Approved for Release: 2013/06/25
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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 2
60
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devices had to be calibrated to 80,000 feet. This immediately raised eyebrows at Kollman because its instruments only went to 45,000 feet. Agency security personnel quickly briefed several Kollman officials and produced a cover story that the altimeters were to be used on experimental rocket planes.²⁷
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THE CIA – AIR FORCE PARTNERSHIP
At the initial interagency meetings to establish the U-2 program in December 1954, the participants did not work out a clear delineation of responsibilities between the CIA and the Air Force. They agreed only that the Air Force would supply the engines and the Agency would pay for the airframes and cameras. With a myriad of details still unsettled, CIA and Air Force representatives began to work on an interagency agreement that would assign specific responsibilities for the program. These negotiations proved difficult. Discussions on this subject between DCI Allen Dulles and Air Force Chief of Staff Nathan Twining began in March 1955. Twining wanted SAC, headed by Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, to run the project once the planes and pilots were ready to fly, but Dulles opposed such an arrangement. The CIA-USAF talks dragged on for several months, with Twining determined that SAC should have full control once the aircraft was deployed. Eventually President Eisenhower settled the dispute. “I want this whole thing to be a civilian operation,” the President wrote. “If uniformed personnel of the armed services of the United States fly over Russia, it is an act of war—legally—and I don’t want any part of it.”²⁸
With the issue of control over the program settled, the two agencies soon worked out the remaining details. On 3 August 1955, Dulles and Twining met at SAC headquarters in Omaha to sign the basic agreement, titled “Organization and Delineation of Responsibilities—Project OILSTONE” (OILSTONE was the Air Force codename for the project). This pact gave the Air Force responsibility for pilot selection and training, weather information, mission plotting, and operational support. The Agency was responsible for cameras, security, contracting, film processing, and arrangements for foreign bases, and it also had a voice in the selection of pilots. All aeronautical aspects of the
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²⁷ Ibid.
²⁸ *OSA History*, chap. 3, pp. 8-15 (TS Codeword); Beschloss, *Mayday*, pp. 105-107.
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Approved for Release: 2013/06/25