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

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18
Secret ~OfiORN
Chapter 1
Sec1et
defense known as Project LINCOLN, then under way at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. By the end of the year, these
experts had assembled in Boston to begin their research. Their head­
quarters was located over a secretarial school on Beacon Hill, which
soon became the codename for the reconnaissance project. The con­
sultants were called the BEACON HILL Study Group.
The study group's chairman was Kodak physicist Carl F. P.
Overhage, and its members included James G. Baker and Edward M.
Purcell from Harvard; Saville Davis from the Christian Science
Monitor;
Allen F.
Donovan from
the Cornell Aeronautical
Laboratory; Peter C. Goldmark from Columbia Broadcasting System
Laboratories; Edwin H. Land, founder of the Polaroid Corporation;
Stewart E. Miller of Bell Laboratories; Richard S. Perkin of the
Perkin-Elmer Company; and Louis N. Ridenour of Ridenour
Associates, Inc. The Wright Air Development Command sent Lt. Col.
Richard Leghorn to serve as its liaison officer.30
During January and February 1952, the BEACON HILL Study
Group traveled every weekend to various airbases, laboratories, and
firms for briefings on the latest technology and projects. The panel
members were particularly interested in new approaches to aerial re­
connaissance, such as photography from high-flying aircraft and
camera-carrying balloons. One of the more unusual (albeit unsuccess­
ful) proposals examined by the panel was an "invisible" dirigible.
This was to be a giant, almost flat-shaped airship with a blue-tinted,
nonreflective coating; it would cruise at an altitude of 90,000 feet
along the borders of the Soviet Union at very slow speeds while using
a large lens to photograph targets of interest. 31
After completing these briefings at the end of February 1952, the
BEACON HILL Study Group returned to MIT, where the panel mem­
bers spent the next three months writing a report detailing their
recommendations for ways to improve the amount and quality of in­
telligence being gathered on the Soviet Bloc. Published as a classified
"' USAF, Project LINCOLN. BEACON HILL Report: Problems of Air Force Intelligence
and Reconnaissance. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 15 June 1952, pp. v, xi: app.
A (S. downgraded to C).
'' Allen F. Donovan. telephone conversation with Donald E. Welzenbach. 21 June 1985
(U) : James G. Baker, interview by Donald E. Welzenbach. tape recording, Washington,
DC, 24 April 1985 (S}.