Francis Powers - Operation Overflight

You could write a whole book between some of the sentences of that paragraph.

The most surprising account, however, appeared in 1965: Waging Peace: The White House Years 1956-1961 , Doubleday, its author former President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

In the chapter entitled “The Summit That Never Was,” Eisenhower describes how he received the news on May 1. By way of preface to this astonishing paragraph, Brigadier General Andrew J. Goodpaster was White House staff secretary, and served as liaison between the President and the CIA:

“On the afternoon of May 1, 1960, General Goodpaster telephoned me: ‘One of our reconnaissance planes,’ he said, ‘on a scheduled flight from its base in Adana, Turkey, is overdue and possibly lost.’ I knew instantly that this was one of our U-2 planes, probably over Russia. Early the next morning he came into my office, his face an etching of bad news. He plunged to the point at once. ‘Mr. President, I have received word from the CIA that the U-2 reconnaissance plane I mentioned yesterday is still missing. The pilot reported an engine flameout at a position about three hundred miles inside Russia and has not been heard from since. With the amount of fuel he had on board, there is not a chance of his still being aloft.’”

I had never an engine flameout nor did I radio back to the base. And the CIA certainly knew this.

It was now obvious why this particular story had received such widespread acceptance. Apparently even the President believed it.

There remains the possibility that the account is in error. One problem with memoirs of heads of state is that they are often the work of a number of people. Recollections differ, time clouds detail. I was told, in this particular instance, however, that a man from the agency was given a leave of absence to help prepare material for the chapter on the U-2 incident. That this slipped past him, if it did, is all the more astonishing.

It may be that General Goodpaster misunderstood the message; it is also possible that someone in the agency, not wanting to accept hard realities, speculated that this might have been what happened. If so, it should have been presented to the President that way, as pure speculation. Conveyed as straight intelligence, with the addition “the pilot reported” for authenticity, it constitutes a serious breach of trust.

There are indications throughout the Eisenhower account that he was not informed on all developments in Operation Overflight.

“A final important characteristic of the plane was its fragile construction,” Eisenhower writes. “This led to the assumption (insisted upon by the CIA and the Joint Chiefs) that in the event of mishap the plane would virtually disintegrate. It would be impossible, if things should go wrong, they said, for the Soviets to come in possession of the equipment intact—or, unfortunately, of a live pilot. This was a cruel assumption, but I was assured that the young pilots undertaking these missions were doing so with their eyes wide open and motivated by a high degree of patriotism, a swashbuckling bravado, and certain material inducements.”

Our feeling that the plane was too fragile to last was, as noted, strong at the start of the program. By 1957, however, with the stepping up of the flights, we knew better. Nor did we by that time believe that in the event of accident at high altitudes the plane would disintegrate. The tragic death of Lockheed test pilot Robert L. Sieker in April, 1957, had dispelled this notion. The crash which killed Sieker had left his plane virtually intact. It was so mangled as to be beyond repair, but all the parts were there.

Later Eisenhower stated: “There was, to be sure, reason for deep concern and sadness over the probable loss of the pilot, but not for immediate alarm about the equipment. I had been assured that if a plane were to go down it would be destroyed either in the air or on impact, so that proof of espionage would be lacking. Self-destroying mechanisms were built in.”

If Eisenhower was told this, he was deceived. Had we been carrying ten times the two-and-a-half-pound explosive charge, there would have been no guarantee that the entire plane and all its contents would have been destroyed. Nor was the single mechanism “self-destroying.” It had to be activated by the pilot.

Eisenhower’s astonishment following Khrushchev’s announcement was undoubtedly genuine: “On that afternoon, Friday, May 6 [Saturday, May 7], Mr. Khrushchev, appearing before the Supreme Soviet once more, announced what to me was unbelievable. The uninjured pilot of our reconnaissance plane, along with much of his equipment intact, was in Soviet hands.”

The evidence strongly suggests that although the President was consulted for authorization of the flight packages, no effort was made to brief him on the many changes in the situation. For example, nowhere in his account is there any mention that we were worried about Soviet SAMs and had been for a long time, or that we realized it was only a matter of time before the Russians would solve their missile-guidance problem.

Again, this is only a personal opinion—possibly erroneous, as I do not know all the facts—but I am inclined to feel that since permission for the flights was so difficult to obtain, the President simply was not informed of the many dangers involved, lest he consider the advisability of discontinuing the overflight program entirely.

I also get the impression throughout his account, though it is only obliquely implied, that Eisenhower believed the pilots had been ordered to kill themselves rather than submit to capture.

Yet I find it difficult to believe the President of the United States would approve a kimikaze-type operation.

The one question I had been hoping would be answered with his book wasn’t. Why was this particular flight scheduled so close to the Summit?

But there are clues. And they would seem to bear out my earlier suspicion that the flight on May 1, 1960, was intended not only for the intelligence data we could have obtained—although that was unquestionably important—but also to give Eisenhower a better bargaining position at the conference table.

Eisenhower admits: “Almost from the very beginning, we learned that the Soviets knew of the flights….” Being aware of this, he must have been aware that it was unlikely this particular flight would have gone undetected. My guess that Eisenhower wanted Khrushchev to know we were still making the flights, in the hope he could use this as leverage in reintroducing the Open Skies Plan in Paris, may not have been too wild a guess. Although I was uninformed of this while in Russia, in his opening remarks at the abortive Summit Conference he stated:

“I have come to Paris to seek agreements with the Soviet Union which would eliminate the necessity for all forms of espionage, including overflights. I see no reason to use this incident to disrupt the conference.

“Should it prove impossible, because of the Soviet attitude, to come to grips here in Paris with this problem and the other vital issues threatening world peace, I am planning in the near future to submit to the United Nations a proposal for the creation of a United Nations aerial surveillance to detect preparations for attack. This plan I had intended to place before this conference. This surveillance system would operate in the territories of all nations prepared to accept such inspection. For its part, the United States is prepared not only to accept United Nations aerial surveillance, but to do everything in its power to contribute to the rapid organization and successful operation of such international surveillance.” [1] Grateful acknowledgment is made to Doubleday and Company, Inc., for permission to quote from Waging Peace: The White House Years 1956-1961 , by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.