Documents / Official release
This is a Secret History Staff monograph by Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach of the Central Intelligence Agency, published in 1992. It gives a history of the CIA's manned overhead reconnaissance program from 1954 to 1974, covering the development and operation of the U-2 and the A-12 OXCART aircraft. It covers overflights of the Soviet Union, the 1960 downing of Francis Gary Powers, and later operations. One section is titled "U-2s, UFOs, and Operation BLUE BOOK."
From the source:Release of 2026-06-12 This CIA History Staff document chronicles the complete history of the U-2 and OXCART (A-12) high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft programs from 1954 to 1974, detailing their development, operations over the Soviet Union and other targets worldwide, the famous downing of Francis Gary Powers in 1960, organizational reforms following that incident, and the eventual transfer of operations from CIA to Air Force control. A more redacted version of this document has been available on CIA's public website.
“RAF”18 pages
later, at press conferences in February and July 1. 964, President Lyndon B. Johnson revealed the existence of the OXCART-type of aircraft, although only in its military YF- l 2A (interceptor) and SR-7 l (strategic reconnaissance) versions. The two CIA reconnaissance aircraft have also been the subject of a number of books, beginning with David Wise's and Thomas B. Ross's The U-2 Affair in 1962 and then Francis Gary Powers' memoirs, Operation Overflight, in 1970. Two recent books give many more details about the U-2 and OXCART air,craft: Michael Beschloss's Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev and the U-2 Affair (l 986) and William Burrows's Deep Black: Space Espionage and National Security ( 1987). Although well written and generally ac curate, these books suffer from their authors' lack of access to classified official documentation. By drawing upon the considerable amount of fonnerly classified data on the U-2 now available to the public, Beschloss has provided an accurate and insightful depiction of the U-2 program in the context of the Eisenhower 21dministration 's overall foreign policy, but his book does contain errors and omissions on some aspects of the U-2 program. Burrows's broader work suffers more from the lack of classified documentation. particularly in the OXCART/SR-71 section, which concentrates on the Air Force air craft because little information about the Agency's aircraft has been officially declassified and released. After the present study of the Agency's overhead reconnaissance projects was completed, a new book on the U-2 was p+ublished in the United Kingdom. Chris Pocock's Dragon Lady: The History of the U-2 Spyplane is by far the most accurate unclassified account of the U-2 program. Pocock has been able to compensate for his lack of ac cess to classified documents by interviewing many former participants in the program, especially former pilots. Pocock is also quite familiar with aircraft itself, for he had worked with Jay Miller on the latter's excellent technical study of the U-2: Lockheed U-2 (l 983). There has also been a classified official study of the U-2 and OXCART programs. In 1969 the Directorate of Science and Technology published a History of the Office of Speci,al Activities by SeeFet
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Official release, from the pursue 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.