The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance; The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954-1974

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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. ♦