The Central Intelligence Agency and overhead reconnaissance : the U-2 and oxcart programs, 1954-1974
Gregory W. Pedlow (Author), Donald E. Welzenbach, United States Central Intelligence Agency (Publisher, Issuing body)
This History Staff monograph offers a comprehensive and authoritative history of the CIA's manned overhead reconnaissance program, which from 1954-1974 developed and operated two extraordinary aircraft, the U-2 and the A-12 OXCART. It describes no only the program's technological and bureaucratic aspects, but also its political and international context. The manned reconnaissance program, along with other overhead systems that emerged from it, changed the CIA's work and structure in ways that were both revolutionary and permanent. The authors tell an engrossing 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. 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 employment over the Soviet Union offers insights that go beyond overhead reconnaissance programs
eBook, English, 1992
History Staff, Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, D.C., 1992