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6. nearly 40 percent of all islanders’ income: CIA NLE MR Case No. 2000-69, Ryukyu Islands (Okinawa) June 1960, 2. “The military economy employs 13% of the working population and generates 36% of the national income.”

7. to keep an extremely low profile: Interview with Ken Collins.

8. “no plausible cover story”: Interview with Colonel Slater.

9. the first Oxcart mission: Photographic Interpretation Report: Black Shield Mission X-001, 31 May 1967. NPIC/R-112/67, June 1967.

10. by the time the photographic intelligence got back: John Parangosky, Deputy for Technology, OSA, wrote: “Film from earlier missions was developed at the Eastman Kodak plant in Rochester, New York. By late summer an Air Force Center in Japan carried out the processing in order to place the photointelligence in the hands of American commanders in Vietnam within 24 hours of completion of a BLACK SHIELD mission.”

11. four were “detected and tracked”: CHESS RUFF TRINE OXCART, BYE–44232/67, Black Shield Reconnaissance Missions 31 May–15 August 1967, 22 Sept. 1967, Central Intelligence Agency, 1. Declassified in August 2007.

12. first attempted shoot-down: Robarge, Archangel, 36.

13. when he was involved in a midair crash: interview with Hervey Stockman; also from Conversations with Hervey Stockman (not numbered) in a section called “Mid-air collision.”

14. to find U.S. airmen who’d gone down: Interview with Frank Murray.

15. “I hope they try something because we are looking for a fight”: Karnow, Vietnam, 514.

16. it was on an espionage mission: CIA Top Secret [Redacted], 24 January 1968, Memorandum: Chronology of Events Concerning the Seizure of the USS Pueblo, 8 pages.

17. two MiG-21 fighter jets appeared on the scene: Ibid., 3.

18. The captain considered sinking his ship: Bamford, Body of Secrets, 259.

19. 90 percent of the documents survived: Ibid., 305.

20. Pentagon began secretly preparing for war: Department of Defense, Top Secret Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, January 25, 1968.

21. pinpointed the Pueblo’s exact location: TOP SECRET TRINE OXCART, BYE–1330/68 Figure 9; a map of Weeks’s flight is noted as Mission BX-6847, 26 January 1968, figure 5.

22. he told his fellow pilots about the problems: Interviews with Frank Murray, Ken Collins.

23. very few individuals had any idea: In fact, for forty years, Frank Murray believed he had located the USS Pueblo because, in a bizarre twist, the CIA told him he did. Only in 2007, when the CIA declassified the official documents on the Oxcart program, was Jack Weeks’s true role in the crisis finally revealed. Murray’s other mission remains classified.

24. “So we had to abandon any plans to hit them with airpower”: Rich, Skunk Works, 44. This is in a section of Rich’s book written by Walt W. Rostow, President Johnson’s national security adviser from 1966 to 1968.

25. Murray was assigned to fly Oxcart’s second mission over North Korea: TOP SECRET TRINE OXCART, BYE–1330/68 figure 7. Mission BX-6853, 19 February 1968.

26. a U.S. federal judge determined: Wilber, “Hell Hath a Jury.”

27. There were beautiful sunsets to watch: Interview with Ken Collins.

28. collectively flown twenty-nine missions: Robarge, Archangel, 35. The pilots were put on alert to fly a total of fifty-eight. Of the twenty-nine, twenty-four were over North Vietnam, two were over Cambodia, Laos, and the DMZ, and three were over North Korea.

29. “using our jamming systems on the bird”: Interview with Frank Murray. The Pentagon was also using Oxcart photographs to identify potential targets for U.S. Air Force air strikes. TOP SECRET CHESS RUFF TRINE Oxcart BYE–44232/67.

30. The Blackbirds were arriving on Kadena to take Oxcart’s place: Interviews with Ken Collins and Tony Bevacqua. The SR-71 began arriving in March of 1968.

31. “reaffirmed the original decision to end the A-12 program”: Helms Memorandum to Paul Nitze (DOD) and Horning, “Considerations Affecting OXCART Program Phase Out,” 18 April 1968.

32. Jack Weeks became ill: Interview with Ken Collins.