Approved for Release: 2013/06/25
---
Secret NOFORN
Chapter 1
19
---
document on 15 June 1952, the *BEACON HILL Report* advocated radical approaches to obtain the information needed for national intelligence estimates. Its 14 chapters covered radar, radio, and photographic surveillance; examined the use of passive infrared and microwave reconnaissance; and discussed the development of advanced reconnaissance vehicles. One of the report’s key recommendations called for the development of high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft:
> We have reached a period in history when our peacetime knowledge of the capabilities, activities and dispositions of a potentially hostile nation is such as to demand that we supplement it with the maximum amount of information obtainable through aerial reconnaissance. To avoid political involvements, such aerial reconnaissance must be conducted either from vehicles flying in friendly airspace, or—a decision on this point permitting—from vehicles whose performance is such that they can operate in Soviet airspace with greatly reduced chances of detection or interception.³²
Concern About the Danger of a Soviet Surprise Attack
The Air Force did not begin to implement the ideas of the *BEACON HILL Report* until the summer of 1953. By this time interest in reconnaissance had increased after Dwight D. Eisenhower became President in January 1953 and soon expressed his dissatisfaction with the quality of the intelligence estimates of Soviet strategic capabilities and the paucity of reconnaissance on the Soviet Bloc.³³
To President Eisenhower and many other US political and military leaders, the Soviet Union was a dangerous opponent that appeared to be moving inexorably toward a position of military parity with the United States. Particularly alarming was Soviet progress in the area of nuclear weapons. In the late summer of 1949, the Soviet Union had detonated an atomic bomb nearly three years sooner than US experts had predicted. Then in August 1953—a scant nine months after the first US test of a hydrogen bomb—the Soviet Union detonated a hydrogen bomb manufactured from lithium deuteride, a technology more advanced than the heavy water method used by US
---
³² *BEACON HILL Report*, pp. 164, 167-168 (C). This section of the report was written by Allen Donovan and Louis Ridenour.
³³ Lundahl and Brugioni interview (TS Codeword).
---
Secret
Approved for Release: 2013/06/25