In 1959 his advisers continued to press for more flights, but Ike continued to refuse. In February, Defense Secretary McElroy, his deputy Donald Quarles, and General Twining asked the president to reconsider his opposition. They insisted that without hard facts, the congressional outrage over the alleged missile gap would continue, and demands for greater defense spending would soon follow. In any case, they said, the military had provided assurances that no U-2 would be shot down. Ike held his ground. He preferred to wait until the Corona satellite had become operational. The U-2 planes constituted “an undue provocation,” he said. Putting himself in Khrushchev’s shoes, he thought “nothing would make him request authority to declare war more quickly than the violation of our air space by Soviet aircraft.”3
His intelligence advisers kept up their campaign. On April 3, 1959, Allen Dulles, accompanied by McElroy, Quarles, and Twining, again asked for a round of U-2 overflights. Dulles called the data the U-2 provided “about as high in importance as any intelligence we can get.” Eisenhower stressed the risks involved: “The psychological impact on Khrushchev of our flying such a mission at this time would be very serious. We are currently in a state of negotiation over the Berlin crisis which threatens to be the most serious of our crises to date.” The State Department was optimistic, he said, about negotiations on Berlin; putting a U-2 plane over the Soviet Union now would be “needling Khrushchev.” The gathered advisers insisted that the Soviets did not have the aircraft or the surface-to-air missiles to intercept the U-2. The plane was “relatively safe,” they said, and produced test results showing that even the best American jet fighters could not catch a U-2.4
Eisenhower agreed to think about it, but four days later, on April 7, he called McElroy and CIA deputy director Bissell to the Oval Office and told them, once again, he would not approve. The U-2 flights would jeopardize any hope of a negotiated settlement with the USSR on Berlin. “We cannot in the present circumstances afford the revulsion of world opinion against the United States that might occur.” Eisenhower admitted that he wanted information on Soviet missiles, not least to counter the “demagoguery” of certain U.S. senators who asserted that America had fallen behind in the missile race. But he kept coming back to the damage if a plane should be shot down. There would be “terrible propaganda” if the Soviets caught the United States in the act of spying.5
Yet under repeated assault by his top staff, Eisenhower finally approved one more overflight of the USSR, which took place on July 9, 1959. That flight yielded excellent results, photographing the Tyuratam missile range and showing how much that site had expanded in the year since it had last been examined. But in light of the upcoming Khrushchev visit in September, the president refused to approve further flights. Allen Dulles, increasingly frustrated that he had to testify before Congress with inadequate data on Soviet missile production, empaneled an ad hoc committee of senior advisers under the chairmanship of Lawrence A. Hyland, a leading electrical engineer and general manager of Hughes Aircraft, to review the state of intelligence on Soviet missiles. Although the Hyland panel concluded that the Soviet program was not as large as many in Congress claimed, it nonetheless demanded more U-2 flights to settle the matter. “Positive evidence,” the panel concluded, “continues to be missing.” The panel pointedly called the lack of data “alarming.” Bissell felt the panel’s conclusion would “add fuel to the fire” in his campaign to get more U-2 flights approved.6
As long as “the spirit of Camp David” hung in the air after Khrushchev’s visit, Eisenhower continued to steer clear of the U-2, lest he return the cold war to the deep freeze. But in January 1960 the CIA’s campaign to get Eisenhower’s approval for more U-2 overflights intensified. On January 14 Khrushchev gave a speech to the Supreme Soviet announcing heavy troop reductions for the Red Army, to be compensated for by corresponding increases in Soviet missiles. Astonished at Khrushchev’s claims of a huge nuclear arsenal that could replace the need for airplanes, submarines, and infantry, CIA analysts sounded the alarm. They saw it as a matter of great urgency to verify or disprove these boasts. Robert Amory, the deputy director for intelligence, shot off a heated memo to Allen Dulles, calling for more overflights “on a most urgent basis,” declaring, “The identification of Soviet operational ICBM sites is the highest priority national intelligence objective.”7
Adding fuel to the fire, Joseph Alsop launched a blistering six-part series of columns on the missile gap “crisis,” prophesying that Soviet nukes could wipe out all American missile sites in a blitzkrieg strike and the United States could do nothing to defend itself—all because of Eisenhower’s failure to take “serious emergency measures.” America was courting disaster, Alsop shrieked. “Pearl Harbor was the result the last time the American Government based its defense posture on what it believed a hostile power would probably do, and not on what the hostile power was capable of doing.” Eisenhower was running “a hair-raising risk.”8
Eisenhower received a more sedate version of this message on February 2, from members of his board of consultants on foreign intelligence affairs. On this board served two men of impeccable national security credentials and vast experience: Gen. James Doolittle, the heroic aviator and the man who had chaired Ike’s review panel of the CIA in 1954, and Gen. John Hull, a three-star general and former deputy chief of staff of the U.S. Army. These distinguished soldiers now pressed Eisenhower to authorize more overflights of Soviet missile sites, stressing that the window on the U-2 was closing, as Soviet interceptor aircraft and missiles were getting more sophisticated every day. Ike responded in a manner that reveals the heavy weight of the burden he carried: “Such a decision is one of the most soul-searching questions to come before a president.”
By now the State Department had settled on the date of May 16 for a full-scale summit meeting with the Soviets, French, and British in Paris. The agenda would include Berlin, nuclear testing, and disarmament. For Ike the stakes were high, as a breakthrough in Paris could cement his legacy as a peacemaker. Under pressure from his intelligence advisers to launch a new round of U-2 flights, he resisted, knowing “he ha[d] one tremendous asset in a summit meeting. . . . That is his reputation for honesty. If one of these aircraft were lost when we are engaged in apparently sincere deliberations, it could be put on display in Moscow and ruin the president’s effectiveness.” He concluded, “The embarrassment to us will be so great if one crashes.” This proved a remarkably prophetic statement.9
Despite his reservations, Eisenhower buckled under the intense pressure placed on him by the intelligence community and approved a U-2 flight for February 10, 1960. The constant demands had worn him down. And just days after the February 10 flight, Dulles was at it again, asking for four more flights. The CIA was a hungry beast whose appetite grew with eating. The president approved one more. Dulles complained, and eventually he got two flights approved. Because of problems with weather and with the Pakistani government, which had to approve the use of its airfield in Peshawar, the flights were pushed back to April 9 and May 1.10
Richard Bissell later admitted that by the start of 1960 the CIA knew that Soviet surface-to-air missiles were improving and might be able to reach the high-flying U-2, especially if the USSR knew in advance where the U-2 was going to fly. The April 9 flight, which brought back more detailed photographs of the missile sites at Semipalatinsk and Tyuratam, was tracked even before it entered Soviet airspace. Although Soviet aircraft and missiles failed to intercept the plane, its exact course and point of origin were well-known to the Soviets, putting them on guard for aircraft entering their airspace from Pakistan. Bissell should have alerted the president to this fact. He didn’t.11
Why did Eisenhower approve these two overflights, the second of which would take place just two weeks before the summit meeting in Paris, scheduled for May 16? Clearly the long and intensive campaign by the intelligence community and the military put significant pressure on him. Dulles and Bissell had allies in Joint Chiefs Chairman Twining,
Secretary of Defense McElroy and his successor Thomas S. Gates Jr., Secretary of State Herter, the analysts within the CIA, the independent board of consultants on foreign intelligence affairs, even Ike’s most trusted wingman, Gen. Andrew Goodpaster; all had at various times urged Ike to use the U-2 more aggressively. They told him that the nation’s security depended upon the intelligence these flights yielded and that the planes were all but invulnerable to Soviet interception. It would have taken superhuman rigidity to resist this kind of pressure.
Then too domestic politics played a significant role. Congress repeatedly hauled in Allen Dulles to testify on the Soviet missile program. Because he could not reveal the source of his information, he was often evasive. His lack of clarity and specificity enraged key Democratic senators Stuart Symington and John Kennedy, who alleged that the administration had become “soft” on defense and had failed to keep up with the USSR. If Ike could prove the missile gap was phony, he could stifle partisan criticism.12
Finally, Eisenhower liked to gamble, and he especially liked to gamble when he knew what cards his opponent was holding. The U-2 promised to give him priceless knowledge about the true state of Soviet missile and bomber capabilities. Going into the summit meeting in Paris, where Ike would confront a confident and blustering Khrushchev, such knowledge would give him an enormous edge. It was just too tempting to resist. On May 1 a U-2 plane, piloted by a highly experienced veteran of the program named Francis Gary Powers, took off from Peshawar on a course that would take him over some of the most sensitive and secret sites inside the Soviet Union en route to Norway. It was the 26th U-2 penetration of Soviet airspace, and it would be the last.
II
Just a few minutes before 9:00 a.m., Moscow time, a Soviet SA-2 surface-to-air missile exploded just behind Powers’s aircraft as it passed over the city of Sverdlovsk. The force of the blast violently shook the fragile U-2, and Powers lost control of the plane, which began to break up and then went into a death spiral. Powers hastily ejected, opened his parachute, but failed to initiate the explosives that were designed to destroy the aircraft. Instead both he and large chunks of his shattered plane fell to the ground. There local farmers and curious onlookers surrounded Powers. Within hours he was on his way to Moscow and the notorious Lubyanka prison. It was May Day, the day commemorating the international labor movement, and a national holiday. As Khrushchev stood on a reviewing platform, watching the enormous May Day Parade, the commander of Soviet air defenses hurriedly approached and informed him that an American aircraft had been shot down.13
At noon on May 1 telephones across Washington started ringing. The CIA team in Norway alerted headquarters that the plane was long overdue. The duty officer informed Bissell, Defense Secretary Gates, the State Department intelligence bureau, and the chiefs of staffs of each of the armed services. The news of the plane’s downing crackled across Washington, hampering the ability of the White House to control the story. The CIA also contacted General Goodpaster, who had the unenviable job of calling Eisenhower at Camp David to inform him that a U-2 plane was missing and likely downed over the USSR. Eisenhower immediately boarded a helicopter for the flight back to Washington.14
Bissell convened a meeting that afternoon at the project headquarters on H Street in Washington. He said later he “felt a sense of disaster about the entire affair,” as well he might. By his own admission, the CIA was “not well-prepared for what happened.” Bissell hastily dusted off the cover plan he had prepared in the event of a lost U-2 plane. NASA would announce that a high-altitude weather craft, flying out of Adana, Turkey, had gone missing. Such a thin cover story could work only if the pilot died in the crash and if the plane’s self-destruct mechanism had been triggered. On May 3 this cover story was sent out to the press, which did not express much interest in the lost weather plane.15
In Moscow, Khrushchev savored the moment. His son recalled that he “was extraordinarily pleased. . . . He had finally gotten his revenge on the people who had been offending him for such a long time.” In his memoir Khrushchev described how irritated the Soviets had been by the overflights, despite repeated protests. “[The Americans] gloated over our impotence and continued to violate the sovereignty of the USSR.” Khrushchev stayed quiet while the interrogation of the pilot continued. He planned to lay a trap while the Americans “tied their own hands by repeating these falsehoods.” At the right moment he would reveal the plane, and the pilot, to the world.16
Eisenhower had surrounded himself with talented, dedicated staff who served him well across many trying hours. But during the U-2 crisis they performed poorly. “The handling of that critical international situation,” Goodpaster confessed many years later, “was about as clumsy in my opinion as anything our government has ever done.” The mistakes derived from a failure to anticipate answers to obvious questions: What if a plane was shot down? What if the pilot survived? What if the film was recovered by the Russians? Who would control the public response to these questions? Most important, should the president become involved? None of these things had been thought through because it was assumed that Soviet missiles could not hit the high-flying aircraft, and even if by some miracle they did, the pilot could never survive the destruction of his plane at 70,000 feet. All these assumptions proved false.17
The Soviets stayed quiet until May 5, when Khrushchev, taking the podium in a packed Kremlin hall before a meeting of the Supreme Soviet, made his stunning announcement. A U.S. aircraft had violated Soviet airspace and been shot down. The deputies received this news with thunderous applause and cries of “Shame! Shame!” Khrushchev undertook a lengthy harangue against the “Pentagon militarists” who had sent the plane on the eve of the great summit. Someone inside the U.S. government, he asserted, wanted the summit to fail.18
Ambassador Tommy Thompson, who was present in the hall to hear Khrushchev’s speech, cabled Washington that in his view, Khrushchev had deliberately left open a back door through which Eisenhower could, if he wished, conduct a dignified retreat. By pointing the finger at alleged and unnamed militarists, or mere incompetence on America’s part, Khrushchev signaled that he did not want to “slam any doors,” Thompson believed. If Eisenhower offered his regrets for the incident and found a suitable scapegoat to take the blame, Khrushchev might allow the summit to proceed unhindered. That is what he seemed to signal in saying “I do not doubt President Eisenhower’s desire for peace.” Indeed, according to his son, Khrushchev truly believed the “flight came from unauthorized military officers and the CIA, not from the president.” He hoped Eisenhower would apologize and the summit could continue.19
But the Soviet leader had inadvertently forced Eisenhower into a corner. Either the president had to admit he had sent the spy plane two weeks before his long-planned summit, or he had to apologize for the overflight while acknowledging that he did not control his own government. As Eisenhower stalled, his staff badly bungled the job of working out a reply to Khrushchev’s allegations. On May 5, in an inexplicable moment of confusion, both the State Department and NASA issued separate statements. The State Department stuck with the original cover story, but NASA provided quite a bit of additional phony information: that the U-2 was one of 10 “flying weather laboratories” that NASA operated out of Europe, Turkey, Pakistan, Japan, and the Philippines; that it contained no reconnaissance cameras; that it was a civilian aircraft flown by a civilian scientist; that it was conducting routine weather research and had not intended to stray across the Soviet border; and more. All of this was information the Soviets could easily disprove.20
And so they did. Khrushchev, with his flair for propaganda, announced on May 7, in another dramatic speech to the Supreme Soviet, that not only did the Soviets possess the plane, its cameras and film, but that the pilot, Gary Powers, was “alive and kicking.” Khrushchev took pleasure in rebutting the flimsy cover story, brandishing photographs that the U-2 had taken. He also reported that the pilot had readily confessed that he was no civilian weather analyst
. Powers admitted that he was a former air force pilot who worked for the CIA. The United States had been caught in a very public lie.21
III
When you are in a hole, the saying goes, the first thing to do is stop digging. This simple adage might have helped Eisenhower’s staff, but they failed to heed it. On May 7, in reply to Khrushchev’s astounding announcement that Powers had survived the crash and was in custody, the president approved yet another press release. This one was drafted by Herter, who had just arrived home from a trip to the Near East. The statement acknowledged that “in endeavoring to obtain information now concealed behind the Iron Curtain, a flight over Soviet territory was probably taken by an unarmed civilian U-2 plane.” Straining credulity, the statement also said that “there was no authorization for any such flight.” Instead the flight had been restricted to the “frontiers” of the USSR. Perhaps, Herter reasoned, this clumsy fudging might appease Khrushchev while protecting the president.22
The statement was a disaster. It admitted that the United States had been spying on the Soviets for years using a spy plane, yet it also claimed that no one in high authority had ordered the plane to fly into Soviet airspace. While confessing to an egregious act of espionage, the wording of the statement supported the cartoonish allegation that Eisenhower was a detached, golf-playing absentee president. The national press was aghast. “This was a sad and depressed capital tonight,” James Reston wrote from Washington. “It was depressed and humiliated by the United States’ having been caught spying over the Soviet Union and trying to cover up its activities in a series of misleading official announcements.” Eisenhower’s fond hopes for a great breakthrough in Paris were overshadowed by “a swirl of charges of clumsy administration, bad judgment, and bad faith.”23
Even now, with all the American fumbling, Khrushchev had not yet settled on how to react. At a reception on May 9 at the Czech Embassy in Moscow for the diplomatic corps, Khrushchev pulled aside Ambassador Thompson and greeted him “warmly.” Khrushchev said he “could not help but suspect that someone had launched this operation with the deliberate intent of spoiling the summit meeting.” He seemed to think it quite possible that Eisenhower really did not know about the U-2 flight and that Allen Dulles was responsible. Khrushchev had a great deal riding on the summit and did not want it to fail. He clung to the faint hope that a scapegoat could be found.24
The Age of Eisenhower Page 62