Approved for Release: 2013/06/25
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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 2
88
These positive results from Project GENETRIX did not outweigh the political liabilities of the international protests. CIA officials became concerned that the ill will generated by balloon overflights could sour the Eisenhower administration on all overflights, including those by the U-2, which was just about ready for deployment. Therefore, DDCI Cabell wrote to Air Force Chief of Staff Twining in February 1956 to warn against further balloon flights because of the “additional political pressures being generated against all balloon operations and overflights, thus increasing the difficulties of policy decisions which would permit such operations in the future.”⁷³
In addition to its concern for the future of the U-2 program, the Agency feared that President Eisenhower’s anger at balloon overflights might result in the curtailment of the balloon program that the Free Europe Committee—a covert Agency operation based in West Germany—used to release propaganda pamphlets over Eastern Europe.
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AQUATONE BRIEFINGS FOR SELECTED MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Although knowledge of the U-2 project was a closely guarded secret within both the Agency and the Eisenhower administration, DCI Dulles decided that a few key members of Congress should be told about the project. On 24 February 1956, Dulles met with Senators Leverett Saltonstall and Richard B. Russell, the ranking members of the Senate Armed Services Committee and its subcommittee on the CIA. He shared with them the details of Project AQUATONE and then asked their opinion on whether some members of the House of Representatives should also be informed. As a result of the senators’ recommendation that the senior members of the House Appropriations Committee should be briefed, Dulles later met with its ranking members, Representatives John Taber and Clarence Cannon. Official Congressional knowledge of the U-2 project remained confined to this small group for the next four years. The House Armed Services Committee and its CIA subcommittee did not receive a CIA briefing on the U-2 project until after the loss of Francis Gary Powers’s U-2 over the Soviet Union in May 1960.⁷⁴
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⁷³ Philip G. Strong, Attachment to Memorandum for DCI Dulles, “Project GENETRIX Summary,” 15 February 1956, OSI records (S).
⁷⁴ John S. Warner, Legislative Counsel, Memorandum for the Record, “AQUATONE Briefings,” 18 November 1957, Office of Congressional Affairs records, job 61-357, box 2 (S); Warner interview (S).
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Secret
Approved for Release: 2013/06/25