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."
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--"ttrerei..1114aEORZI Chapter 5 197 CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED Nothing came of the proposal to resume overflights in the fall of 1961, as both the USIB and the Special Group came out against it, but, as long as U-2 photography remained clearly superior to satellite photography, the thought of obtaining U-2 coverage of the Soviet Union remained tempting. In February 1962, the USIB seriously con- sidered a COMOR proposal to send a U-2 over Kamchatka to photo- graph Soviet antiballistic-missile facilities but finally decided to wait for the results of an Air Force peripheral mission. The board later ac- cepted DC1 McCone's recommendation to seek satellite rather than U-2 coverage of the area.' With both the CIA and the State Department strongly opposed to sending the highly vulnerable U-2 over the Soviet Union, prospects for resuming flights remained slight unless the international situation worsened to such a degree that overflights would be worth the risks involved. Since this never happened, Francis Gary Powers' flight on I May 1960 proved to be the last CIA overflight of the Soviet Bloc. Yet, the U-2 remained useful, for it could operate successfully in other areas with less developed radar and air defense systems. After May 1960, the main focus of U-2 activity shifted to two new areas: Latin America, where U-2s would play an extremely important role during the early 1960s, and the Far East, where CIA U-2s were active from 1958 until 1974, when the Agency's involvement in manned re- connaissance finally ended. U-2 OPERATIONS IN LATIN AMERICA U-2 Support to the Bay of Pigs Invasion During late summer 1960, the Directorate of Plans was planning a counterrevolutionary invasion of Cuba for the following year. To sup- port this effort, the Agency asked the National Security Council's ED 129581.6M11>10<25Yrs Memorandum for the Special Group from COMOR, "Illustrations of Policy Restraints on the Collection of Information through Overflight of Denied Areas during 1962," 14 December 1962, IC Staff. COMIREX records. iTS Codeword): James S. Lay. "The United States Intelligence Lara 1938-1963." (draft) CIA History Staff MS-2, 1974, p. 385 (TS Codeword). One year later Saryshagan was the topic of US Intelligence Board deliberations. In October 1963 the board asked COMOR to prepare recommendations on the need for an electronic intelligence-gathering mission against the Soviet ABM installations at Saryshagan. The proposed mission would not, however, vio- late Soviet airspace; instead, the U-2 would fly over the portion of the People's Republic of China closest to Saryshagan. Lay. "US1B History," pp. 393-94 (TS Codeword). ret 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.