Approved for Release: 2013/06/25
---
Secret NOFORN
Chapter 5
222
landing at the Scranton-Wilkes-Barre Airport, the pilot reported the incident to Headquarters. The Office of Security immediately contacted the Pennsylvania State Police, who sealed off the wooded area. Agency security officers soon arrived to search for the boxes. They recovered all 43 containers; not one had broken.³²
Detachment G’s only other activity during the summer of 1961 was a solitary overflight of North Vietnam, known as Operation EBONY. In preparation for this mission, a U-2 deployed to Cubi Point on 13 August 1961. Two days later it successfully conducted the overflight and subsequently returned to the United States.³³
New Detachment on Taiwan
Long before the Nationalist Chinese became involved in the U-2 program, they were flying covert reconnaissance missions for the CIA. In 1952 the CIA began recruiting Nationalist Chinese crews to replace US personnel from the proprietary firm Civil Air Transport, who had been flying Agency aircraft to drop leaflets, agents, and supplies over the Chinese mainland. This project (BGMARQUE) also provided photographic coverage of the rail line from Shanghai to the border with French Indochina. CIA-sponsored aerial reconnaissance over the mainland increased substantially in 1955 with the establishment of Project STPOLLY, which used Agency aircraft with Nationalist Chinese crews to gather Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) and conduct psychological warfare against the People’s Republic of China. At first the SIGINT equipment was installed in World War II–vintage aircraft such as PB-4Ys and B-17s, but in 1958 the project received a new aircraft procured covertly by the Agency from Lockheed, the P2V7, with an extremely sophisticated airborne SIGINT system. STPOLLY added the more advanced Lockheed P3A in 1963. Between 1955 and 1967, when the CIA terminated the project, STPOLLY conducted 399 overflights of the People’s Republic of China, losing a total of eight aircraft and crews.
In addition to CIA-sponsored aerial reconnaissance projects, the Nationalist Chinese Air Force had its own reconnaissance capability with US-supplied RB-57 aircraft. In 1958 the US Air Force proposed
---
³² Ibid., chap. 7, p. 24 (TS Codeword).
³³ Ibid., chap. 16, p. 18 (TS Codeword).
---
Secret
Approved for Release: 2013/06/25