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.
“Donald A. Johnson”17 pages
316 Sec, et NOFORN Chapter 7 The low level of overflight activity did not prevent the U-2 from accomplishing a lot in the four years it flew over the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Twenty-four U-2 missions made deep penetra tion overflights of the Soviet Union: six by Detachment A from Germany, three by Detachment C from the Far East and Alaska, and 15 by Detachment B from Turkey and Pakistan, including the unsuc cessful Powers mission. The amount of information these missions gathered was impres sive. By the summer of 1960, the U-2 project had developed more than 1, 285,000 feet of film-a strip almost 250 miles long. The U-2s covered more than 1,300,000 square miles of the Soviet Union, ap proximately 15 percent of its total area. [nformation from U-2 photo graphs was used to prepare 5,425 separate photoanalytical reports. 1 Numbers alone cannot describe the importance of the U-2 over flight project. [n a 28 May 1960 memorandum, after Powers was shot down, DCI Allen W. Dulles described the program's accomplish ments: '"Five years ago, before the beginning of the U-2 program, ... half knowledge of the Soviet Union and uncertainty of its true power position posed tremendous problems for the United States. We were faced with the constant risk of exposing ourselves to enemy attack or of needlessly expending a great deal of money and effort on misdi rected military preparations of our own." Dulles went on to describe the U-2's contribution in gathering information on four critical as pects of the Soviet Union's power position: its bomber force, its mis sile force, its atomic energy program, and its air defense system.1 The first major contribution of intelligence collected from U-2 overflights was the exposure of the "bomber gap" as a myth. Contrary to the US Air Force's claims, the Soviet Union was not building a large force of long-range bombers. Armed with information from U-2 overflights, President Eisenhower was able to resist pressure to build a large US bomber fleet to meet a nonexistent Soviet threat. ' DCI Allen W. Dulles, Memorandum for Brig. Gen. Andrew J. Goodpaster. "Statistics Relating to the U-2 Program." 19 August 1960, Operation MUDLARK tiles, OSA re cords. job 74-8-605, box 2 (TS Codeword). 'The original draft of this document was probably written by James Q. Reber. It was then revised by DCI Dulles. "Accomplishments of the U-2 Program," 27 May 1960. Operation MUDLARK tiles, OSA records, job 74-B-605, box 2 (TS Codeword). SeeFot
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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.