The compartmented control system that governed United States overhead reconnaissance programmes, covering the aircraft and satellite systems of the National Reconnaissance Office and its predecessors. Material handled within it was marked “Handle Via BYEMAN Control System” above its ordinary classification, and access was restricted to those indoctrinated into the specific project.
BYEMAN appears in the UAP record through PURSUE Release 05 record CIA-UAP-D022, the CIA file on the Puerto Rico Radar Contacts 1964. The file’s two memoranda are TOP SECRET, handled via BYEMAN under project OXCART, GROUP 1 excluded from automatic downgrading and declassification, and routed on BYEMAN cover sheets between the Assistant Director for Special Activities and the Assistant Director for Scientific Intelligence.
The compartment is the point of the file rather than incidental to it. The question CIA was answering was whether a Navy radar and visual contact off Puerto Rico had been one of its own U-2 and OXCART Overflights aircraft: a cable had told CINCLANTFLT the object was identified as a YF-12A, and CIA believed it had convinced the Office of Naval Intelligence otherwise. The analysis that followed concluded the object was probably a delta-wing fighter of another type. Handling an unidentified-object enquiry inside a reconnaissance compartment is what allowed the two possibilities to be weighed against each other in one place.
Connections
Puerto Rico Radar Contacts 1964 · U-2 and OXCART Overflights · Central Intelligence Agency · PURSUE · Executive Order 13526