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."
“Burbank”8 pages
CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED ---SZerNISEL Chapter 6 310 EO 129581.61[11111>1045Yrs (Si In spite of Helms's request and the strength of his arguments, the Bureau of the Budget memorandum was submitted to President Johnson. On 28 December 1966, the President approved the termina- tion of the OXCART program by 1 January 1968. This decision meant that CIA had to develop a schedule for an orderly phaseout of the A-12. This activity was known as Project SCOPE COTTON. Project headquarters informed Deputy Defense Secretary Vance on 10 January 1967 that the A- 12s would gradually be placed in storage, with the process to be completed by the end of January 1968. In May 1967, Vance directed that SR-7 Is would as- sume responsibility for Cuban overflights by I July 1967 and would add responsibility for overflights of Southeast Asia by 1 December 1967. Until these capabilities were developed. OXCART was to re- main able to conduct assignments on a 15-day notice for Southeast Asia and a seven-day notice for Cuba.67 All these arrangements were made before the OXCART had con- ducted a single operational mission, which did not occur until 31 May 1967. In the months that followed the initiation of operations in Asia. the OXCART demonstrated its exceptional technical capabilities. Soon some high-level Presidential advisers and Congressional leaders began to question the decision to phase out OXCART. and the issue was reopened. The CIA contended that the A-12 was the better craft because it flew higher, faster, and had superior cameras. The Air Force main- tained that its two-seat SR-71 had a better suite of sensors, with three different cameras (area search, spotting, and mapping), infrared de- tectors, side-looking aerial radar, and ELINT-collection gear. In an ef- fort to resolve this argument, the two aircraft were pitted against each other in a flyoff codenamed NICE GIRL. On 3 November 1967, an A-12 and an SR-71 flew identical flight paths, separated in time by one hour, from north to south roughly above the Mississippi River. The data collected during these missions were evaluated by repre- sentatives of the CIA, DIA, and other Defense Department intelli- gence organizations. The results proved inconclusive. Both photographic systems pro- vided imagery of sufficient quality for analysis. The A-12 Type-I camera's 72-mile swath width and 5,000-foot film supply were supe- rior to the SR-71 Operational Objective camera's 28-mile swath and 'OXCART Story." p. 31 (S): OSA History, p. 138 (TS Codeword). 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.