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John S. McCain POW CIA-Defense Department Documents

 U2 Spy Plane Program CIA Files

U2 SPY PLANE PROGRAM CIAFILES

1,325 pages of CIA files covering the U2 spy plane program.

U2-Spy-Plane-CIA-Files-CD-ROM

CIA OFFICIAL HISTORY OF THE U2 PROGRAM

"The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance, The U2 and OXCART Programs, 1954-1974," written by Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach.   This formerly top secret CIA internal history of the U2 program written in 1992.

This copy of the report was released by the CIA in August, 2013.

This report contains a comprehensive and authoritative history of the CIA's manned overhead reconnaissance program, which from 1954 to 1974 developed and operated the U2 and the A-12 OXCART. It describes not only the program's technological and bureaucratic aspects, but also its political and international context. The authors tell an engrossing story, the struggle between the CIA and the US Air Force to control the U2 and A-12 OXCART projects. The report reveals how the manned reconnaissance program confronted problems that still beset successor programs today.

The report is based upon both full access to CIA records and extensive classified interviews of its participants. The CIA's historians have found records that were nearly irretrievably lost and have interviewed participants whose personal recollections gave information available nowhere else.

Subjects include: The history of high attitude reconnaissance, development of the U2, Soviet, Middle East and Latin American surveillance operations.

Also included on this disc is a copy the same report that was released in 1998 with fewer pages and more redactions.

The later release contains newly declassified material concerning the U2 program.

Previously unreleased material includes names of pilots, codenames and cryptonyms, locations, funding and cover arrangements, electronic countermeasures equipment, cooperation with foreign governments, and operations, particularly in Asia.

An example of the new material; in the 1998 release pages 153 to 157 was withheld in their entirety. Those pages are in the 2013 release. They discuss the British participation in the U-2 program. The authors note that President Dwight Eisenhower viewed British participation "as a way to confuse the Soviets as to sponsorship of particular overflights" as well to spread the risk of failure.

Highlights include:

Numerous references to Area 51 and Groom Lake, with a map of the area.

Names of all the pilots who flew the U-2 missions that are discussed in the history.

A table (Appendix D) which provides key data on all U-2 flights over the Soviet Union, including date, mission numbers, pilot, airfield, payload, and route. Maps show all the routes.

Cryptonyms and codewords such as KWEXTRA-00, KWGLITTER-00, OARFISH, HTNAMABLE, KWCORK, MUDLARK (the project to gather all available information about the downing of Francis Gary Powers' U-2), and HBJARGON (the U-2 base in Pakistan).

An account (pp. 231-233, previously redacted in its entirety) of U-2 operations from India, between 1962 and 1967, triggered by the 1962 Sino-Indian war.

An account (pp. 222-230 ff., almost entirely deleted in the previous release) of U.S.-sponsored Chinese Nationalist U-2 operations, including tables of the number of overflight and peripheral missions each year.

Details of Operation FISH HAWK (pp. 249-251), the employment of a U-2, launched off an aircraft carrier in May 1964, to photograph the French nuclear test site in the Pacific.

Discussions of a manned low-altitude reconnaissance program, STPOLLY, consisting of flights over China during the 1960s by Chinese Nationalist pilots.

An account (pp. 211-216) of U-2 operations in support of CIA covert operations during the 1958 Indonesian rebellion and the Tibetan rebellion against China.


U2 FLIGHT MANUAL

A 295 page, 1959 flight manual released by the CIA in 2012.

The flight manual includes a description of the plane, warning bulletins and updates, pre-flight check list, sections on normal procedures, emergency procedures, description and operation of auxiliary equipment, operating limitations, flight characteristics, systems operation, all weather operation, and operating data.


U2 RELATED DOCUMENTS

Additional reports, memos, and correspondences cover: Crash of U2 plane piloted by Francis Gary Power; Briefings of Congressional leaders; Overflights of Cuba and the Soviet Union; U2 program statistics; Legality of U2 flights; Organization of the U2 Program.

 

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