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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."

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“United Press”14 pages

  • p. 12 …later, at press conferences in February and July 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson revealed the existence…
  • p. 40 …MIT Press. 1977), p. 68: Beschloss, Maplay, p. 74: TCP Report. pp. 185-186 (S). UNCLASSIFIED
  • p. 98 …The Soviet Union sent strongly worded protest notes to the United States and the nations from…
  • p. 102 …not only press releases and the public line to be taken, but also the suspension of…
  • p. 107 …The "provisional" designation gave the U-2 detachments greater security because provisional Air Force units did…
  • p. 112 …at a press conference that the Soviet Union might be ahead of the United States in…
  • p. 125 …Dial Press, 1982), pp. 45-47. Lundahl and Brugioni interview (TS Codeword). UNCLASSIFIED
  • p. 174 …McElroy stressed that the gap would be temporary and that at its end the United States…
  • p. 195 …in the press about the presence of "spyplanes" on Japanese territory, asked the United States to…
  • p. 198 …DCI records (S). " United States Congress, Senate. Foreign Relations Committee, Executive Sessions of the Senate Foreign…
  • p. 307 …By 1962 the United States had become aware of the effectiveness of a new Soviet radar…
  • p. 315 …To preserve the secrecy of the OXCART program, the Air Force informed the press that an…
  • p. 328 …at times when the press and Congress alleged that the United States was falling behind the…
  • p. 362 …MIT Press, 1977. Kistiakowsky. George B. A Scientist at the White House. Cambridge: Harvard University Press…
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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 under it. 406 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.