COLONEL EDWARDS (CONTINUING): WEREN T EVEN AWARE OF THE PROJECT, SO THAT WE HAVE TRIED TO KEEP IT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01676R002200070003-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 27
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 20, 2003
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: February 19, 1962
• Content Type: MIN

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19 February 1962
COLONEL EDWARDS (Continuing): weren't even aware
of the project, so that we have tried to keep it on an eyes only
basis. At the time this was organized I put some of my people
under the senior officials in charge of the Project, and I think
they deserve much of the credit, or those people in command,
for being able to keep it this way for so many years. I want
to make this short here now, but I will call on a couple of my
people here to brief the board. All of the senior officials of
the Government and of the Agency who were briefed on this,
it was on this same sort of basis, so I think you will have some
feeling of what we have sort of brought in in the matter of our
briefings. I also think that the Board might want to think as
you go along -- and if I can help, and the Counsel will also
advise -- that the report that is going to be written up will be
a very sensitive sort of document, and I would recommend
that the Board as you get into this thing might want to think,
of course, everything being reported to the Agency or to the
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officer appointing the Board, but any other modified type of
report under the terms of reference of the Board that could,
o'r, if I may be so bold, will eventually pass to Congress or
maybe some parts to the press -- I can see that it's a problem,
and in meeting that problem I will make an effort to do my best
to advise. I will now call on the briefing officers. We will
have a briefing first on the Project from
My name is
security officer of the Project. During the debriefings of Mr.
Powers and the inquiry here certain very sensitive information
will be introduced here. The covert operation of the U-2
aircraft both before Mr. Powers' incident and subsequent thereto
has been protected by a special security system which is now
identified as Project IDEALIST. Although much sensitive
information became available to both the Soviets and to the
American public because of the incident, the covert utilization
of the U-2 continues to be at the present time a very significant
force for the collection of vital intelligence information. Also
interspersed in the testimony will be information pertaining to
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will brief you on that
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subsequent to my statements here. In the interest of speed and
simplification all testimony will initially be classified Project
IDEALIST, communications intelligence -- or COMINT, as the
word is known, and also TOP SECRET. Efforts will be made
subsequent and as becomes necessary to declassify the appro-
priate sections. There will be placed before you an IDEALIST
security manual consisting of a little over two pages of reading
matter, and an IDEALIST secrecy oath which will clarify for
you in general terms those areas which we still regard as being
classified within the meaning of the special clearance, as you
were, of this special security system.
- I am a Central Intelligence
Agency communications intelligence officer. As
has indicated, this particular proceeding will involve several
different types of intelligence, all of which are very sensitive.
One of those is communications intelligence. Communications
intelligence is obtained by the interception of foreign communi-
cations. In our context it is a classified term. For the purpose
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of discussing that type of information in the presence of
uncleared people or persons whose clearance is in doubt we
use an overt unclassified term called "Special Intelligence" -
commonly referred to as "SI". It's safe to say a person has an
S:[ clearance where this pertains to SI matters is completely
unclassified, but in the context that we use it - communications
intelligence, which is synonymous, is classified. Now Title
18 of the U. S. Code, Section 798, makes it unlawful for a person
to disclose or discuss communications intelligence matters with
any other person unless that person has the appropriate
clearance. It is encumbent upon a person who has a communi-
c ations intelligence clearance to ascertain first of all whether
or not the other person does have such a clearance before he
commences such a discussion with him or releases communica-
tions intelligence material.
Now this particular type of clearance which
you gentlemen have makes it mandatory upon you to observe the
sensitivity of this itx particular matter - this type of material--
indefinitely, permanently. It is not a clearance which terminates
upon the conclusion of this particular proceeding, but it rests
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with you - that obligation - indefinitely, permanently.
said, we have some documents
here which we would like for you to please read and to sign the
secrecy or.occke oath.
For purposes of the record, I might read
the captions of the document. The first is identified as the
IDEALIST Security Manual; second, the IDEALIST secrecy
oath; following that you will find a communications intelligence
indoctrination form; and lastly, the applicable sections of
Title 18, Section 789 of the United States Code. And I would
appreciate it if you would rcec$x& tAh'e3s3e read these documents
and sign the oaths.
MR. HOUSTON: Now going into formal session, we
would like to present some witnesses and introduce some basic
material we think would be appropriate for the Board to
consider.
I would like to call first Mr. Cunningham
to give the Board some additional briefing on the nature and
some special aspects of the project.
Judge Prettyman then swore in the witness,
James Cunningham.
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MR. HOUSTON: Mr. Cunningham, would you
identify yourself -- give your full name and position?
MR. CUNNINGHAM: My name is James A Cunningham.
I am the Acting Chief of the Development Projects Division of
Central Intelligence Agency.
MR. HOUSTON: Would you proceed to inform the
Board of some of the aspects of the Project that you think are
pertinent to its consideration.
MR. CUNNINGHAM: It has been my pleasure for
slightly more than six years and nine months to have been
intimately associated with the U-2 Project from the time it was
a set of engineering drawings through its flying days in
II
II
that you have seen in the movie this morning, through
its employment overseas as I think the single most successful
gross intelligence collection vehicle that the country has ever
had, through the difficult days of 1 May 1960 and up to the
present time.
I should say the main thing that I think
could be emphasized here today, and which I will try to ao,
is to stress for you the kind of an organization which we had in
the Agency to accomplish the job which we had before us. The
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keynote of our organization here and also in the Air Force was
compartmentation -- in other words, the limiting of knowledge
of the activity by setting up special groups to conduct the
business of the activity without reference to the rest of the
Agency. There was established then in the Central Intelligence
Agency a cell which concerned itself with the administration and
operation of the entire U-2 project. It was this cell, then,
which I joined in May of 1955 at a time when it had a total of
5 people. It was this cell which guided bringing the weapons
system into being, and then subsequently of course it grew much
beyond the original dimensions.
JUDGE PRETTYMAN: When you speak of the U-2
Project what is the blanket term you have used now in referring
to the Project? What Project? You have used it several times.
MR. CUNNINGHAM: Within the Agency the first
cryptonym assigned to the Project was Project AQUATONE.
This was the label under which we operated.
JUDGE PRETTYMAN: You used some term several
times in referring to this Project. What is the Project? Let
me put it this way: is the Project the ship or the plane, or is
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the Project an area of the earth's surface from which you want
to get information?
MR. CUNNINGHAM: The Project in effect is the task
order under which this entire system was planned and operated.
JUDGE PRETTYMAN: Was the Project order to create
a plane useable everywhere, or was the purport of the order an
a
effort to cover/certain part of the earth's surface?
have referred to it, was to develop and operate a weapons
system which was capable of reconnauisance of the kind that
is associated with U-2.
JUDGE FR ETTYMAN: As far as the Project is con-
cerned it had no particular part to do with a particular part of
the earth's surface.
MR. CUNNINGHAM: The organization necessary to
support that concept--
MR. BROSS: A "weapons system" has a rather military
significance to I think most of us. I take it this is not a piece
of armament--
MR. CUNNINGHAM: No, sir. This is a term which
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has been generally applied within the Services, particularly
the Air Force, to imply a number of various subordinated
systems to a primary system. In other words, the word
"weapons system" -- and Col. Geary could verify this here -
to describe in Air Force language, let's say, a complete
operating set of equipment which are capable of doing the
assigned job. The word "weapons" I agree is sometimes
misleading to an outsider.
COLONEL GEARY: You might say weapons integration,
perhaps, to give you a system.
MR. HOUSTON: The point is, this had no aggressive
capability?
MR. CUNNINGHAM: That is right.
Within the Agency this group or cell of
people was set apart from any dealings with the Agency in terms
of the normal Agency business. Our sole job was to get on with
the work of creating an airplane and associated system, and in
order to do so we, under this philosophy of compartmentation,
selected from the Agency and from the Air Force a limited
number of people who dropped all other concerns and who did
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this work and nothing else. At its peak in Headquarters when
it was solely concerned with the U-2 effort this small cell
people in all. In order to ensure complete
compartmentation we structured this unit so that it would be
able to do everything for itself. In other words, this is a
departure from the normal Agency way of doing business. It
had its own security force, it had its own finance officers,
its own materiel office, its own contracting branch -- all of
the things which it could do for itself, even down to its own
travel section. We did not rely upon the balance of the Agency
for its normal support. It had its own security classification
system, and I think Col. Edwards may discuss this in greater
detail later on. This entire concept, then, of putting aside
a group of people to do a single task is basic, I think, to your
understanding of what the organization looked like on the day
when the incident occurred.
This same compartmentation was followed
in the deployment of our units overseas, as well as during their
training phase. When they were overseas they were not within
the normal command structure of the Air Force, for example.
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They reported to Washington via separate and distinct channel
from any military unit that might have been associated nearby
with them. We even had for this purpose our own communications
system which was separate and apart from the normal Agency
communications system, relying in large part for support upon
the Air Force's global communications network.
Within the detachment, then, there were
basically -- the atasx detachment overseas -- there were basically
four different types of people all of whom were administered by
the Central Intelligence Agency. These types were, in the
first instance, Air Force officers and men who supplied those
skills which related to the operation of aircraft and airframe
systems. There were Central Intelligence Agency staff employees
who were concerned for the most part with support functions.
that is to say, security, finance, administration, and the like.
There were also in each unit overseas contractor furnished
personnel. You have heard this morning of all the various
companies which participated in the U-2 project. Nearly all
of them supplied people who in an Air Force context would have
been called technical representatives. We had them overseas
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as an administrative responsibility of Central Intelligence
We also had a group of contract employees which
constituted the pilots. These people were under contract
between themselves and the Central Intelligence Agency to
perform the function of flying the aircraft. Later on we also
had a group of contract guards in the security field in order to
take note of the changing responsibilities in terms of overseas
logistics support, courier duties in connection with the movement
of film, etc. So these were all under a centralized management
which reported to the cell in CIA with which I have been
associated over these years.
Policy guidance to the units in the field
stemmed from the cell to which I have referred. This cell
was also responsible for the recruitment of the pilots who made
up the group that flew the U-2. This responsibi lity was
obviously one which we could not undertake on our own, there
being no reservoir of qualified jet pilots in the United States
at that time except for the military. The Air Force rendered
timely and vital support to us throughout the recruitment of
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pilots for the U-2, and that support was centralized in two
places, in the Pentagon in an office known as
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was specially established for the support of this Project on
"the other side of the river" as we call it, and from the
Strategic Air Command which did the initial screening on the
pilots who were then subsequently recruited by a team comprised
of Agency personnel in the field of personnel administration
and security. I can't say accurately at the moment exactly
how many files were reviewed by the Air Force in the course
of selecting the pilots whom we eventually hired, but I do
recall at one point -- I remember a factor of about 20 to one --
in other words, for every man we finally got this represented
about 20 people who had been considered in the first instance
for this assignment. The bulk of the pilots whom we had in the
U--2 were those who had, in the first place, reserve officer
status, and who presumably thereby were not necessarily
career oriented in the Air Force. They also had to be qualified
jet pilots with as much experience as we could acquire.
Physically, of course, they had to meet extremely rigid
standards, and psychologically and from a security standpoint.
As it turned out, the majority of these men were fighter pilots,
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as opposed to bomber pilots - -
JUDGE PRETTYMAN: You say "the majority of
these men" -- which brings up a question, and if we ask a
question we're not supposed to know the answer to, just say
so -- did you have quite a few men qualified to fly the U-2?
Were there quite a few, or two or three?
MR. CUNNINGHAM: The total number, as I recall,
who went through this training and got as far as
was twenty nine.
JUDGE PRETTYMAN: How many went as far as to
be authorized to fly the U-2 on missions?
MR. CUNNINGHAM: It was a slightly smaller number.
I can't recall accurately what that number was.
JUDGE PRETTYMAN: More than five?
MR. CUNNINGHAM: Yes.
JUDGE PRETTYMAN: More than ten?
MR. CUNNINGHAM: Yes. At the time of the 1 May
incident, and from recollection, we then had seventeen, I
believe it was, pilots on contract for this purpose. This was
the residual from the 29 who had been originally recruited,
some of whom were killed, of course, in the training program,
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and some of whom were dropped for various reasons.
MR. BROSS: May I ask how many fatalities there
were in the training?
MR. CUNNINGHAM: In the CIA area of responsibility?
MR. BROSB: Pilots on the U-2 Project.
MR. CUNNINGHAM: In our program the total as I
after the first unit had been deployed.
The screening of these pilots was as
detailed as we then could make it on the basis of our unknown
quantities in this particular field of endeavor. The initial
s e l e c t i o n , that i s , the interviews with t~lue : n in the field,
were three in number and spread over a period of the same
number of days. These were on graduated levels of information,
so that the individual could reject the opportunity at any point
up until the final interview , when he was then in effect signed
up to proceed further on the matter. Many men got as far as
the first or second interview and rejected this because of family
considerations or just because the interviewing team would not
answer enough questions as to what they really were going to be
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involved in. Those who passed the first three screehing inter-
views and who were subsequently approved by Security were
then sent to the 1XaXv)X
where a specially designed series of physical examin-
ations were conducted. These physical examinations, to give
you an idea of the complexity of them, lasted five days, eight
hours a day, before the individual could be fully vetted as
being qualified to proceed further in the program. 'Iihrere was
an attempt made to furnish psychological assessment of the
individual as a function of these examinations. This was done
here in Headquarters. It was again not as searching as we
perhaps would have done had we had more experience in the
field of assessment of this kind -- the assessment of pilots
as opposed to agent types.
I made an earlier reference to the fact
that the Headquarters cell in the Agency was responsible for
providing the commanders of these units in the field -- by
the way, who were Air Force officers, and I should refer again
to the fact -- I think it may become critical later on -- that
the Air Force officers who were overseas operating the U-2
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were secunded to Central Intelligence Agency and received
their guidance and orders from the CIA during the period of
their employment. This could become a little hazy as you
go further into this matter. The unit here in Headquarters -
the cell of which I have spoken -- was until 16 February 1959
administered on a full-time basis by Mr. Richard M. Bissell,
Jr. He had as his Deputy an Air Force senior officer who was
assigned to be cognizant of those matters of great interest to
the Air Force. When Mr. Bissell became Deputy Director of
Plans the senior air Force officer de facto became the Acting
Chief of this activity. I served at that point as the senior
Agency civilian in an administrative context. I have since that
time become the Deputy to the Air Force officer who heads
this Division of which I have spoken -- he is Colonel Stanley
W. Berley, U. S. Air Force, who is not here at the present time.
I think the single most important document
which you will be reviewing in the course of your assessment
of this incident is the paper I have in front of me here which
I would like to--
MR. HOUSTON: Before you pass it out I would like
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to identify it a little further. Did you personally participate
in the development of this paper?
MR. CUNNINGHAM: Yes, I did.
MR. HOUSTON: Do you have the original of that
document available ?
MR. CUNNINGHAM: The original of the document
we do not have, as far as I can tell, at this point. We have
copies which are known to have been extant at the time of issue.
The original copy contained, by the time it was put out, so
many interlinear corrections and observations in the margin
that it was not retained, as I recall.
MR. HOUSTON: This document was developed when?
MR. CUNNINGHAM: This document was developed
for the first time and issued for the first time on the 8th of
May 1956. This was coincident with the deployment date of
the first unit overseas, which was the 7th of May 1956. The
edition which you will see here, which is dated 9 December 1957,
and is referred to as "OPERATIONS POLICY LETTER NO. 6",
the subject of which is: Intelligence Briefings, Including
Policy for Pilots Forced Down in Hostile Territory -- this was
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the edition which was in force at the time of the 1 May 1960
incident.
MR. HOUSTON: Under what authority was this
policy issued? Who authorized the issuance?
MR. CUNNINGHAM: The actual version as it appears
here before you was approved informally by General Cabell
as the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence. The individual
who has signed it here in pseudo was an Air Force Lieutenant
Colonel who at the time was serving as the Director of
Operations for the U-Z Project.
JUDGE PRETTYMAN: Now we haven't heard what it
is so I don't know how to ask a question about it, but is this
a briefing?
MR. HOUSTON: This is a paper--
JUDGE PRETTYMAN: It is a contract?
MR. HOUSTON: No. It was a policy direction to
the Headquarters unit and to units in the field--
MR. CUNNI NIGHAM: May I make one correction?
This was the policy paper which was sent by the Headquarters
to the field for their direction.
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MR. BROSS: May I ask Mr. Houston -- aren't we
getting a little ahead of ourselves here?--we haven't gotten
the pilot hired yet.
MR. CUNNINGHAM: The reason I did not go into that
more fully, Mr. Bross, is that
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is the Personnel Officer for this Division and who like myself
has been continuously associated with this for a good many years
will discuss, I think in much greater detail, the actual con-
tracting for the man's services. He was, by the way, one of
the iim(Riiwid.u.aLf who participated in the screening interviews
at various Air Force bases throughout the United States that
I have referred to that took place in 1956. He will be appearing
before you subsequently, and I felt that you might want to get
into that kind of detail with him.
MR. BROSS: We are now concerned with the general
policy whiic:hL governed the control of these pilots.
JUDGE PRETTYMAN: Now as I understand it, this
paper -- up to now there is nothing to show that Powers ever
saw this.
to see. This was intended -- as it reads here: "The purpose
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of this policy letter is to furnish guidance to detachment
commanders".
JUDGE PRETTYMAN: This is what Headquarters
told the detachment commanders?
MR. HOUSTON: That is why we are bringing it in
at this time. We felt it was part of the basic administration.
MR. CUNNINGHAM: In other words, this is the
basic document under which the detachment commander inter-
preted his responsibilities vis-a-vis the pilot, and it is the
document from kwhich he would give direction within his own
unit to the officers who conducted the actual briefings of the
individual prior to a given mission.
I would call your attention here to what
I think is the most important part of this--
MR. HOUSTON: I would like to ask first if the Board
feels this is sufficiently identified to be put in as a part of
the record at this time, or do you want further identification
or authentication of it?
JUDGE PRETTYMAN: As far as the identification is
concerned, it's all right. Whether it has any degree of material
we have to consider, I don't know.
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MR. HOUSTON: We would like to put it in the
record as EXHIBIT 1.
MR. CUNNINGHAM: I believe in reaching your con-
clusions, gentlemen, this document will be as basic as anything
you will see. I call your attention partisuilarly to paragraph
4 thereof, which in effect set the tone for the entire pre-mission
briefing of these pilots as they undertook these missions. As
you will see as you read it, this is fairly definitive guidance
regarding the behavior of the individual in the event of an
particular
incident over hostile territory. It is within that/framework,
then, that any assessment of the behavior of Mr. Powers , I
think, will be germane.
JUDGE PRETTYMAN: I don't know anything about it
so there's no use exploring what is in it, but I very definitely
have a question in my mind at the moment. It just occurs to
me like this: suppose you have been trying a 2nd Lietenant of
Infantry for behavior on the battlefield, and somebody presented
as part of the testimony an order issued by Camp Headquarters,
Division Headquarters, General Order So & So. Well, that is
all right -- that goes down to battalion headquarters and the
Adjutant puts it in a file someplace -- and you can't try a
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a 2nd lieutenant for battlefield behavior -- you have to connect
it up somehow -- he has to know about it some place.
MR. HOUSTON: That is correct, Judge. It is put
in at this time because it is part of the general organization of
the project. It needs to be connected up at a later date.
MR. C UNNINGHAM : I think within this the key point --
and I should relate this if I can to the whole purpose of the
project -- was that the individual's behavior in event of capture
by hostile forces was predicated on the assumption that whatever
he did would support the concept of plausible denial, which was
really basic- to the entire U-2 project from its inception. In
other words, the Central Intelligence Agency need have had no
part of the management or operation of the U-2 had it not been
for the desire on the part of the appropriate Government officials
to dissassociate this effort from the normal military context
where the Government of the United States and the defensive
military arms of the United States could be expected to be
responsible in the event anything happened. This we have come
through the years to refer to as the concept of plausible denial.
In other words, the individual in order to take blame away from
the aggressive military arm was
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the policy was to instruct him to represent himself as an
employee of the Central Intelligence Agency so that no one
could inferentially associate him at that moment in time with
the aggressive act of militarism which under a certain context
the act of reconnaissance can be assumed to be.
I don't know at this point what additional
I should say or could say which would shed more light on how
we got to where we were on that morning of 1 May.
MR. BROSS: If I remember, Mr. Cunningham, you
said that this represented the policy of the Government with
respect to what it wanted its pilots to do and how it wanted its
pilots to behave on the date on this and also on the date this
policy was effective on the 1st of May 1960,
MR. CUNNINGHAM: That is correct. This in effect
was the distillate of our policy with regard to disassociation
of the military from this endeavor.
JUDGE PRETTYMAN: Now you said something about
the fact that the original of this had so many interlinear
corrections in it, and what not--
MR. CUNNINGHAM: Sir, we have within our records
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the original stencils from which these copies were made,
which has the (holographic ?) signature of the man who signed it.
The actual document with any kind of approval at the Deputy
Director level, we do not have.
MR. HOUSTON: We do have this draft?
MR. CUNNINGHAM: Yes.
MR. BROSS: This document has a signature on it.
GENERAL BULL: He was talking about the original
draft several years before this.
MR. CUNNINGHAM: In other words, the original
drafting job was done in the spring of 1956. The revisions
which then took place between that version and the version
you have before you also went through a draft subsequently,
but because it was merely an amendment to an original document
there was no attempt to preserve the draft versions with all the
pencilled notations on it. It was simply put out in this form,
and the Director of Operations, who at that point was authorized
to do so, signed the original stencil, because it required a
sufficiently wide distribution that it was turned out as a
sg stencilled document as opposed to one made on the typewriter
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