This history of the A-12 reconnaissance aircraft was occasioned by CIA’s acquisition on loan from the Air Force of the eighth A-12 in the production series of 15 in September 2007. Known as Article 128, the aircraft is on display at the Agency’s Headquarters compound in Langley, Virginia. This history is intended to provide an accessible overview of the A-12’s development and use as an intelligence collector. The Central Intelligence Agency was created in 1947 principally to provide US leaders with strategic warning of attack by the Soviet Union. The Agency’s main mission during its first decade and a half was to deploy its collection and analytic assets to detect and preempt a nuclear Pearl Harbor. No other intelligence question had greater implications for the national interests of the United States—and its very survival—than determining what kinds of strategic weapons, and how many of them, the Soviet Union had, and how it intended to use them. With the USSR proving to be an extremely hard target for traditional espionage operations, the United States had to turn to technical collection to peer beyond the Iron Curtain. In 1954, CIA retained the Lockheed Corporation to build the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft. Essentially a jet-powered glider, the U-2 could fly at the unprecedented height of 70,000 feet—beyond the range of Soviet fighters and missiles—and take detailed photographs of Soviet Bloc military facilities. The aircraft was ready for operations in June 1956. At the time, CIA project officers had estimated that the U-2 would be able to fly safely over the Soviet Union for two years at most before it became vulnerable to Soviet air defenses. The Soviets tracked the U-2 from its first mission, however. The estimate had proven too optimistic, especially after initial efforts to mask the U-2’s radar image proved ineffective. A more radical solution was needed—an entirely new aircraft.