Approved for Release: 2013/06/25
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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 2
86
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Photograph of Dodonovo Atomic Energy complex taken by a Project GENETRIX balloon
[figure]
All of this publicity and protest led President Eisenhower to conclude that “the balloons gave more legitimate grounds for irritation than could be matched by the good obtained from them,” and he ordered the project halted. On 7 February 1956 Secretary of State Dulles informed the Soviet Union that no more “weather research” balloons would be released, but he did not offer an apology for the overflights.⁷⁰
Despite the furor caused by GENETRIX, Air Force Chief of Staff Twining proposed yet another balloon project only five weeks later, in mid-March 1956. This project would employ even higher flying balloons than GENETRIX and would be ready in 18 months. President Eisenhower informed the Air Force, however, that he was “not interested in any more balloons.”⁷¹
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⁷⁰ Andrew J. Goodpaster, Memorandum for the Record, “10 February 1956 Conference of Joint Chiefs of Staff with the President,” WHOSS, Alpha, DDEL (TS, declassified 1980); Stephen E. Ambrose, *Eisenhower: The President* vol. 2 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), p. 310.
⁷¹ Quoted in Ambrose, *Eisenhower: The President*, p. 310.
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Secret
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Approved for Release: 2013/06/25