the type of high-altitude aircraft the panel was seeking. Edwin Land, the developer of instant photography and another member of the panel, proposed to Dulles through Dulles' aide, Richard M. Bissell Jr., that his agency should fund and operate this aircraft. Land believed that if the military, rather than the CIA, operated the CL-282 during peacetime, such action could provoke a war. Although Dulles remained reluctant to have the CIA conduct its own overflights, Land and James Killian of MIT told President Eisenhower about the aircraft; Eisenhower agreed that the CIA should be the operator. Dulles finally agreed, but some USAF officers opposed the project because they feared it would endanger the RB-57D and X-16. The USAF's Seaberg helped persuade his own agency to support the CL-282, albeit with the higher-performance J57 engine, and final approval for a joint USAF-CIA project (the first time the CIA dealt with sophisticated technology) came in November 1954. Lockheed had meanwhile become busy with other projects and had to be persuaded to accept the CL-282 contract after its approval. Manufacture Bissell became head of the project, which used covert funding; under the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949, the CIA's director is the only federal government employee who can spend "unvouchered" government money. Lockheed received a $22.5 million contract (equivalent to $ million today) in March 1955 for the first 20 aircraft, with the first $1.26 million ($ million today) mailed to Johnson's home in February 1955 to keep work going during negotiations. The company agreed to deliver the first aircraft by July of that year and the last by November 1956. It did so, and for $3.5 million ($ million today) under budget. The Flight Test Engineer in charge was Joseph F. Ware Jr. Initial design and manufacturing was done at Lockheed's Skunk Works factory in Burbank, California, with engineers embedded in the manufacturing area to address problems quickly. Procurement of the aircraft's components occurred secretly. When Johnson ordered altimeters calibrated to from a company whose instruments only went to , the CIA set up a cover story involving experimental rocket aircraft. Shell Oil developed a new low-volatility, low vapor pressure jet fuel that would not evaporate at high altitudes; the fuel became known as JP-7. Manufacturing several hundred thousand gallons for the aircraft in 1955 caused a nationwide shortage of Esso's FLIT insecticide. Realizing the plane could not be tested and flown