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.
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179 gee1 et NOFORl'ii Chapter 4 This statement had been prepared for a "best case·· scenario, that is to say, one in which neither the pilot nor the plane and film sur vived. However, pilots had bailed out from extremely high altitudes and survived, and there was even evidence from previous U-2 crashes that much of the aircraft itself could be salvaged. The small destruc tive charge aboard the U-2 was not sufficient to destroy much more than the camera. The tightly rolled film, which could reveal the exact purpose of the mission even if the pilot and aircraft did not survive, was very hard to destroy. Kelly Johnson later conducted an experi ment that revealed film taken out of a completely burned-out aircraft could still provide usable imagery.33 After almost four years of suc cessful U-2 missions, Richard Bissell and the rest of the Development Projects Division had become overconfident and were not prepared for the ··worst case" scenario that actually occurred in May I 960. This failure played directly into the hands of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who shrewdly decided to release information about the downed U-2 a little at a time, thereby encouraging the United States to stick with its vulnerable cover story too long. As he later wrote, "Our intention here was to confuse the government circles of the United States. As long as the Americans thought the pilot was dead, they would keep putting out the story that perhaps the plane had acci dentally strayed off course and been shot down in the mountains on the Soviet side of the border."'" The first word from the Soviet Union came on Thursday, 5 May, when Premier Khrushchev announced to a meeting of the Supreme Soviet that a US "spyplane" had been downed near Sverdlovsk. He made no mention of the fate of its pilot. Khrushchev's announcement aroused considerable interest in the media in the United States, and that same day the State Department and NASA issued another statement that continued the "weather plane" cover story, adding that the pilot became lost during a routine mission near the Caucasus Mountains. Soon afterward. the US Ambassador to Moscow cabled a report to the State Department indi cating that the pilot might be alive after all. Two days later, on 7 May 1960. Khrushchev confirmed this report by revealing that the U-2 pi lot was alive and had admitted his mission of spying on the Soviet Union. " Geary intt!rview. '" Khrushcht!v. Khrushchev Remembers: The Lase Teswmem. p. 507. Sec1et
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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.