104-10336-10015 Assassination Records Review Board 600 E Street NW + 2nd Floor » Washington, DC 20530 (202) 724-0088 + Fax: (202) 724-0457. | cin HAS NO OBJECTIGN To . ECLASSIFICATION AND/O October 29, 1996 MAT ober RELEASE OF CIA INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT Mr. Donald E. Welzenbach 830 Mississippi Avenue Davenport, Iowa 52803 Dear Mr. Welzenbach: | Iam writing you on behalf of the Assassination Records Review Board, an independent ' Federal Agency established pursuant to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, 44 U.S.C. § 2107 (Supp. V 1994). The Review Board, whose members are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, is charged with the responsibility of collecting records and information related to the assassination of President Kennedy. Review Board members and staff are required by law to possess Top Secret, SCI clearances. The Review Board is not seeking to reach any conclusions regarding the assassination, but is primarily concerned with identifying, clarifying, locating, and making available assassination records. I am enclosing some explanatory material about the Review Board and its mandate. Also enclosed is an excerpt from the book Skunk Works, by Ben Rich and Leo Janos, which refers to Lockheed’s preparation of four sets of falsified U-2 technical manuals at the request of Richard Bissell of the CIA. It is our understanding that while working as a CIA historian, you wrote the first history of the U-2 for that agency. We would like very much to discuss this subject with you, and believe that your past in-depth knowledge of the U-2 may assist the ARRB in our attempts to clarify. the historical record in this area. I am taking the liberty of forwarding a copy of this letter to Mr. John Pereira, of the Historical Review Group, Center for the Stud;yuf Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, D.C., 20505. To the extent that you feel discussing this subject with the Review Board would constitute disclosure of any information that is still classified, we would be happy to initiate a discussion between you and the appropriate officials at the CLA to address any concerns you may have. Sometime in the near future a member of the Review Board staff will be calling you to establish a mutually agreeable time for a telephonic interview to discuss certain aspects of the U-2 program. Should you wish to call us first in response to this letter, please ask Boaro Memeers: John R. Tunheim, Chair + Henry F. Graff » Kermit L. Hall « William L. Joyce - Anna K. Neison Executive Dinecror: David G. Marwell
13-00000 Mr. Donald E. Welzenbach October 29, 1996 Page 2 for either Mr.. Doug Horne (a Senior Analyst on the Military Records Team), or Dr. Michelle Combs (a Senior Analyst on the CIA Records Team). We look forward to talking with you about the U-2 program. General Counse and. Associate Director for Research & Analysis Enclosures
13-00000 Descriptive Name: Contact Letter to Welzenbach (U-2) Descriptive Type: Letter Subject: Attachments: Blind Copy: Carbon Copy: . Date Completed: Reference: Document Number: 4.20,3 Author: Typist: Future ARRB Interview ARRB Info Package and “Skunk Works” excerpt Marwell, Gunn, Wray, Horne 12:00:00 AM -DHORNE DHORNE
13-00000 A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed / BEN R. RICH AND LEO JANOS | LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY BOSTON NEW YORK TORONTO LONDON
13-00000 abe Copyright © 1994 by Ben R. Rich All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, except by a _ reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. First Edition Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data . Rich, Ben R. _ Skunk Works: a personal memoir of my years at Lockheed / Ben R. Rich and Leo Janos. — Ist ed. ‘ p. cm - i Includes index. : ISBN 0-316-74330-5 i 1. Lockheed Advanced Development Company --- History. 2. Rich, Ben R. — i. Career in aeronautics. 3. Aeronautics — Research — United States — History. I. Janos, Leo. I. Title. OI. Title: Skunk Works. TL565.R53 1994 338.7'623746'0973 — dc20 94-8732 . 0987654321 MV-PA , } Published simultaneously in Canada . by Little, Brown & Company (Canada) Limited , Printed in the United States of America
or se ly re 3p ot | RRDpY Se od a Vw Cn ee ©) OVERFLYING RUSSIA 153 The next thing we tried was something called a Salisbury screen, a metallic grid applied to the airplane's undercarriage in the hope of deflecting incoming radar beams, but it worked only at some frequencies and altitudes and not at others. Kelly thought it was more practical to try special iron fer- rite paints that would absorb a radar ping rather than — bounce it back to the sender. The paints were moderately ef- fective but inhibited heat dissipation through the airframe’s outer skin and we experienced overheating engine problems. But the paint lowered the radar cross section by one order of magnitude, so we decided to give it a try. We called these specially painted airplanes “dirty birds” and shipped the first one out for flight testing in April 1957. Our test pilot, Bob Sieker, took the U-2 up to over seventy thousand feet and suddenly radioed that he was experiencing rapid airframe - heat buildup.,. Moments later his engine blew out and the face- plate blew off Bob's oxygen mask as his pressure suit in- _ stantly inflated. The U-2 dove straight down and crashed. It took us three days to locate the wreckage and Bob's body. An - autopsy revealed that above seventy thousand feet he had suffered acute hypoxia and lost consciousness in only ten seconds. The culprit that killed him was a defective faceplate clasp that cost fifty cents. . The CIA was so desperate to buy time for these Soviet over- flights that Bissell got Kelly to sequester four of our test flight engineers and have them write a bogus flight manual for a U-2 twice as heavy as ours and with a maximum altitude of only fifty thousand feet that carried only scientific weather gear in its bay. The manual included phony instrument panel photos with altered markings for speed, altitude, and load factor limits. Four copies were produced and then artificially aged with grease, coffee stains, and cigarette burns. How or if the agency got them into Soviet hands only Mr. B knew, and he never told.
13-00000 ADMINISTRATIVE INTERNAL USE ONLY Uf ” og - 3 April 1997 WEMORANDUM FOR: Bonnie Hunter ' FROM: J. Barry Harrelson CSI/HRG SUBJECT: JFK Assassination inquiry; Lockheed REFERENCE: 3 April 1997 MEMORANDUM FOR: | J. Barry Harrelson FROM: Teresa Wilcox @ OST SUBJECT: JFK Assassination inquiry; Lockheed REFERENCE: Barry, Per our meeting earlier this week, | called Lockheed security today and discussed the Board's interest in learning what U-2 records Lockheed might have and how they might be searched if Lockheed were te look for records on “the” manual. The security officer | talked to, Roy Kidd, said he suspected it would be looking for a needle in the haystack, but he wouldn't know without doing some checking around. He will get back to me. In the meantime, you may pass on the names of the twe points of contact, Roy Kidd or Jim Ghezzi, both at 805-572-4379 (commercial line). If the Board wants to deal with Lockheed through me, il help them do this. If they want to deal directly with Lockheed, that's fine, too... | would just ask that you and be kept informed. ! told Lockheed the same thing. Would you mind faxing to me the page from the Ben Rich book? 1 seem to have temporarily misplaced my copy. My open fax is 703-482-6350) Thanks. — FARK IQ 4¥/3)77, ce: | DST DST ce: ADMINISTRATIVE - INTERNAL USE ONLY
Sw ciA Tk4 2 Assassination Records Review Board 600 E Street NW « 2nd Floor « Washington, DC 20530 ~ (202) 724-0088 + Fax: (202) 724-0457 December 18, 1997 CIA HAS NO OBJECTION TO _DECLASSIFICATION AND/OR Chief IN THIS DOCUMENT Historical Review Group - Center for the Study of Intelligence Central Intelligence Agency Washington, D.C. 02505 Re: Status of CIA Responses to Assassination Records Review Board’s Requests for Additional Information and Records Dear John: Iam writing to follow-up on our telephone call earlier today and to convey my serious concern about the status of CIA’s responses to the Review Board’s requests for additional information and records. Although CIA has completed its responses to __ several requests, and many others have been answered in part, a significant number of requests have not been answered — including some that were made more than two years ago. On many occasions we have been assured that responses would be forthcoming, only to have promised dates come and go without answers. It is now extremely important that these requests be answered promptly so that we may conduct a proper follow-up if necessary. The issues that we can now identify as being of the highest priority are identified in the text below by double asterisks (**)' and we request that they be answered within the next month. We request that the remaining requests be answered by April-1, 1998. The remainder of this letter is divided into two parts: first, a listing of the formal requests for information and records, and second, a listing of the informal requests for information and records. Please let me know if your understanding of any of the following points differs from ours so that we can resolve any potential discrepancies. ‘As identified more fully below, the issues are: CLA-1 Organizational Material, CIA-6 Cables and Dispatches, CLA-13 Backchannel Communications, CIA-IR-03 HTLINGUAL Documents, CIA-IR-04 Disposition of Angleton Files, CIA-IR-07 Claude Barnes Capehart, CIA-IR-15 Electronic “take” from Mexico City, CIA-IR-21 DRE Monthly Operational Reports, CIA-IR-22 “A” Files on Clay Shaw and Jim Garrison. Boaro Memeers: John R. Tunheim, Chair + Henry F. Graff + Kermit 1. Hall - William L. Joyce « Anna K. Nelson
13-00000 Mr. John Pereira December 18, 1997 Page 10 outcome of these particular searches, the Review Board continues to seek a full ' accounting for all surveillance conducted during the relevant time periods. CIA-IR-16 U-2 Files. DS&T has provided a folder title printout of U-2 materials for Review Board _ examination and has checked for records filed under Richard Bissell’s name. The Review Board staff continues to review these indexes. The DS&T should continue to search for OSP files. CIA-IR-17 DS&T Records on Castro Assassination Plots. The DS&T records should be searched for any records on Castro assassination plots. The Review Board will provide possible search query suggestions from the 1967 IG Report. CIA-IR-18 DO Office. The Review Board has requested orally information about a particular DO office. Since January 1997, CIA has had no response and no time frame for a response. CIA-IR-19 Computer Searches. The Review Board has requested that full computer searches be conducted on all of the following people and organizations. The results of the searches should be documented. Once formal documentation of the completed searches has been provided, the request is complete. ; ry os, 1. Spas Raikin This request is complete 3. Hunter Leake ARRB awaits documentation. HRG is checking for a DCD file. 4, Marilyn Dutz Murret This request is complete 5. John McVickar ARRB awaits documentation 6. Andy Anderson ARRB awaits documentation
13-00000 _ SECRET a ” a . « 8 May 1997 MEMORANDUM FOR: DST FROM: Bonnie K. Hunter-Y- SUBJECT: U-2 Folders REFERENCE: Michelle Combs, ARRB Staff, requested access to the following files from the list of U-2 files provided for ARRB Staff review: JOB # BOX FOLDER 89800980 0003 0051 89B00980R 0003 0052 89B00980R 0005 0086 89B00980R 0005 0088 89B00708R 0007 0075 69B00825R 0001 0011 33-02415A 008 0033 The request is for access for background purposes at this time. _ Please respond to Barry Harrelson, DCI/CSI/HRG, as soon as possible. Ge: J. Barry Harrelson SECRET
13-00000 CO CIA SPECIAL COLLECTIONS < 7 ' RELEASE IN FULL , 2000 30 July 1998 NOTE TO FILE: CIA-IR-16 is finished in all respects as far as HRP is concerned. Requests for an information search were distributed. A shelf list of files available on the U-2 were found and made available to ARRB staff member, Michelle Combs. She then selected materials (five boxes) she wanted to see. From her review of the materials, she made notes and and has advised she is now in a position to write a memorandum on her review — and findings.. That memorandum is pending. The only action required of HRP or the Agency when Ms. Combs completes the memorandum is to review it for classification. Gary
13-00000 ry CIA SPECIAL COLLECTIONS — tte “9 12 September 1998 MEMORANDUM FOR: Laura Denk 4 Executive Director, ARRB FROM: J. Barry Harrelson JFK Project Officer, HRP/OIM SUBJECT: CIA-IR-16, U-2 Files 1. his ts in response to referent request. 2. Searches were made for information responsive to the request and materials were provided for examination by ARRB staff. No documents were selected for the JFK Collection. 3. This concludes the Agency’s action on this request. If you. have any question, please advise. J. Barry Harreis n \