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."
“Mission Control”17 pages
CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED Chapter 1 36 ED 1295131.61dlill>10<25Yrs (Si On 19 November, the day after Seaberg's briefing, the final deci- sion on the CL-282 came at a luncheon hosted by Air Force Secretary Talbott. The participants—Dulles and Cabell from the CIA; Gardner, Ayer, and General Putt from the Air Force; Kelly Johnson; and Edwin Land—all agreed "that the special item of material described by Lockheed was practical and desirable and would be sought.. . . It was agreed that the Project should be a joint Air Force–CIA one but that, regardless of the source of the funds, whether AF or CIA, \ It is interesting to note that Lockheed, which had originally de- veloped the CL-282 on its own and had devoted considerable effort to promoting it, had to be persuaded to undertake the project in November 1954 because the company had become heavily committed to several other civilian and military projects. When Kelly Johnson received a call from Trevor Gardner on 17 November asking him to come to Washington for conversations on the project, his instructions from Lockheed's senior management were "to not commit to any program during the visit, but to get the information and return." When he returned to California, Johnson noted in his project log that "I was impressed with the secrecy aspect and was told by Gardner that I was essentially being drafted for the project. It seemed, in fact, that if I did not talk quietly, I might have to take a leave of absence from my job at Lockheed to do this special project." 65 Of course, Kelly Johnson did not need to be drafted or persuaded into undertak- ing such a bold step forward in aircraft design. He used Gardner's statement to convince Lockheed's senior management to approve the project, which they did after meeting with Johnson when he returned to California on the evening of 19 November. Four days later, on 23 November, the Intelligence Advisory Committee (IAC) approved DCI Dulles's request to undertake the CL-282 project. The following day Dulles signed a three-page mem- orandum, drafted by DDCI Cabell, asking President Eisenhower to approve the overhead reconnaissance project. That same afternoon, at a meeting attended by the Secretaries of State and Defense and senior Air Force officials, Dulles and Cabell presented the document to the Charles Pearre Cabell, Memorandum for the Record. "Luncheon Meeting with the Secretary of the Air Force," 19 November 1954, in OSA History. chap. 2, annex 4 (TS Codeword). " Johnson, "Log for Project X," 17 and 19 November 1954. 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.