Approved for Release: 2013/06/25
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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 4
164
mention of overflights by the United States. After the trip was over, Khrushchev and other leading Soviet officials continued to make exaggerated claims about the extent of their missile force, adding to the confusion and concern within the US intelligence community. Thus in November 1959, Soviet Premier Khrushchev told a conference of journalists, “Now we have such a stock of rockets, such an amount of atomic and hydrogen weapons, that if they attack us, we could wipe our potential enemies off the face of the earth.” He then added that “in one year, 250 rockets with hydrogen warheads came off the assembly line in the factory we visited.”¹² Because the Soviet Union had been launching at least one missile per week since early fall, US policymakers placed great weight on his remarks.
Despite the intelligence community’s intense interest in the Soviet Union’s nuclear and missile programs, President Eisenhower did not authorize any more overflights of the Soviet Union during the remainder of the year. On the other hand, he raised no objections to (and probably welcomed) the first British overflight of the Soviet Union in December 1959. For almost a year, the RAF pilots of Detachment B had been ready to fly over the Soviet Union, but Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had not previously authorized any such missions because of his own visit to the Soviet Union, several international meetings, and other state visits. As a result, British U-2 missions had been confined to the Middle East. Now that the Prime Minister’s approval had been obtained, Detachment B conducted Operation HIGH WIRE with an RAF pilot. Squadron leader Robert Robinson left Peshawar on 6 December and overflew Kuybyshev, Saratov Engels Airfield, and the Kapustin Yar Missile Test Range before landing at Adana. The mission photography was excellent, but it did not provide intelligence on Soviet ICBMs, which were tested at Tyuratam, not Kapustin Yar.¹³
Because there had been so few overflights in 1958 and 1959, many questions about the Soviet missile program remained unanswered. Within the intelligence community there was still considerable disagreement over the size of the Soviet missile force. Thus, during testimony before the US Senate in January 1960, DCI Allen Dulles, Secretary of Defense Thomas Gates, and Air Force Chief of
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¹² William E. Burrows, *Deep Black: Space Espionage and National Security* (New York: Random House, 1987), p. 101.
¹³ *OSA History*, chap. 11, p. 33 (TS Codeword); Mission folder 8005 (6 December 1959), OSA records, job 67-B-972, box 13 (TS Codeword).
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Secret
Approved for Release: 2013/06/25