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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. 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…
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Photograph of Dodonovo Atomic
Energy complex taken by a
Project GENETRIX balloon
All of this publicity and protest led President Eisenhower to con-
clude that "the balloons gave more legitimate grounds for irritation
than could be matched by the good obtained from them," and he or-
dered the project halted. On 7 February 1956 Secretary of State
Dulles informed the Soviet Union that no more "weather research"
balloons would be released. but he did not offer an apology for the
overt' ights.7u
Despite the furor caused by GENETRIX, Air Force Chief of
Staff Twining proposed yet another balloon project only five weeks
later, in mid-March 1956. This project would employ even higher fly-
ing balloons than GENETRIX and would be ready in 18 months.
President Eisenhower informed the Air Force, however, that he was
"not interested in any more balloons." 'I
Andrew J. GoocIpaster, Memorandum for the Record, -10 February 1956 Conference of
Joint Chiefs of Staff with the President." WHOSS, Alpha. DDEL (TS, declassified 1980):
Stephen E. Ambrose. Eisenhower. The President vol. 2 (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1984), p. 310.
Quoted in Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President. p. 310.
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.