- (AFP) -- During the Cold War, the United States ran a
much broader aerial intelligence operation than previously acknowledged,
sending spy planes into China, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, newly
declassified documents show.
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- The documents, made public on Wednesday by the National
Security Archive, a local think tank, indicate the US effort to secretly
photograph sensitive foreign targets went far beyond widely publicized
U-2 flights over the Soviet Union, Cuba and the Korean Peninsula in the
1950s and 1960s.
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- As Washington scrambled to collect intelligence on China's
budding nuclear program, the Central Intelligence Agency authorized a daring
intrusion deep into Chinese airspace to take pictures of a gaseous diffusion
plant in the central city of Lanzhou.
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- The U-2 mission that lasted slightly more than seven
hours -- nearly six of them in Chinese airspace -- began on January 8,
1965 and apparently went without a hitch, according to a heavily edited
formerly top secret CIA report.
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- "Although the U-2 was continuously tracked while
over the mainland, no air defense weapons reactions to the aircraft were
noted in Comint," said the report, referring to a regional US command.
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- The CIA does not reveal where the mission originated,
although its timeline heavily suggests the U-2 had take off from Taiwan
to reach Chinese territory so quickly.
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- The United States extensively used the island as a base
for intelligence operations in Asia from the end of World War II until
it normalized relations with Beijing in 1978.
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- Nor did the spy agency disclose what kind of intelligence
was gleaned during the 1965 flight: the relevant part of the document has
been blacked out by censors.
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- As the battlefields of the Cold War moved to other parts
of the world, Washington became anxious to learn more about Soviet military
activities in the Horn of Africa, where Moscow-backed Ethiopia fought in
1978 a bloody war with neighboring Somalia.
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- So the Pentagon dispatched one its SR-71 "Blackbird"
spy planes there.
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- The secret flight, which originated in Britain's Mildenhall
Royal Air Force Base, required six mid-air refuelings but yielded a rich
bounty, according to a document compiled by the US Strategic Air Command.
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- Pictures made over the Red Sea port of Assab in March
1979 allowed intelligence analysts to detect the arrival of approximately
25 medium tanks and nine field artillery guns.
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- The same "Blackbird" also overflew the southwestern
tip of the Arabian Peninsula to collect military intelligence about the
sensitive region destabilized by a recent conflict between South and North
Yemen, the document revealed.
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- "Photography from the March 21, 1979 mission enabled
the National Photographic Interpretation Center here in Washington to conclude
that South Yemen had indeed pulled all its forces out of the Qatabah and
Harib regions," the command said.
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- Barely six months after a botched April 1980 US attempt
to rescue American hostages from Iran, Major General James Vaught, of the
Pentagon's Joint Staff, asked permission for several "Blackbird"
reconnaissance flights in the Gulf region, "to assist in selection
of low level air penetration routes."
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- In his letter, Vaught mentioned a possible "US military
contingency action" in the region, a reference interpreted by experts
from the archive as an indication that the United States was planning a
second hostage-rescue mission.
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- But most of the US aerial reconnaissance flights at that
time targeted then-Communist Poland, which was gripped by Solidarity-led
labor unrest.
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- "National intelligence users believed it probable
in December 1980 that Warsaw Pact forces would invade Poland," the
Strategic Air Command said.
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- Hence, 29 "Blackbird" aerial espionage missions
flew out of Mildenhall from 1978 through 1980.
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- All but one of them were designed to monitor "Soviet/Warsaw
Pact military force status," according to the command.
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