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.
“United Press”17 pages
Helen Hill Kleyla and Robert D. O'Hern. This 16-volume Top Secret Codeword study of the Agency's reconnaissance aircraft provides a wealth of technical and operational information on the two projects but does not attempt to place them in their historical context. Without examining the international situation and bureaucratic pressures af fecting the president and other key policymakers, however, it is impossible to understand the decisions that began, carried out, and ended the CIA's reconnaissance aircraft projects. In preparing this study of CIA's overhead reconnaissance pro gram, the authors drew on published sources, classified government documents, and interviews with key participants from the CIA, Air Force, contractors, scientific advisory committees, and the Eisenhower administration. The interviews were particularly impor tant for piecing together the story of how the CIA became involved in overhead reconnaissance in the first place because Agency documen tation on the prehistory of the U-2 project is very sketchy and there are no accurate published accounts. Research on the period of actual reconnaissance operations included the records of the Director of Central Intelligence, the Office of Special Activities in the Directorate of Science and Technology, and the Intelligence Community Staff, along with documents from the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas, and additional interviews. Both authors are grateful for the assistance they have received from many individuals who played important roles in the events they recount. Without their help a good deal of this story could never have become known. The assistance of Agency records management officers in the search for documents on the overhead reconnaissance program is also greatly appreciated. To ensure that this study of the Agency's involvement in over head reconnaissance reaches the widest possible audience, the authors have kept it at the Secret classification level. As a result, some aspects of the overhead reconnaissance program, particularly those involving satellites and related interagency agreements, have had to be described in very general terms. The omission of such information is not significant for this book, which focuses on the Agency's recon naissance aircraft. ♦
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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.