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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. 4 …Scientists and Overhead Reconnaissance 17 The BEACON HILL Report 17 Concern About the Danger of a…
  • p. 14 …view of the "other side of the hill." With the advent of dry film, it became…
  • p. 30 …of this new advisory body." The BEACON HILL Report In 1951 the Air Force sought even…
  • p. 31 …Their head- quarters was located over a secretarial school on Beacon Hill, which soon became the…
  • p. 32 …to implement the ideas of the BEACON HILL Report until the summer of 1953. By this…
  • p. 34 …Created in July 1953, the Intelligence Systems Panel (ISP) included several experts from the BEACON HILL…
  • p. 37 …reconnais- sance needs expressed in the BEACON HILL Report. Theoretically, he explained to the panel, any…
  • p. 41 …H. T. Friis R. Mettler A. G. Hill E. Purcell W. H. Radford E. H. Plesset…
  • p. 44 …6(dli1i>10<25Yrs since the BEACON HILL and Intelligence Systems Panel meetings. (Si James Baker…
  • p. 45 …Having participated in the BEACON HILL Study and the Intelligence Systems Panel, several Project Three members…
  • p. 344 …He headed the Beacon Hill Panel in 1952 and later became director of Lincoln Laboratories. PARANGOSKY…
  • p. 345 …of several advisory panels, including the BEACON HILL project. He helped Baker decide what cameras to…
  • p. 364 …BEACON HILL Report: Problems of Air Force Intelligence and Reconnaissance. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 15 June…
A-12s
005653421 UNCLASSIFIED
Chapter 6
298
EO 129581.6(dli1l>1010<25Yrs
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Defense McNamara told DCI McCone that he doubted that the
OXCART would ever be used and suggested that improvements in
1 jwould very likely eliminate the need for the
expensive OXCART program. Strongly disagreeing, McCone told
McNamara that he had every intention of using OXCART aircraft to
fly over the Soviet Union.
McCone raised this issue with President Kennedy in April 1963,
at a time when the nation's I were experiencing a great
number of failures and the intelligence community was clamoring for
better photography to confirm or disprove allegations of the existence
of an antiballistic missile system at Leningrad. Unconvinced by
McCone's arguments for OXCART overflights, President Kennedy
expressed the hope that some means might be devised for improving
instead. 9'
"'John A. NIcCone, Memorandum for the Record. ''Summary of meeting with Secretary
McNamara and Secretary Gilpatric. General Carter and Mr. McCone on 3 July 1962."
6 July 1962. DC1 records (S): McCone. Memorandum for the File. "Meeting with the
President-5:30-15 Apr 1963 in Palm Beach. Florida. - DCI records (S).
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.