 1961, and it was followed by three additional agreements durin g the next four years.'4 Interest in coordinating the reconnaissance efforts of the military services and the CIA also affected the field of photographic interpre- tation. In the wake of the loss of Francis Gary Powers' U-2 on 1 May 1960, the President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities (PFIAB) had urged the establishment of an interagency group to study ways to improve the entire US intelligence community. Formed on 6 May 1960, the Joint Study Group on Foreign Intelligence Activities met for the next seven months under the lead- ership of Lyman Kirkpatrick, CIA Inspector General. One of the study group's key recommendations in the report it issued in December 1960 was the creation of a national photointerpretation " [bid (TS Codeword). Problems of classification prevent a more detailed discussion of this aspect of the recon- naissance program, which will be covered in a future history of satellite reconnaissance at a hieher level of classification. 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.