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.
“Headquarters”22 pages
59 Sec,et NOFORN Chapter 2 SECURITY FOR THE U-2 PROJECT On 29 April 1955, Richard Bissell signed an agreement with the Air Force and the Navy (which at that time was also interested in the U-2) in which the services agreed that the CIA "assumed primary respon sibility for all security" for the overhead reconnaissance project (AQUATONE). From this time on, the CIA has been responsible for the security of overhead programs. This responsibility has placed a heavy burden on the Office of Security for establishing procedures to keep large numbers of contracts untraceable to the Central Intelligence Agency. The Office of Security has also had to determine which contractor employees require security clearances and has had to devise physical security measures for the various manufacturing fa cilities. Keeping the U-2 and subsequent overhead systems secret has been a time-consuming and costly undertaking.25 The most important aspect of the security program for the U-2 project was the creation of an entire new compartmented system for the product of U-2 missions. Access to the photographs taken by the U-2 would be strictly controlled, which often limited the ability of _CIA analysts to use the products of U-2 missions. The terminology used to describe U-2 aircraft and pilots also played a part in maintaining the security of the overhead reconnais sance program. To reduce the chances of a security breach, the Agency always referred to its high-altitude aircraft as "articles," with each aircraft having its own "article number." Similarly, the pilots were always called "drivers." In cable traffic the aircraft were known as KWEXTRA-00 (the two-digit number identified the precise air craft; these numbers were not related to the three-digit article num bers assigned by the factory). The pilots were referred to as KWGLITTER-00 (the two-digit number identified the precise pilot). Thus, even if a message or document about overflight activities fell into unfriendly hands, the contents would simply refer to codewords or at worst to "articles" and "drivers," giving no indication of the nature of the program. -'6 Even the aircraft's onboard equipment required the involvement of CIA security planners. Thus, when Kelly Johnson ordered altime ters from the Kollman Instrument Company, he specified that the " OSA History. chap. 7, pp. 4-6 (TS Codeword). ,. lnfonnation supplied by James Cunningham to Donald E. Welzenbach (S). Secret
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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 406 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.