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."
“Sea”17 pages
—Swarm-NOE:3UL Chapter 4 191 CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED center that would bring together photointerpreters from the Agency and the military services. The report further recommended that the CIA be placed in charge of the new center. Ignoring Air Force claims that it should head such a center, President Eisenhower approved the report's recommendation, and, on 18 January 1961, National Security Council Intelligence Directive (NSCID) No. 8 established the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC). Henceforth, the director of NPIC would be designated by the DCI and approved by the Secretary of Defense, and the deputy director would come from one of the military services. The first director of NPIC was Arthur S. Lundahl, head of the CIA's Photo-Intelligence Division!' One additional major change in the U-2 program in the years im- mediately following the May Day incident—although not directly re- lated to the loss of Powers' U-2—was the departure of Richard Bissell from the CIA and the subsequent reorganization of the Agency's reconnaissance and scientific activities. The roots of Bissell's downfall went back to 1 January 1959, when he became Deputy Director for Plans and decided to place all Agency air assets in-the DDP in order to maintain control of his overhead reconnais- sance projects (the U-2 and its two proposed successors, the OXCART aircraft and the reconnaissance satellite). The previously independent Development Projects Staff became the Development Projects Division (DPD) of the DDP and now controlled all Agency air operations, including air support for covert operations. As a result, U-2s were occasionally employed for gathering intelligence to sup- port DDP operations in addition to their primary mission of gathering strategic and tactical intelligence. Although the reorganization made sense in terms of increasing the efficiency of Agency air operations, the use of the U-2 to support covert action disturbed Bissell's backers among the scientists advising Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, especially James Killian and Edwin Land. They were concerned that Bissell was becoming too in- volved in covert action and was not able to devote sufficient time to the overhead reconnaissance program. Then came the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961, which discredited Bissell with the Kennedy administration in general and the two scientists in particular. Later that year, Bissell lost another important source of support when Allen Dulles resigned as DCI in November 1961. During his final " Lundahl and Brugioni interview (TS Codeword). 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.