Approved for Release: 2013/06/25
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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 4
187
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the U-2 project under the title *Operation Overflight*. Later he flew a light plane as a traffic reporter for a Los Angeles radio station and then a helicopter for a television station. On 1 August 1977, he and a cameraman from the station died when his helicopter crashed on the way to an assignment.⁴⁹
CHANGES IN OVERFLIGHT PROCEDURES AFTER MAY 1960
One of the most important changes in the overflight program after the loss of Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 was the institution of more formal procedures for the approval of U-2 missions. During the first four years of U-2 activity, very few members of the Eisenhower administration had been involved in making decisions concerning the overflight program. The President personally authorized all flights over the Soviet Union and was consulted by Richard Bissell and either the DCI or the DDCI about each such proposed mission. In addition to CIA officials, the President’s discussions of individual U-2 missions or of the program as a whole generally included the Secretary of State or his Under Secretary, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense or his deputy, and the President’s secretary, Colonel (later General) Goodpaster.
The approval process under President Eisenhower was thus very unstructured. There was no formal approval body charged with reviewing overflight proposals; the President kept this authority in his hands and simply consulted with selected cabinet officials and advisers before reaching a decision. In 1959 the U-2 program had gained a second approval authority when British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan became the approval authority for missions conducted by the RAF pilots in Detachment B.
The loss of Powers’ U-2 in May 1960 led to major changes in the approval process. For all practical purposes, Prime Minister Macmillan ceased to be a source of approval because the RAF pilots who remained in the U-2 program did not conduct any more operational missions (although the use of British pilots was considered on several occasions). In the United States the approval process
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⁴⁹ Beschloss, *Mayday*, pp. 396-401. Beschloss claims that Powers was fired by Lockheed for criticizing the Agency in his memoirs (which he had shown to the Agency in draft form), but Kelly Johnson’s “U-2R Log” records on 25 September 1969: “We have no flight test activity at all. I must let Gary Powers go. Have protected him for about seven years, but he doesn’t have an ATR (Air Transport Rating), so we have no other job for him—not even flying the Beechcraft.”
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Secret
Approved for Release: 2013/06/25