Washington, D.C., October 29, 2013 – The CIA s history of the U-2 spy plane, declassified this pas

Washington, D.C., October 29, 2013  – The CIA s history of the U-2 spy plane, car rental san juan puerto rico declassified this past summer , sparked enormous public attention to the U-2 s secret test site at Area 51 in Nevada, but documents posted today by the National Security Archive ( www.nsarchive.org ) show that Area 51 played an even more central role in the development of the U.S. Air Force s top secret car rental san juan puerto rico stealth programs in the 1970s and 1980s, and hosted secretly obtained Soviet car rental san juan puerto rico MiG fighters during the Cold War.
Compiled and edited by Archive senior fellow Jeffrey T. Richelson, today s e-book posting includes more than 60 declassified documents. Some of the documents specifically focus on Area 51 and the concern for maintaining secrecy about activities at the facility. Included is a 1961 memo ( Document 1 ) from the CIA s inspector general raising the issue of security, and a response ( Document 2 ) reporting the shared concerns of the CIA Deputy Director car rental san juan puerto rico for Plans, Richard Bissell. Security concerns led to consideration ( Document 3 ) of photographing the area with U.S. reconnaissance assets and a debate ( Document 4 ,  Document 5 ) over the possible release of a photograph of the facility taken by SKYLAB astronauts.
car rental san juan puerto rico Other documents focus on the aircraft tested at the facility (and their operational use) — particularly the stealth F-117. Those documents include a variety of histories of the F-117 squadron, with details on participation in operations and exercises. In addition, there are extracts from two reports ( Document 15 ,  Document 16 ) on accidents involving F-117 aircraft, as well as histories and assessments ( Document 17 ,  Document 18 , Document 23 ,  Document 36 ) of F-117 deployment in operations DESERT STORM and IRAQI FREEDOM. Also included are fact sheets ( Document 58 ,  Document 59 ,  Document 60 ) concerning three programs, at least two of which were tested at Area 51 — the Bird of Prey and TACIT BLUE.
In addition to documents on F-117 operations, a number of documents focus on the development of stealth capability. One of those ( Document 10 ), is the mathematical analysis by Russian physicist and engineer P. Ya. Ufimtsev that former Lockheed Skunk Works director Ben Rich called the Rosetta Stone breakthrough for stealth technology.
Also represented in the posting is another type of activity at Area 51 — the exploitation of covertly acquired Soviet MiGs. Included is a 300-page car rental san juan puerto rico Defense Intelligence Agency report ( Document 50 ) on the exploitation of the MiG-21, a project titled HAVE DOUGHNUT. Other documents ( Document 51 ,  Document 52 ) concern the exploitation effort concerning two MiG-17s, efforts named HAVE DRILL and HAVE FERRY.
Area 51 has the been the focus of enormous interest among a significant segment of the public for decades — an interest that inevitably spawned books, articles, and a variety of documentaries. 1  For some enthusiasts Area 51 was a clandestine site for UFOs and extraterrestrials, but it is better understood as a U.S. government facility for the testing of a number of U.S. secret aircraft projects — including the U-2, OXCART, car rental san juan puerto rico and the F-117. Declassified documents help demonstrate the central role that Area 51 played in the development of programs such as the F-117, and the operational employment of the aircraft. Other declassified documents reveal car rental san juan puerto rico Area 51 s role in testing foreign radar systems and, during the Cold War, secretly obtained Soviet MiG fighters.
On April 12, 1955 Richard Bissell and Col. Osmund car rental san juan puerto rico Ritland flew over Nevada with Kelly Johnson in a small Beechcraft plane. Johnson was the director of the Lockheed Corporation s Skunk Works, which, as part of a secret CIA-Air Force project, codenamed AQUATONE by the CIA and OILSTONE by the Air Force, was building a revolutionary spy plane, designated the U-2. Bissell, CIA head of the project, Ritland his Air Force deputy, Johnson, and Lockheed s chief test pilot, were looking for a site where the plane could be tested safely and secretly. 2
During the trip they discovered, near the northeast corner of the Atomic Energy Commission s (AEC) Nevada Proving Ground, what appeared to be an airstrip near a salt flat known as Groom Lake. After examining the location from the ground, the four agreed that it would make an ideal site for testing the U-2 and training its pilots. Upon returning to Washington, Bissell discovered that the land was not part of the AEC s proving ground — leading him to ask the commission s chairman to make the Groom Lake area an AEC possession, a request which was readily granted. President Eisenhower approved the plan, and the territory, car rental san juan puerto rico known by its map designation — Area 51 — was added to the Nevada Test Site. 3  The site acquired several other designations. Kelly Johnson, in order to make the remote location seem more palatable his workers began referring to it as Paradise Ranch, which was then shortened to the Ranch. An additional unofficial name would be Watertown Strip — a consequence of the need to build a paved runway so that testing could continue when rainwater runoff from nearby mountains made it impossible to land on Groom Lake. By July 1955, the base was ready and personnel from the CIA, Air Force, car rental san juan puerto rico and Lockheed began to arrive. 4
Within a year the U-2 program would transition car rental san juan puerto rico to an operational program, with flights initially over Eastern Europe and then the Soviet Union. Bissell and other senior officials anticipated that the U-2 would have a limited life before becoming vulnerable to Soviet air defense systems. Before the end of 1958 they had launched Project GUSTO to find a successor to the U-2, which resulted in the selection of another Lockheed-designed plane, the A-12 or OXCART— which was to fly higher than the U-2, far faster (over Mach 3), and be harder for air defense radars to detect. 5
In November 1959, a little over two years before the first A-12 arrived at Area 51 in late December 1961, a radar test facility was established there — the result of contractor Edgerton, Germeshausen Greer (EG G) agreeing to move its Indian Springs, Nevada test facility to Area 51. Its purpose was to determine the vulnerability of an OXCART car rental san juan puerto rico mockup to detection. Area 51 would also become the home to testing programs for two OXCART derivatives — the YF-12A KEDLOCK fighter plane and the Air Force s Project car rental san juan puerto rico EARNING, which ultimately produced the SR-71 (also designated SENIOR CROWN) reconnaissance aircraft — as well as the D-21 TAGBOARD drone that was expected car rental san juan puerto rico to be launched from A-12 aircraft. 6
In September 1961, a few months before car rental san juan puerto rico the first OXCART arrived, car rental san juan puerto rico the site was visited by CIA Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick, who conveyed his findings ( Document 1 ) to Richard Bissell — who had become the CIA s Deputy Director of Plans in the summer of 1958, with continued responsibility for the CIA s secret aircraft projects car rental san juan puerto rico through car rental san juan puerto rico his directorate s Development Projects Division (DPD). Kirkpatrick wrote that his visit left reservations in my mind. One was that the Area appears to be extremely vulnerable in its present security provisions against unauthorized observation — including air observation. In addition, Kirkpatrick suggested that the project car rental san juan puerto rico had reached a stage where top management at the Area 51 needs consolidation with clear and precisely defined authority. Finally, he questioned the survivability of the program s hardware when and if employed in actual operations.
Bissell s off-the-cuff reactions were reported car rental san juan puerto rico in an October 17 memo ( Document 2 ) from Bissell s assistant to the acting chief of the DPD. The author reported Bissell s belief that Kirkpatrick s points about area security were well taken, his lack of strong reaction to the comment about site management, and his questioning whether the inspector general s comment about OXCART vulnerability was appropriate for Kirkpatrick to get himself involved in. With regard to the issue of security Bissell was particularly interested in why we have not yet been able to eject the various [deleted] car rental san juan puerto rico holding property around the Area.
Concern about maintaining secrecy for activities at the site persisted as illustrated by an April 6, 1962 memo ( Document 3 ) from DPD executive officer John McMahon to the division s acting chief. He reported that he and another car rental san juan puerto rico DPD official (John Parangosky) had earlier discussed the idea of employing a U-2 to produce images of the area and asking photographic interpreters to determine what was happening at the site. But given, the upcoming scheduled launches of CORONA reconnaissance satellites, McMahon noted that it might be advisable to include a pass crossing the Nevada Test Site, to see what we ourselves could learn from satellite reconnaissance of the Area. That and later missions could be used to assess what deductions the Soviets could make should Sputnik 13 have a reconnaissance capability.
A dozen years later, it was not Soviet reconnaissance that resulted in interagency discussions car rental san juan puerto rico and memos concerning exposure of Area 51 activities via overhead imagery. Rather it was the inadvertent imaging of the area by American SKYLAB astronauts. Among the memos was one ( Document 4 ) from Robert Singel, the National Reconnaissance Office s deputy director, concerning the on-going internal government controversy. Another memo ( Document 5 ) provided Director of Central Intelligence William Colby with the latest information on the internal debate and identified key questions that needed to be answered before a final decision was made. 7
During the mid-1970s another issue was whether the CIA should continue Area 51; its major aerial reconnaissance programs, such as the U-2 and OXCART, no longer needed the site, but the Air Force still needed the site for radar testing, development of stealth aircraft, and exploitation of Soviet MiG aircraft that the U.S. had acquired. The National Security Council decided that the Air Force should take over the site. According to a memo ( Document 6 ) from deputy car rental san juan puerto rico director of central intelligence, E.H