Documents / FOIA release

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. 18 …Leghorn persuaded his superiors to submit his suggestion to the . Pentagon for funding. He had not…
  • p. 20 …Meanwhile Leghorn, frustrated by the rejection of his original concept, had transferred to the Pentagon in…
  • p. 22 …become the assistant director of Lockheed's Advanced Development Program, was in the Pentagon on business…
  • p. 24 …for the construction and maintenance of 30 aircraft to a group of senior Pentagon officials that…
  • p. 26 …He had been present at Kelly Johnson's presentation on the CL-282 at the Pentagon…
  • p. 27 …with Strong in the Pentagon on 12 May 1954. six days before the Wright Air Development…
  • p. 52 …Late on the morning of 2 December 1954, Dulles told Bissell to go to the Pentagon…
  • p. 91 …1-le then briefed a high-level Pentagon panel that included the Secretary of the Air…
  • p. 92 …After a half hour passed, the base commander called the Pentagon to ask where the crippled…
MC-2 partial-pressure suit (seen
on pilot Francis Gary Powers)
CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED
""""Igeret-ALQ
Chapter 2
63
advanced gear for the U-2 pilots. David Clark expert Joseph Ruseckas
then developed a complex life-support system, which was the first
partially pressurized "spacesuit" for keeping humans alive for
lengthy periods at ultrahigh altitudes. The effort to provide a safe en-
vironment for pilots at high altitudes also involved the Firewel
Company of Buffalo, New York, which pressurized the U-2 cockpit to
create an interior environment equivalent to the air pressure at an alti-
tude of 28,000 feet. The system was designed so that, if the interior
cockpit pressure fell below the 28,000-feet level, the pilot's suit
would automatically inflate. In either case, he could obtain oxygen
only through his helmet.'4
" Ibid., chap. 5, p. 19 (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.