ARRB REQUEST: CIA-IR-16: U-2 FILES
Originator: ARRB
From: ARRB
To: CIA/HRG
Document date: 10/29/1996
Document type: PAPER - TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

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2023 RELEASE UNDER THE PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATION RECORDS ACT OF 1992

FYI

Assassination Records Review Board

600 E Street NW • 2nd Floor • Washington, DC 20530

(202) 724-0088 • Fax: (202) 724-0457

VIEW

BOARD

October 29, 1996

CIA HAS NO OBJECTION TO

DECLASSIFICATION AND/OR

RELEASE OF CIA INFORMATION

IN THIS DOCUMENT

Mr. Donald E. Welzenbach

830 Mississippi Avenue

Davenport, Iowa 52803

Dear Mr. Welzenbach:

I am 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 CLA 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 Study uf 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 CIA 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

BOARD MEMBERS: John R. Tunheim, Chair • Henry F. Graff • Kermit L. Hall • William L. Joyce • Anna K. Nelson

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: David G. Marwell

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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.

Associate Dictor to escarch & Analysis

Enclosures

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Descriptive Name: Contact Letter to Welzenbach (U-2)

Descriptive Type: Letter

Subject:

Future ARRB Interview

Attachments:

Blind Copy:

ARRB Info Package and "Skunk Works" excerpt

Marwell, Gunn, Wray, Horne

Carbon Copy:

Date Completed:

12:00:00 AM

Reference:

Document Number: 4.20,3

Author:

Typist:

DHORNE

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SKUNK WORKS

A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed

BEN R. RICH AND LEO JANOS

BOSTON

LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY

NEW YORK

TORONTO

LONDON

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JORARY OF CONGRATE

SEP 1 5 1994

COPYRIGHT OFFICE

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

TL565

• R53

1994

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.

Includes index.

ISBN 0-316-74330-5

1. Lockheed Advanced Development Company - History. 2. Rich, Ben R. -

Career in aeronautics. 3. Aeronautics - Research - United States - History. I.

Janos, Leo. I. Title.

TL565.R53 1994

i u The Shank Worka:

338.7 623746 0973 — dc20

94-8732

10 9

876

432 1

MV-PA

Published simultaneously in Canada

by Little, Brown & Company (Canada) Limited

Printed in the United States of America

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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.

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ADMIWSTRATIVE • INTERNAL USE ONLY

re 4-2

3 April 1997

MEMORANDUM FOR:

FROM:

SUBJECT:

REFERENCE:

Bonnie Hunter

J. Barry Harrelson

CSI/HRG

JFK Assassination inquiry; Lockheed

3 April 1997

MEMORANDUM FOR:

J. Barry Harrelson

FROM:

Teresa Wilcox @ DST

SUBJECT:

REFERENCE:

JFK Assassination inquiry; Lockheed

Barry,

Per our meeting earlier this week, I 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 to look for records on "the" manual. The security

officer I 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 two 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, I'll help them do this. If they want to deal directly with Lockheed, that's

fine, too….. I would just ask that you and be kept informed. I told Lockheed the same thing.

Would you mind faxing to me the page from the Ben Rich book? I seem to have temporarily misplaced my copy. My open fax is

-703.482-6350, Thanks.

FAX'd 413/97.

CC:

{Marsha A. Hubbs:@ DST

Lorraine C. Castro:® DST

CC:

ADMINISTRATIVE • INTERNAL USE ONLY

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re CAIR16

ON

DS

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

Mr. John Pereira

RELEASE OF C!A INFORMATION

Chief

IN THIS DOCUMENT

Historical Review Group

Center for the Study of Intelligence

Central Intelligence Agency

Washington, D.C. 02505

Re: Status of CLA Responses to Assassination Records Review Board's Requests for

Additional Information and Records

Dear John:

I am 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 CLA 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: CIA-1 Organizational Material,

CIA-6 Cables and Dispatches, CIA-13 Backchannel Communications, CLA-IR-03

HTLINGUAL Documents, CIA-IR-04 Disposition of Angleton Files, CIA-IR-07 Claude

Barnes Capehart, CLA-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.

BOARD MEMBERS: John R. Tunheim. Chair • Henry F. Graff • Kermil 1. Hall • William L. Joyce • Anna K. Nelson

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... ... ....

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.

CLA-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.

1. Spas Raikin

2. Leo Cherne

3. Hunter Leake

Resuts/Comments

This request is complete.

ARRB awaits documentation.

ARRB awaits documentation. HRG is checking for a DCD

4. Marilyn Dutz Murret

5. John McVickar

6. Andy Anderson

This request is complete.

ARRB awaits documentation.

ARRB awaits documentation.

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_ SECRET

s. :""

8 May 1997

MEMORANDUM FOR:

FROM:

SUBJECT:

REFERENCE:

<Marsha A. Hubbs @ DST

Bonnie K. Hunter-Y.

U-2 Folders

Michelle Combs, ARRB Staff, requested access to the following files from the list of U-2 files provided for ARRB Staff review:

JOB #

BOX

89B00980

0003

89B00980R

0003

89B00980R

0005

89B00980R

0005

89B00708R

0007

69B00825R

0001

33-02415A

0008

The request is for access for background purposes at this time.._

Please respond to Barry Harrelson, DCI/CSI/HRG, as soon as possible.

FOLDER

1900

2900

9800

0088

9200

0011

0033

CC:

J. Barry Harrelson

SECRET

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CIA SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

RELEASE IN FULL

2000

file a

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.

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CIA SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

RELEASE IN FULL

2000

file ey

•

12 September 1998

MEMORANDUM FOR:

Laura Denk

Executive Director, ARRB

FROM:

J. Barry Harrelson

JFK Project Officer, HRP/OIM

SUBJECT:

CIA-IR-16, U-2 Files

1. This is 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 Harrelson

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