true author of this seminal work on Oxcart; any other name was a pseudonym). The contract was officially signed on February 11, 1960.
25. the CIA hired work crews from next door: Interview with Ernie Williams.
26. The construction of a new runway and the fuel farm: Interview with Harry Martin; Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 25–26.
27. The A-12 Oxcart was a flying fuel tank: Interview with Harry Martin.
28. CIA’s “own little air force”: Interview with Colonel Slater. 29. Getting the Oxcart to fly: Interview with Frank Murray.
30. 186-mile swath just to make a U-turn: Interview with Colonel Slater.
31. same was true at NORAD: Interviews with Dr. Wheelon, Colonel Slater.
32. they passed a simple sketch: Interview with Ed Lovick. 33. S. Varentsov: CIA Memo, S. Varenstov, Chief Marshal, USSR,
The Problem of Combat with the Nuclear Means of the Enemy and Its Solution, August 1961.
34. advancing surface-to-air missile technology: Interviews with Dr. Wheelon, Ed Lovick, T. D. Barnes.
Interviews: Gary Powers Jr., T. D. Barnes, Dr. Wheelon, Jim Freedman, Gene Poteat, Helen Kleyla (Richard Bissell’s longtime secretary, via written correspondence)
1. drenched in sweat: Powers, Operation Overflight, 75.
2. Tyuratam was Russia’s Cape Canaveral: CIA report on U-2 Vulnerability Tests, April 1960, Eisenhower Archives, Office of the Staff Secretary, Subject Series, Alphabetical Subseries, Box 15, Intelligence Matters. Memo: ICBM Targets — The Urals and Tyura Tam, “Sverdlovsk in the Urals is the best bet on the location of a major ICBM factory.” Notable color U-2 flight maps are in this file.
3. head up to a facility at Plesetsk: Harford, Korolev, 112. “R-7s and R-7As were deployed at only two launch pads at Baikonur and, eventually, four at Plesetsk, a launch center readied by 1959… Plesetsk soon became the busiest of the USSR’s three launch facilities, having responsibility for placing in orbit reconnaissance and other military satellites.”
4. two-and-a-half-foot increments: Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball, 185.
5. indicated he wanted to speak with him: Powers, Operation Overflight, 69.
6. had a premonition: Ibid.
7. awakened by a ringing telephone: W. Taubman, Khrushchev, 443.
8. a sharp poke in the eye: Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 444. “Sverdlovsk, was an especially deep penetration into our territory and therefore an especially arrogant violation… They were making these flights to show up our impotence. Well, we weren’t impotent any longer.”
9. “An uncomfortable situation was shaping up”: Orlov, “The U-2 Program,” 10.
10. Soviets’ secret bioweapons program: Hoffman, The Dead Hand, 119.
11. Kyshtym 40 was as valuable: Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball, 43. 12. “Destroy target”: Orlov, “The U-2 Program,” 11. 13. Stop and think: Powers, Operation Overflight, 83. 14. “He’s turning left”: Jack Anderson, “US Heard Russians
Chasing U-2,” Washington Post, May 12, 1960.
15. NSA operators heard: Bamford, Body of Secrets, 49.
16. “Bill Bailey did not come home”: Richelson, Wizards of Langley, 18.
17. The brand was Laika: Powers, Operation Overflight, 91.
18. “We believed that if a U-2 was shot”: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 121-22. But Bissell also admitted that the Agency agreed “unanimously” that the “big rolls of film aboard the plane would not be destroyed… Their nonflammable base would prevent them from burning, and they could be dropped from a height of ten miles and survive. We always knew that in the event of a crash there was going to be a couple rolls of film lying around, and there was not much we could do about it.”
19. the White House claimed: Department of State, for the Press, No. 249, May 6, 1960; Department of State, for the Press, No. 254, May 9, 1960.
20. But Khrushchev had evidence: Incoming telegram, Department of State, Control 6700, May 10, 1969.
21. With great bravado: W. Taubman, Khrushchev, 455-58. 22. “I would like to resign”: P. Taubman, Secret Empire, 396.
23. Eisenhower wouldn’t bow: Bamford, Body of Secrets, 53–54. “For Eisenhower, the whole process was quickly turning into Chinese water torture. Every day he was being forced to dribble out more and more of the story.”
24. “the first time any nation had publicly admitted”: Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball, 49.
25. authorized a Soviet military base: Ibid., 55.
26. twenty-five minutes’ time: Havana, Cuba, to Washington, DC, is 1,130 miles. In 1960, a Russian missile traveled at approximately Mach 3.5.
27. During Powers’s trial: “Report on Conclusion of Powers Trial, USSR International Affairs,” August 22, 1960, approved for release September 1985, 39 pages.
28. “Las Vegas firing range (poligon) in the Nevada desert”: Ibid., RB-6.
29. “criminal conspiracy”: Ibid. 30. “follower of Hitler”: Ibid., RB-20.
31. Watertown as the U-2 training facility: Powers, Operation Overflight, 114.
32. out at the Ranch: Parangosky, The Oxcart Story, 6–7.
33. Richard Bissell had a tennis court put in: Interview with Dr. Wheelon.
34. Prohibited Area P-275: Interview with Peter Merlin.
35. “thirteen million different parts”: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 133.
36. the titanium that first held everything up: Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 21– 22.
37. nearly 95 percent of what Lockheed initially received: Robarge,
Archangel, 11.
38. Russia was spending billions of rubles: Interview with Ed Lovick.
39. “who thought ELINT was a dirty word”: Poteat, “Engineering and the CIA,” 24.
40. Barnes was recruited by the CIA: Interview with Barnes; CIA Personal Resume, 1966, Barnes, Thornton Duard.
41. Castro’s regime “must be overthrown”: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 153.
42. “Richard Bissell,” Kennedy said: Thomas, “Wayward Spy,” 36. 43. put a bullet in his own head: Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 303. 44. Bahнa de Cochinos, or the Bay of Pigs: Kirkpatrick, The Real
CIA, chapter 8; Pfeiffer, CIA’s Official History of the Bay of Pigs; Warner, “CIA’s Internal Probe.”
45. could help in gathering intel: Oral history interview with Richard M. Bissell Jr. by Theodore A. Wilson and Richard D. McKinzie, East Hartford, Connecticut, July 9, 1971.
46. Bissell blamed the mission’s failure on his old rival General Curtis LeMay: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 176. In discussing the decision of the Joint Chiefs, which included LeMay sitting in for the commandant of the Marines, “to cancel the air strikes so readily,” Bissell stated, “one could make a case that their view reflected rivalry between the air force and the CIA. The agency’s earlier success with the overhead reconnaissance programs had disturbed certain high-ranking members of the air force.” Certainly he is referring to LeMay. “Friends of mine in the military spoke frankly to me about this,” Bissell added. “There was no denying that the sentiment existed among military that all the air activities undertaken by the CIA in the U-2, SR-71 [note: Oxcart had not been declassified yet] and spy satellite programs should have come under jurisdiction of the air force. Robert Amory recalled in a 1966 interview that, after I
was put in charge of the U-2 program, ‘essentially the air force’s eye was wiped in you-know-what and they resented that from the beginning.’” For Bissell, “the resentment never died.”
47. if LeMay had provided adequate air cover: Ibid., 175. “Curtis LeMay (who was sitting in for the absent commandant of the Marines) and several of the chiefs admitted their doubt about the absolute essentiality of air cover… I was shocked. We all knew only too well that without air support, the project would fail.”
48. “time zone confusion”: Ibid., 189. Bissell wrote, “When the B26s lumbered into the air the next day, however, no navy cover appeared. It seemed that a misunderstanding about the correct time standard had
