Black Shield is the code name for the operation in 1967 to deploy three CIA A-12 reconnaissance aircraft to Kadena AB, Okinawa, to obtain photo reconnaissance of North Vietnam. The following is a document prepared during the phase to ferry the three aircraft to Okinawa.
In the first sentence of Paragraph 3, a six-letter word had been blacked out by the US government before releasing the document. The context implies that the word refers to a location. Two other words, both made of three letters, were also blacked out in the same paragraph. They are most likely the abbreviations of country names. I suspect that the six-letter word is “Taiwan” and the three-letter word is “ROC”. But it is hard to tell if I am correct simply by reading this paragraph. Fortunately, Paragraphs 2 and 4 offer us very important clues.
The word “327th” in Paragraph 4 is obviously the numerical designation of a military unit. A few Google searches tell us that the 327th Air Division had been stationed in Taiwan. Furthermore, Brig Gen William F. Pitts (GEN PITTS in Paragraph 2) was its commander at the time. In addition, Vice Adm. William E. Gentner Jr. (ADM GENTER in Paragraph 2) commanded United States Taiwan Defense Command from 1964 to 1967. So I am confident that this document was about Taiwan’s role in Black Shield.
CIA’s official history The Oxcart Story explicitly noted that ROC government was notified of Operation Black Shield:
Although Taiwan had been designated for A-12 emergency landing, the aircraft never landed in Taiwan during the entire period of Black Shield. Incidentally, the first operational mission by the SR-71 out of Kadena AB ended with a diversion to Taiwan’s CCK AFB due to adverse weather.