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

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FOREWORD
This History Staff Monograph offers a comprehensive and authorita­
tive history of the CIA's manned overhead reconnaissance program.
which from 1954 to 1974 developed and operated two extraordinary
aircraft, the U-2 and the A-12 OXCART. It describes not only the
program's technological and bureaucratic aspects, but also its politi­
cal and international context. The manned reconnaissance program,
along with other overhead systems that emerged from it, changed the
CIA's work and structure i.n ways that were both revolutionary and
permanent. The formation of the Directorate of Science and
Technology in the I 960s, principally to develop and direct reconnais­
sance programs, is the most obvious legacy of the events recounted in
this study.
The authors tell an enigrossing story. The struggle between the
CIA and the US Air Force to control the U-2 and A-12 OXCART
projects reveals how the manned reconnaissance program confronted
problems that still beset successor programs today. The U-2 was an
enormous technological suc:cess: its first flight over the USSR in July
1956 made it immediately the most important source of intelligence
on the Soviet Union. Using it against the Soviet target it was designed
for nevertheless produced a persistent tension between its program·
managers and the President. The program managers, eager for cover­
age, repeatedly urged the President to authorize frequent missions
over the Soviet Union. President Eisenhower, from the outset doubt­
ful of the prudence and prt0priety of invading Soviet airspace, only
reluctantly allowed any overflights at all. After the Soviets shot down
Francis Gary Powers' U-2 on I May 1960, President Eisenhower
forbade any further U-2 flights over the USSR. Since the Agency
must always assess a covert operation's potential payoff against the
diplomatic or military cost if it fails, this account of the U-2's em­
ployment over the Soviet Union offers insights that go beyond
overhead reconnaissance programs.
Indeed, this study should be useful for a variety of purposes. It is
the only history of this program based upon both full access to CIA
records and extensive classified interviews of its participants. The
authors have found records that were nearly irretrievably lost and
have interviewed participants whose personal recollections gave in­
formation available nowhere else. Although the story of the manned
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