PART 2: BODY OF SECRETS....NERVES

CHAPTER THREE 

NERVES 

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Alongside Greenland's North Star Bay, thick with pack ice, the RB-47 taxied up to a 10,000-foot runway. Strapped into the left-hand seat, the command pilot looked over and saw his detachment commander flash the green light for three seconds: he could start his engines. 

Nicknamed the Strato-Spy, the RB-47 was the Ferrari of electronic spy planes during the 1950's and early 1960's, with a speed of over 500 miles per hour and a ceiling of about 41,000 feet. Using the basic frame of a B-47 bomber, it was designed from the ground up strictly for eavesdropping. Its sleek silver wings, swept back at a 35-degree angle, were so long and heavy the tips drooped close to the ground. Weighing them down were six powerful turbojets capable of producing 6,000 pounds of thrust each. Like giant training wheels, landing gear extended from the two engines closest to the bullet-shaped fuselage. And to get off a short runway in a hurry, its fuselage was designed to accommodate thirty-three powerful rockets that could produce an instantaneous 1,000 pounds of thrust each. 

For listening, the plane's shiny aluminum belly was covered with an acne like assortment of discolored patches, bumps, pods, and appendages, each hiding a unique specialized antenna—about 400 in all. A twelve-foot-long pod containing even more antennas and receivers was occasionally suspended from the right side of the aircraft. 

The airborne electronic espionage operations, known as ferret missions, were so secret that the crews were forbidden from mentioning their aircraft, unit, or home base, or saying anything about their operations. "We usually snuck into our deployment base under the cover of darkness," said one RB-47 veteran, "and were hidden away on the far side of the field or in an isolated hangar well away from all other activities." Some detachment commanders forbade the crews even to be seen together in public. And, to avoid tipping off any spy that they were about to activate, crews would occasionally wear civilian work clothes over their flight suits when going to the flight line for a mission. 

Ten minutes before takeoff at North Star Bay, the command pilot saw the green light flash twice for three seconds, clearing him to taxi out to the active runway. His engines gave an ear-piercing whine as he slowly turned into takeoff position. Once aboard the aircraft, the crew would maintain absolute radio silence in order to frustrate any Soviet electronic monitoring equipment. Even communication with ground control before takeoff was restricted to these brief light signals. 

In the center of the plane, separated from the cockpit by a narrow crawlspace, were the three "Ravens"—Air Force officers who were specialists in electronic intelligence. Packed in the tight space of what would normally have been the bomb bay, and surrounded by bulky electronic equipment, a Raven could be "excruciatingly uncomfortable,"  said former Raven Bruce Bailey, a veteran of hundreds of missions against the Soviet Union. On a typical flight, he said, the idea was to "stuff" the Ravens "into unbelievably cramped, noisy, dangerous hellholes and assure that they have a pressurization/air-conditioning system that doesn't work, ample fuel leaks, no acceptable method of escape, and can not move around in flight." 

The Ravens were confined for up to a dozen hours in a compartment only four feet high. "Not only was it impossible to stand," said Bailey, "there wasn't even enough room for a good crouch. Most movement was made on your knees or in a crawl." Noise was also a major problem. "The compartment had no insulation and its thin aluminum walls were nestled right between and slightly behind the six engines. In addition . . . antennas and pods attached to the fuselage caused the skin to buffet and vibrate badly, adding to the noise." 

Finally, as the aircraft leveled off, fuel would occasionally puddle in the compartment, filling the space with fumes. "With all the electrical gear and heat in the cabin, raw fuel made it a potential bomb," the former Raven pointed out. "When fuel was discovered, you immediately turned off all electrical power and depressurized the cabin. Then you hoped to get the plane on the ground before it blew up." Bailey, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, called the RB-47 Strato-Spy "an ugly, overweight, underpowered, unforgiving, uncomfortable, dangerous, and noisy airplane." Nevertheless, he added, "all of us who flew in it eventually grew to love it." 

The entrance to the Raven compartment was a two-foot-square hatch on the bottom side of the fuselage. Once the three Ravens were aboard, the hatch would be sealed from the outside with forty-eight large screws. Squeezed together in the small space, all facing aft, the electronic spies were surrounded by scopes, receivers, analyzers, recorders, and controls. 

Raven One, the commander of the group, sat in the right forward corner of the cabin. In addition to banks of equipment in front and to his left, he had a wide array of analog, video, and digital recorders stacked tight along the wall to his right and behind him. During the flight, he would keep his ears finely tuned for airborne-intercept radar signals from hostile Soviet fighters. From the sound and the wavy lines on his scopes, he could tell just how threatening those fighters might be. Raven Two, who listened for Soviet ground control and intercept radar systems, would be the first to know when the Strato-Spy was being tracked. Raven Three was responsible for analyzing the Soviet early warning and missile guidance signals, one of the principal objectives of the mission. 

With two minutes to go, his preflight checks completed, the navigator began the countdown to takeoff. He was seated facing forward in the black nose of the plane, just below and in front of the pilot. His cabin 32 was darkened so he could better see his radarscopes; his only natural light came from two small windows above his seat. 

At one minute to takeoff, a steady green light signaled to the command pilot that he was cleared to fly the mission. With a deafening roar, he eased forward on the throttles, bringing his engines up to 100 percent power. By then the brakes were bucking and straining as they fought to hold back 36,000 pounds of forward thrust. The pilot carefully stabilized the engines. 

Ten seconds before the zero mark the pilot flipped the water-alcohol injection switches, giving the plane a powerful boost so that it suddenly jumped forward briefly, like a lion about to pounce. From the half-dozen turbojets, thick clouds of heavy black smoke filled the sky. 

At exactly ten o'clock the spy plane shuddered and let out a loud scream as the pilot released the brakes. Lumbering at first, the quarter million pounds of steel and flesh were soon racing down the long frozen runway at nearly 200 miles per hour, leaving behind a gray trail of smoke and mist. A "ground lover," the heavy bird required well over two miles of surface for liftoff. As the concrete began to run out, the pilot pulled firmly back on his yoke and the aircraft knifed gracefully skyward. 

In the spring of 1956 perhaps the most serious and risky espionage operation ever undertaken by the United States was launched. President Eisenhower authorized an invasion of Russian airspace by armed American bombers carrying eavesdropping gear and cameras instead of nuclear weapons. Details of the operation are still wrapped in great secrecy. 

Nicknamed Project Homerun, the operation was staged from an air base near the frozen Eskimo village of Thule, Greenland, a desert of ice and snow 690 miles north of the Arctic Circle. In the purple-black of the polar winter, aircraft mechanics labored in —35° temperatures to prepare the nearly fifty bombers and tankers that would play a role in the massive incursion, one of the most secret missions of the Cold War. Housing for the flight and maintenance crews consisted of temporary buildings that looked like railroad refrigerator cars. 

The mission was to penetrate virtually the entire northern land-mass of Russia, a bleak white 3,500-mile-long crescent of snow-covered permafrost stretching from the Bering Strait near Alaska to Murmansk and the Kola Peninsula in European Russia. At the time, little was known about the vast Soviet Arctic region. Yet, because a flight over the North Pole was the shortest way for Russian bombers and missiles to reach the U.S. mainland, it was the most likely battleground for the next war. At the same time, it was also the most likely route for an American invasion of Russia. Thus any Soviet radar operator seeing the bombers would have no way of knowing that the mission was espionage and not war. Despite the enormous risks of igniting World War III, President Eisenhower approved the operation. 

On March 21, 1956, a group of RB-47 reconnaissance bombers took off for target locations within Russia. Almost daily over the next seven weeks, between eight and ten bombers launched, refueled over the North Pole, and continued south across the Russian border to their assigned locations. 

They flew in teams of two. One RB-47H ferret would pinpoint and eavesdrop on radar, air bases, and missile installations. Nearby, an RB47E photo reconnaissance plane would gather imagery. Their assignments included overflying such sensitive locations as Novaya Zemlya, the banana-shaped island where Russia carried out its most secret atomic tests. From moment of takeoff to moment of landing, absolute radio silence was required, even during the occasional chase by a MiG. "One word on the radio, and all missions for the day had to abort," said Brigadier General William Meng, one of the officers who ran the penetration operation. "But that never happened; not one mission was ever recalled." 

As in a Fourth of July fireworks display, the most spectacular mission was saved for the end. On May 6, they began the single most daring air operation of the Cold War, a "massed overflight" of Soviet territory. The point was to cover a great deal of territory, quickly. Six armed RB-47E aircraft, flying abreast, crossed the North Pole and penetrated Russian airspace in broad daylight, as if on a nuclear bombing run. They entered above Ambarchik in western Siberia, then turned eastward, collecting valuable intelligence as they passed over key Russian air bases and launch sites on their way toward Anadyr on the Bering Strait. Nearly a dozen hours after it began, the massed overflight ended when the spy planes touched down at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska. 

Within minutes of the landing, the recording tapes were sent by a special courier flight to NSA for analysis. They revealed no Soviet radar signals—proof that, at least for the time being, Russia was blind to an over-the-pole attack by American nuclear bombers. The vast sweep of frozen tundra making up Russia's northern frontier was virtually radarfree. Nevertheless, no one dared speculate on how the mission might have ended if hidden Soviet radar installations had picked up the incoming bombers and believed that they were sent on an American surprise attack. With only seconds to spare, the Russians might well have launched a counterattack, with devastating results. 

In all, 156 eavesdropping and photo missions were flown over Russian airspace during the almost two months of Project Homerun without the loss of a single aircraft—and without a nuclear war. Nevertheless, Moscow was well aware of the air invasion. Eight days after the massed overflight, a protest note was delivered to the American ambassador in Moscow. Publicly, however, the Kremlin said nothing; the humiliation would have been too great. 

Throughout the 1950s the ferrets, like mosquitoes hunting for an exposed patch of skin, buzzed the long Soviet border. They were searching for holes in Russia's vast fence of air-defense radar sites. At the time, the Soviet military had not yet completed work on a nationwide network. Nor was much of the interior protected. 

As a CIA report points out, human spies had effectively been put out of action. "The stringent security measures imposed by the Communist Bloc nations," said the study, "effectively blunted traditional methods for gathering intelligence: secret agents using covert means to communicate intelligence, travelers to and from target areas who could be asked to keep their eyes open and report their observations later, wiretaps and other eavesdropping methods, and postal interceptions. Indeed, the entire panoply of intelligence tradecraft seemed ineffective against the Soviet Bloc, and no other methods were available." 

But while the Communist governments of Eastern Europe and Asia could draw impenetrable iron curtains around their countries, hiding such things as the development of nuclear weapons and missile technology, they could not build roofs over them. Nor could their armed guards halt the continuous streams of invisible signals escaping across their borders. 

While the eavesdropping bombers occasionally flew deep into Soviet airspace, other ferret missions engaged in the dangerous game of fox and hounds. Probing and teasing the hostile air defense networks, they would dart back and forth across sensitive borders, daring the Soviets to react. There was no other way to force the missile batteries and border defense installations to turn on their secret tracking equipment and thus enable the American signal snatchers to capture the precious electrons. Once analyzed, the information enabled war planners to determine where the holes were and how best to build equipment to counteract the radar and fire control systems. 

It was a time and a place where spy wars were fought with armor piercing bullets and heat-seeking missiles rather than with whispered words over cocktails or bulky envelopes deposited under dead tree trunks. Unlike the U-2 spy planes, the converted bombers flew low— well within the range of Russian missiles and warplanes. 

In 1954, two years before Project Homerun, three RB-47 reconnaissance planes took off from England and headed toward Russia's northern Kola Peninsula, which borders the Barents Sea. It was an area of extreme secrecy, and considered the most likely spot from which the Soviets would launch a nuclear attack. At the time, the United 35 States was desperate to obtain intelligence on the number and location of the new Soviet jet-turbine-powered long-range bombers, codenamed Bison. 

At about one hundred miles from the heavily defended port city of Murmansk, two of the aircraft turned back as planned. The third, however, continued straight for the coastline. With no wingman to supply cover, the air crystal-clear, and the sun directly overhead, Captain Harold Austin, a tall, thin Texan, aimed the black nose of his converted bomber directly for Murmansk and pushed hard on the throttles. "The weather was gorgeous," he recalled. "We could see forever." He sped high over the Russian coastline at just over 500 miles an hour. But within minutes of turning on the cameras and eavesdropping equipment, MiGs were scrambling skyward. 

Above and below, Austin could see the tracer bullets, and he yelled at his copilot to return fire. Air Force captain Carl Holt had swiveled his narrow seat 180 degrees to the rear and was pressing hard on the fire control button for his twin cannons. In the cloudless sky he stopped counting at about ten MiGs. "The guns won't work," he shouted above the roar of the six powerful turbojets. "Well, you'd better kick something back there and get the damn things to work a little bit anyway, or we may be a dead duck here!" Austin roared in a deep Texas drawl. Austin quickly banked toward Finland. But a fighter from above put a shell through the top of his port wing, destroying the intercom and knocking a hole in the fuel tank. By the time they crossed into friendly territory, their plane was dangerously low on fuel, but a lucky rendezvous with a tanker saved Austin, his crew, and the mission tapes. 

Largely secret until now, the bomber overflights and ferret missions were the dark underside of the Cold War, an invisible hot war in which the lives of more than two hundred silent warriors were lost and more than forty American aircraft were shot down. 

As American spy planes were drawing protests from Russia, a major crisis was developing in Europe and the Middle East. During the president's morning briefings, aides with maps were beginning to run out of pins to mark the hot spots. On July 26, 1956, following a fiery speech, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. The action would lead to a mini-war with England, France, and Israel and a cooling of relations with the European allies of the United States. It would also, according to a highly secret NSA report, become "the first major test of the National Security Agency during a short-term, 'brushfire' crisis." 

Sitting in the director's office was Lieutenant General Ralph Julian Canine, of the Army, the agency's first director, whom many considered  the father of NSA. Portly and white-haired, the fifty-five-year-old general had spent most of his career as an infantry soldier, with little experience in intelligence. He often reminded those around him that what most qualified him to be the director of NSA was his long experience with pack mules. 

"People were scared of him," said Air Force colonel Frank L. Herrelko, a burly one-time coal miner who worked for Canine as his director of communications security, the codemaking side of the business. "But deep down he had a heart of gold." Once onboard, Herrelko made the serious mistake of pronouncing Canine like the dog, "Kay-Nine." "I paid for that for the next eight months," said Herrelko. "After that he called me boy. He would only call me Colonel in front of somebody else. He called me boy." 

The seizure of the Suez Canal came as the last move in a bitter game of Cold War poker. For months, the United States and Russia had been subtly bidding against each other for the costly right to help Egypt pay for an important dam across the Nile. Nasser was a key leader of the Arab world and he controlled a strategic piece of real estate; his friendship was an alluring prize. The price was the Aswan High Dam. Knowing his value and hoping to up the bids, Nasser awkwardly attempted to play one side off the other. Instead, the United States folded its cards and Russia, now without competition, began hedging its bet. Frustrated, Nasser declared martial law along the canal and ordered shipping companies to pay Egypt rather than the Canal Company. 

Although Nasser never indicated any desire to close the canal or restrict shipping, the British and French governments, part owners of the Canal Company, nevertheless feared their passage might be blocked. Like a plasma tube, the canal allowed vital oil shipments to pass from refineries in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere to storage tanks in England and France. 

Soon after Nasser nationalized the canal, Britain joined France in an ambitious plot to take back the canal by force. Rather than appear as an aggressor, however, France secretly enlisted the help of Israel. The intrigue involved Israel launching a war against Egypt. Then, once Egypt began defending itself, England and France would go in as "peacekeepers." As part of the "peace," the canal would be taken from Egypt and kept by Britain and France. Israel would capture the Sinai from Egypt. It was a deceitful plan, which smacked of a return to the worst days of colonialism. Nevertheless, it was fully agreed to by Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion, defense minister Shimon Peres, and armed forces chief Moshe Dayan. Britain's prime minister, Anthony Eden, informed of Israel's planned key role, likewise gave his country's approval. For all involved in the cabal, it was essential to keep the precise details of the elaborate conspiracy hidden from Washington. At the same time, however, it was also essential to win Washington's support once the hostilities began. 

As the crisis quietly grew, the American intelligence community began turning its eyes and ears on the Middle East. On Monday, August 6, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles sat alongside the president's desk and brought to Eisenhower's attention NSA's latest intercepts from Spain and Syria, revealing their attitudes and intentions following the seizure. From Israel, however, there was nothing. 

NSA's expensive machine was not working. It had only two settings: Communist Europe and Communist Asia. Under the postwar United Kingdom—USA (UKUSA) Communications Intelligence Agreement, the world had been divided into spheres of interest. Through its listening posts in England and on Cyprus, GCHQ, NSA's longtime British partner, was to monitor much of Western Europe and the Middle East. But now, to hide from Washington its invasion plans, GCHQ was passing on only selected intercepts. 

Deceived by its partner, NSA could do little by itself. The agency had few Arabic or Hebrew linguists and it was not equipped to eavesdrop on British, French, or Israeli military communications. All NSA knew was that traffic analysis indicated that "communications between Paris and Tel Aviv were extremely heavy," as were those between Britain and France. 

To make matters worse, the agency was in the middle of moving from Washington to a new headquarters twenty-five miles north, at Fort Meade in Maryland. Files, people, and equipment were scattered among Arlington Hall in Virginia, where the main codebreaking and analysis were done; the Naval Security Station in Washington, which served as headquarters and was responsible for codemaking; and the new building at Fort Meade where operations were to be consolidated. Communications among the various areas were jury-rigged and couriers were required to move intercepted traffic between locations four times a day. Adding to the confusion, General Canine was clearing his desk and getting ready to retire. As one NSA analysis later acknowledged, "1956 was a bad time for NSA to get involved in a crisis." 

As the full extent of the elaborate French-Israeli-British plot became clear, Eisenhower grew outraged. He told Britain and France that they should expect no American assistance with their adventure. Over the phone, Dulles told Eisenhower the action was "about as crude and brutal as anything I have ever seen" and called the Anglo-French ultimatum "unacceptable." "Expect the Russians to be in on this," Eisenhower said. Allen Dulles, at the CIA, called his brother. "It was the gravest situation between our countries in years," Allen said. 

The issue of what action to take against Israel was hotly debated. "It would be a complete mistake for this country to continue with any kind of aid to Israel," Eisenhower argued, "which was an aggressor." Harold Stassen objected but John Foster Dulles answered, "One thing at least was clear: We do not approve of murder. We have simply got to refrain from resorting to force in settling international disputes. ... If we stand by in this crisis, the whole United Nations will go down the drain." Eisenhower agreed. 

In London, the heavy pressures exerted by the United States, Russia, and the international community had become too great. A cease-fire was agreed to, thus ending one of the most serious confrontations America had faced since the end of World War II. 

The Suez crisis had a profound effect on NSA. It marked a dismal entry into the world of crisis intelligence. An internal analysis of the agency's performance was harshly critical: "As for crisis response, all was chaos. The cryptologic community proved incapable of marshalling its forces in a flexible fashion to deal with developing trouble spots. The events of the year did not demonstrate success—they simply provided a case study to learn from." 

In a highly unusual move, Canine enlisted the help of an outside management firm to examine the agency's problems. Suddenly consultants from McKinsey and Company began crisscrossing NSA's hallways, going over NSA's highly secret organizational charts, and studying the flow of intercepts from NSA's worldwide network of listening posts. Canine's key concern was whether the agency would function more effectively if its organization was based primarily on function— traffic analysis, cryptanalysis, and so on—or on geography. And how centralized should NSA become? 

The consultants recommended a complete change. The repercussions, according to a later NSA report, lasted more than thirty years. Soon after he arrived, Canine had reorganized the new agency along functional lines. Now McKinsey proposed a "modified geographical concept." Signals intelligence would be organized according to target—the Soviet Union and its satellite countries; China and Communist Asia; and so on. Each of those sections would include specific disciplines, such as cryptanalysis and traffic analysis. 

Thus NSA-70, which was responsible for all high-level cryptanalysis, was replaced by ADVA ("Advanced Soviet"), which focused exclusively on new ways to attack high-level Soviet cipher problems. GENS ("General Soviet") concentrated mainly on mid- and lower-level Russian crypto systems, as well as on analysis of content. ACOM (Asian Communist) attempted to exploit the systems of China, North Korea, and the rest of Communist Asia. Finally, ALLO ("All Others") analyzed the systems belonging to the nations making up the rest of the world, including America's allies. ALLO-34, for example, was responsible for Middle East traffic analysis. Three other divisions were primarily for support: MPRO ("Machine Processing") was responsible for computer number crunching; TCOM ("Telecommunications") controlled the worldwide flow of signals; and Collection managed the NSA's far-flung network of listening posts. 

On November 23, 1956, Ralph Canine walked out of NSA for the last time as director. "Canine . . . stands out as the guy who everybody respected in the agency," recalled Howard Campaigne. "I was surprised to learn later that the people above him didn't think nearly as much of him as we did. He made a tremendous impression." 

In a restricted corner of a remote air base in Peshawar, Pakistan, Francis Gary Powers sat shoehorned into the narrow cockpit of U-2 Number 360. At twenty minutes past six on the morning of May 1, 1960, the scorching sun had already pushed above the tallest peaks of the western Himalayas. In the low, fertile plain known as the Vale of Peshawar, rippling heat waves created the impression of an endless lake. Powers was locked in a white space helmet and a tightly tailored pressure suit. Beads of sweat flowed down from his short brown hair and passed across his broad forehead and cheekbones in thin streams. His long underwear was soaked with perspiration. 

The first U-2 had been launched from West Germany four years earlier, on Independence Day of 1956. Shortly before, NSA had detected a possible mobilization by Moscow in response to a series of riots in East Germany, thus making the mission more urgent. But hope that the U-2 would be able to slip across the Soviet Union undetected was dashed by the eavesdroppers at Fort Meade. "NSA picked up the Soviet transmission of their the U-2's track so we knew that they had been tracked a good deal of the time," said Richard M. Bissell, Jr., the CIA official who ran the program. Nevertheless, seeing where the Russians were able to pick up the plane and where they weren't gave NSA an indication of just where the holes were in Soviet radar coverage. 

As he did with the bomber overflights, Eisenhower played a major role in the planning for each mission. "He would sometimes cut out particular legs or say, 'Well, don't go from A to B to C, go from A to C,' " according to Bissell. 

In Peshawar, Powers looked at his watch. The mission was now almost a half-hour behind schedule. He had never before had to wait so long for final clearance from the White House. In fact, Eisenhower had already given the mission a thumbs-up, but because of radio problems the message had not gotten through to the operations officer in Peshawar. 

Although much attention would later be focused on the U-2s' photo role, the planes' eavesdropping missions, codenamed Green Hornet, were equally important. A U-2's intercept equipment, known as System-V, was installed in the bay that normally housed the main camera. It consisted of sophisticated electronic receivers and large-capacity recorders that used Mylar tape. Scores of antennas, like small blades, were attached to the fuselage, each dedicated to particular frequency bands. Powers's first eavesdropping mission took the plane along the Soviet border from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea and on to Afghanistan. According to a CIA report, "the System-V unit worked well." 

Soon after his assignment to Adana, Turkey, Powers began flying Green Hornet missions. "We usually flew from Turkey eastward along the southern border of the Soviet Union," he recalled, "over Iran and Afghanistan as far as Pakistan, and back. We also flew along the Black Sea, and, on occasion, as far west as Albania, but never penetrating, staying off the coast, over international waters. . . . Since these 'eavesdropping' missions were eventually to become fairly frequent, there was a tendency to minimize their importance, but in many ways they were as valuable as the overflights, the data obtained enabling the United States to pinpoint such things as Russian antiaircraft defenses and gauge their effectiveness." 

On the top of the priority list, according to Powers, were Soviet space and missile launches which normally took place at night and, from the altitude of the U-2, "were often spectacular," he said. "The equipment we carried on such occasions was highly sophisticated. One unit came on automatically the moment the launch frequency was used and collected all the data sent out to control the rocket. The value of such information to our own scientists was obvious." Indeed it was. The U-2's ability to soar thirteen miles high along the Soviet border gave it a unique ability to eavesdrop on telemetry data during the earliest phases of the flight. The U-2, said one CIA report at the time, "possesses altitude capabilities which make it a unique platform for the reliable acquisition of high quality telemetry data prior to first stage burnout on Tyuratam [missile center] launchings. Such data is of extreme importance in determining ICBM characteristics." 

Finally, the link from Washington to Peshawar was made. Colonel William Shelton, the detachment chief, leaped from the radio van and ran across the field to give Powers the hand signal for takeoff. It would be the twenty-fourth U-2 overflight of the Soviet Union, and the last. 

Powers locked his canopy from the inside, turned on the pressurization system, and pulled back hard on the throttle, sending the plane into a steep climb, a roller-coaster ride up to the blue-black curve of space. Below passed the barren dusty-brown landscape of Afghanistan and the peaks of the Hindu Kush, spiking through the thin cloud cover like daggers. An hour later, reaching penetration altitude of 66,000 feet,he passed over the Soviet border, high above the village of Kirovabad in the remote Tadjik Republic. Oddly, Powers felt the Russians knew he was coming. 

In this, he was perceptive. Soviet radar had begun tracking the plane before it ever reached the border. Immediately, an alert was telephoned to command headquarters and air defense staff officers were summoned to their posts. 

In still-darkened Moscow, gaily decorated for the grand May Day celebration, a telephone rang next to Party Chairman Khrushchev's bed. "Minister of Defense Marshal Malinovsky reporting," said the voice on the other end. Malinovsky told his boss that a U-2 had crossed the border from Afghanistan and was flying in the direction of Sverdlovsk, in central Russia. "Shoot down the plane by whatever means," barked the Soviet leader. "If our anti-aircraft units can just keep their eyes open and stop yawning long enough," he added, "I'm sure we'll knock the plane down." The days of protest were over. "We were sick and tired of these unpleasant surprises—sick and tired of being subjected to these indignities," Khrushchev later wrote. "They were making these flights to show up our impotence. Well, we weren't impotent any longer." 

But Powers was in luck. A missile battalion more than a dozen miles below was not on alert duty that day. A missile launch was considered but then rejected as unfeasible. Instead, fighter aircraft were scrambled in an attempt to shoot down the plane. "An uncomfortable situation was shaping up," recalled former Soviet Air Force colonel Alexander Orlov, who was involved in air defense at the time. "The May Day parade was scheduled to get underway at mid-morning, and leaders of the party, the government, and the Armed Forces were to be present as usual. In other words, at a time when a major parade aimed at demonstrating Soviet military prowess was about to begin, a not-yet-identified foreign aircraft was flying over the heart of the country and Soviet air defenses appeared unable to shoot it down." 

"Shame!" Khrushchev screamed at Marshal S. S. Biryuzov, the chief of the Air Defense Forces. "The country was giving air defense everything it needs, and still you cannot shoot down a subsonic aircraft!" Biryuzov had no excuses. "If I could become a missile," he fumed, "I myself would fly and down this damned intruder." The tension was palpable. "Nerves of military people at airfields," said Orlov, "missile positions, command-and control facilities, the Air Force, and the Air Defense Forces were badly frayed. . . . Khrushchev demanded that the intruding aircraft be shot down at all costs. The Soviet leader and his lieutenants clearly viewed the violation of their nation's skies by a foreign reconnaissance aircraft on the day of a Soviet national holiday, and just two weeks before a summit conference in Paris, as a political provocation."

Russian radar continued to follow the U-2 across the Central Asian republics. By the time Powers reached the Tashkent area, as many as thirteen MiGs had been scrambled in an unsuccessful attempt to shoot him down. Far below, Powers could see the condensation trail of a single engine jet moving fast in the opposite direction. Five to ten minutes later he saw another contrail, this time moving in the same direction, paralleling his course. "I was sure now they were tracking me on radar," he later recalled, "vectoring in and relaying my heading to the aircraft." 

But Powers knew that at his altitude there was no way for the pilots even to see him, let alone attack him. "If this was the best they could do," he thought, "I had nothing to worry about." He then wondered how the Russians felt, knowing he was up there but unable to do anything about it. Had he known of a top secret CIA study the previous summer he might not have been so cocky, but the pilots were never informed of its findings. The study gave the U-2 a very limited life because of improvements in Soviet ground-to-air missiles. It recommended that the overflights be terminated and replaced by border surveillance flights: "In view of the improving Soviet air defense effort, we believe that the utilization of the aircraft may soon be limited to peripheral operations." 

By now, 4½ hours into the mission, Powers was approaching his first important target, the Tyuratam Missile Test Range. This was the Soviet Union's most important space launch site. Three days earlier, CIA Director Dulles reported to the president and the National Security Council that Russia had recently attempted to launch two space vehicles, probably lunar probes. "Evidence indicates that both attempts failed," he said. "The vehicle launched on April 15 did not attain a velocity sufficient to send it to the moon. . . . The second Soviet space vehicle lifted from the launching pad but failed immediately." The short interval between the two attempts, he concluded, "probably indicates that the USSR has a second launching pad at Tyuratam." Up to then, the United States had known of only one. 

This information, produced by NSA listening posts and ferret missions, was considered so secret that Dulles took the unusual precaution of reminding the council and even the president of how closely it was held. "Intelligence concerning Soviet failures in the launching of missiles or space vehicles," he warned, "was very sensitive information." 

In addition to photographing the missile site, Powers had a second key mission—this one for NSA: to eavesdrop on the radar systems surrounding the base. On board were special recorders that could capture the signals. After landing, the tapes would be flown back to Fort Meade for analysis. 

Large thunderclouds obscured Powers's view of the test site, but he nevertheless switched on the cameras, which might capture proof of the second launch pad. At the same moment, he entered the engagement zone of a surface-to-air-missile battalion. "Destroy target," the officer in charge of the unit shouted. Immediately an SA-2 missile was fired. This time the missile men's eyes were wide open—and the Soviets were lucky. A fireball exploded behind Powers, damaging the U-2's tail and wings but leaving the cockpit unharmed. At the air defense facility below, the small dot on the radar began to blink. The plane was breaking up. 

"My God, I've had it now!" Powers gasped. He felt a dull thump and a tremendous orange flash filled the cockpit. As his plane began to dip toward the ground from 70,500 feet, on the very edge of space, Powers fought for control. The orange glow, he thought, seemed to last for minutes. "Instinctively I grasped the throttle with my left hand," he recalled, "and keeping my right hand on the wheel, checked instruments." 

All of a sudden a violent force sent him bouncing within the cockpit and he knew both wings had come off. He was now in a tailless, wingless missile heading rapidly toward earth. "What was left of the plane began spinning. . . . All I could see was blue sky, spinning, spinning." 

With pressurization lost, Powers's space suit had inflated and was squeezing him tighter and tighter. At the same time, the g-forces were pushing him toward the nose of the plane. "I reached for the destruct switches to blow up the plane," he said, "opening the safety covers, had my hand over them, then changed my mind, deciding I had better see if I could get into position to use the ejection seat first." Forced forward in his seat, he was afraid that when he ejected his legs would be sliced off. "I didn't want to cut them off, but if it was the only way to get out. . ." 

Instead of ejecting, Powers began to climb out of the cockpit. He unlocked the canopy and it jetted into space. "The plane was still spinning," said Powers. "I glanced at the altimeter. It had passed thirty four thousand feet and was unwinding very fast." The centrifugal force threw him halfway out of the aircraft, smashing his head against the rearview mirror and snapping the mirror off. "I saw it fly away," Powers recalled. "That was the last thing I saw, because almost immediately my face plate frosted over." 

Half in and half out of the disintegrating spy plane, Powers was still trapped. He suddenly realized that he had forgotten to unfasten his oxygen hoses and now they were turning into a noose. After minutes that seemed like hours of struggle, the hoses broke and suddenly, unbelievably, he was free. "It was a pleasant, exhilarating feeling," he thought. "Even better than floating in a swimming pool." Later he said, "I must have been in shock." At an NSA listening post in Turkey, intercept operators began picking up some worrisome signals. For more than four hours they had been eavesdropping on Soviet radar installations as the Russians tracked Powers's U-2 flight. 

It had long been one of NSA's neatest tricks. Because radar signals travel in a straight line and the earth is curved, it was impossible for American radar stations outside Russia to detect air activity deep within the country. However, Soviet radar installations throughout the country communicated with each other over high-frequency circuits. Because high-frequency signals bounce between the earth and the ionosphere, the right equipment can pick them up thousands of miles away. Thus, by eavesdropping on Soviet radar networks as they transmitted signals between their bases over these channels, NSA could, in effect, watch Russian radar screens far inside the country. 

For years American intercept operators in Turkey had eavesdropped on Soviet radar installations as they tracked the occasional U-2 overflight. But because the spy planes flew far too high for either Russian MiGs or their SA-2 surface-to-air missiles, they were out of harm's way. It was like throwing a rock at a passing jetliner. This time, however, something was different; something was very wrong. "He's turning left!" the Americans heard a Soviet pilot shout. A few moments later the intercept operators watched the U-2 suddenly disappear from Russian radar screens near Sverdlovsk. 

A CRITIC message was sent to NSA, the White House, and other locations in Washington. The information reached the CIA's Operations Center at 3:30 A.M. 

They flew in low and swift, arriving with the dawn. The rhythmic thwap, thwap, thwap of the long blades competed briefly with the sounds of electric shavers and percolating coffee in town houses in northwest Washington and in split-levels in the nearby Maryland and Virginia suburbs. Almost simultaneously, they began landing on dirt fields, creating miniature dust storms, and in vacant lots, where commuters were briefly startled to see large, dark helicopters in their favorite parking spaces. 

At the White House the sun was just starting to peek from behind the Washington Monument, casting an early-morning shadow across the neatly landscaped Ellipse and illuminating the few remaining cherry blossoms along the Tidal Basin. President Eisenhower had been awakened by the phone call only minutes earlier and now he was being rushed out through the curved diplomatic entrance to his waiting chopper, ducking his head to avoid the slice of the still-spinning blades. 

A few miles to the east, the wife of Secretary of Defense Thomas Gates, still in her nightgown, negotiated through traffic as her husband read out lefts and rights to a secret landing spot within NSA's heavily protected naval headquarters on Nebraska Avenue. The secretary was in for trouble, however: his pass was still sitting back home on his dresser. 

When the White House switchboard reached the president's science adviser he was standing under the hot spray of his shower. There was no time to dry off, he was told as he quickly jotted down instructions. 

In Georgetown, CIA Director Allen Dulles managed to get a ride from another senior official when his car picked this of all mornings to stall. 

It was Thursday, the fifth of May. Within half an hour of the emergency calls, part of this long-planned "Doomsday" practice exercise, helicopters carrying the nearly two dozen senior national security officials were flying south over the thick green canopy that covers the Virginia countryside. Their destination was a secret command center dug deep into Mount Weather in the Blue Ridge Mountains and built on a series of giant nuclear-shock-absorbing steel springs. Its code name was High Point, but members of the president's inner circle also called it simply "the hideout." 

In Moscow at that very moment, a bald, rotund ex-miner in a tent-like business suit stood before the Supreme Soviet and punched the air with his fist like a bare-knuckles boxer. "Shame to the aggressor!" he bellowed, "Shame to the aggressor!" Standing on the stage of the white chambered Great Kremlin Palace, Chairman Nikita S. Khrushchev had just brought some news to the thirteen hundred members of the Soviet parliament. "I must report to you on aggressive actions against the Soviet Union in the past few weeks by the United States of America," he said, his voice rising to a shout. "The United States has been sending aircraft that have been crossing our state frontiers and intruding upon the airspace of the Soviet Union. We protested to the United States against several previous aggressive acts of this kind and brought them to the attention of the United Nations Security Council. But as a rule, the United States offered formalistic excuses and tried in every way to deny the facts of aggression—even when the proof was irrefutable." 

Then the surprise. Five days before, on May Day, "early in the morning, at 5:36 Moscow time, an American plane crossed our frontier and continued its flight deep into Soviet territory. . . . The plane was shot down." The packed auditorium broke into pandemonium, shaking with applause and wild cheers, stamping their feet. "Just imagine what would have happened had a Soviet aircraft appeared over New York, Chicago or Detroit," he added, "How would the United States have reacted? . . . That would mean the outbreak of war!" 

Pointing to the west and stabbing the air once again, Khrushchev yelled, "The question then arises: who sent this aircraft across the Soviet frontier? Was it the American Commander-in-Chief who, as everyone knows, is the president? Or was this aggressive act performed by Pentagon militarists without the president's knowledge? If American military men can take such action on their own," he concluded, "the world should be greatly concerned." More earsplitting applause. 

The timing of the long-planned Doomsday rehearsal seemed almost uncanny to the casually dressed officials in the cement bunker beneath Mount Weather. Five days earlier the U-2 spy plane carrying Francis Gary Powers had gone down over Central Russia—and then, not a peep. All concluded that the aircraft had crashed, killing the pilot. A standard cover story had been issued the next day. Approved by Eisenhower in 1956, at the beginning of the overflight program, this cover story had it that the missing plane belonged to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and had been on a routine air sampling mission in Turkey. "Following cover plan to be implemented immediately," said the CIA's top secret message to its field stations. "U-2 aircraft was on weather mission originating Adana, Turkey. Purpose was study of clear air turbulence. During flight in Southeast Turkey, pilot reported he had oxygen difficulties. ..." 

Deep in the hideout, Eisenhower's astonishment grew as each new page of Khrushchev's speech was handed to him. It had flashed across the wires shortly after the U.S. officials were airborne. The Soviets were not only taking credit for blasting the spy plane out of the sky with a missile, they were pointing the finger of responsibility directly at the president. The American press was also beginning to raise similar questions. Eisenhower could see the darkening clouds of an enormous election-year scandal forming. 

At 10:32 A.M. Russia's imaginary nuclear strike ended. But Eisenhower was now left to respond to Khrushchev's verbal bombshell, and against that the High Point bunker could offer no protection. As the rest of the senior national security team headed back to Washington, the president huddled with his closest advisers. Gathered on sofas and overstuffed chairs in the bunker's small informal lounge, most agreed with Douglas Dillon that a new statement should be issued, replacing the NASA cover story, to counter Khrushchev's explosive charges. A former Wall Street banker and owner of a French winery, Dillon was filling in for Secretary of State Christian Herter, who was out of the country. 

But Eisenhower would have none of it. All Khrushchev had was a dead pilot and a stack of scrap metal. As weak and as full of holes as the NASA cover story was, they would stick with it. Allen Dulles agreed. He had given birth to the U-2, nurtured it, and pressed the reluctant president to let it fly deep and often. Now was no time for weakness. Besides, he had long ago given the White House "absolutely categorical" assurances that a U-2 pilot would never survive a crash.

This certainty was curious, for a number of safety devices were built into the aircraft, including a specially designed ejection seat. Dulles's "absolutely categorical" guarantee lends weight to the suspicion that the U-2 was rigged to prevent any possibility of a pilot surviving. Adding weight to this theory was a later comment by top Eisenhower aide Andrew Goodpaster that "we had an understanding . . . that the plane would be destroyed and that it was impossible for the pilot to survive." 

Once set in motion, however, the lie would soon gain a life of its own and no one would be able to control it. At NASA, long respected around the world for the open and honest way it managed America's space program, spokesman Walter Bonney was forced to stand before television cameras and tell lie after lie for the better part of an hour. Two days later, on Saturday, May 7, Khrushchev let his other boot drop. "Comrades," he said with a smile, looking down on the delegates attending the meeting of the Supreme Soviet. "I must let you in on a secret. When I made my report two days ago, I deliberately refrained from mentioning that we have the remains of the plane—and we also have the pilot, who is quite alive and kicking!" The gathering howled with laughter and shook the walls with applause. Then, in an action that certainly sent shivers down the spines of senior officials at NSA, he told the crowd that the USSR had also recovered "a tape recording of the signals of a number of our ground radar stations—incontestable evidence of spying." 

Notified of the news while at Gettysburg, Eisenhower replied with one word: "Unbelievable." In Washington, it was chaos. Senior aides, like masons, began to quickly build a wall of lies around the president, and the cover story seemed to change by the hour. Like a character from Alice in Wonderland, State Department spokesman Lincoln White was left to scurry down the rabbit hole again and again. Everything said previously was untrue, he told a dumbfounded press. One reporter later wrote, "Almost instantly you could feel the anger harden. Newsmen discovered, to their horror, that they had participated in a lie." 

At one point Secretary of Defense Gates called Secretary of State Herter and demanded that someone give a straight story. "Somebody has to take responsibility for the policy," Gates insisted. "While the President can say he didn't know about this one flight, he did approve the policy." Herter gripped the black receiver tight and shot back, "The president didn't argue with this but for the moment he doesn't want to say anything and we have been trying to keep the president clear on this." 

When the president walked into the Oval Office on the morning of May 9, his normal good humor had given way to depression. "I would like to resign," he said to his secretary, Ann Whitman. Talk was beginning to spread that Congress might call for a vigorous probe into the U-2 affair,something Eisenhower wanted to avoid at all costs. Later in the day Herter and Dulles were scheduled to go behind closed doors and brief a handful of senior senators and congressmen on the scandal. Dulles, Eisenhower said, should tell the delegation from the Hill only that the project had operated for four years under a general, blank presidential authorization. No more. Then, to discourage any thoughts of an investigation, the spy chief should "point out that any informal investigation would be very bad." 

For Eisenhower, the whole process was quickly turning into Chinese water torture. Every day he was being forced to dribble out more and more of the story. But he had decided that one secret must never be revealed, even if members of his Cabinet had to lie to Congress to keep it: his own personal involvement in the U-2 and bomber overflights. Before the congressional meeting, Goodpaster called Herter to emphasize the point. The "president wants no specific tie to him of this particular event," he warned. 

As Dulles and Herter were on Capitol Hill, Eisenhower was meeting with members of his National Security Council, warning them to avoid the press. "Our reconnaissance was discovered," he said ruefully, "and we would just have to endure the storm and say as little as possible." A short time later, in what had become by now an almost laughable daily routine, Lincoln White read still another statement, which contradicted the three previous announcements. Now the administration was admitting to "extensive aerial surveillance by unarmed civilian aircraft, normally of a peripheral character but on occasion by penetration. Specific missions . . . have not been subject to presidential authorization." With that, Eisenhower had drawn a line in the sand. No matter what the cost, a blanket of lies must forever hide his personal involvement in the ill-fated project. 

From the very beginning, he had had a sense that the overflight programs would end in disaster. But his advisers, especially Allen Dulles and General Nathan Twining, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had pushed and pushed and pushed. No more. "Call off any provocative actions," the president ordered Gates following a June 1960 Cabinet meeting, barely able to hide his anger. NSA's peripheral ferret flights, however, could continue—as long as they remained in international airspace. Then Eisenhower motioned for Herter and Goodpaster to follow him into his office and told them in no uncertain terms that all further U-2 overflights of the USSR would cease. "Inform Allen Dulles," he said abruptly. The next day Eisenhower was to depart for Paris and a long awaited summit conference with Khrushchev. He wanted no more surprises. 

Aboard his four-engine Il-18, as it passed over the dark forests of Byelorussia on its way to Paris, Khrushchev once again began smoldering over the timing of the U-2 mission. "It was as though the Americans had deliberately tried to place a time bomb under the meeting," he thought, "set to go off just as we were about to sit down with them at the negotiating table." He was particularly concerned over his nation's loss of prestige within the Soviet bloc. "How could they count on us to give them a helping hand if we allowed ourselves to be spat upon without so much as a murmur of protest?" The only solution was to demand a formal public apology from Eisenhower and a guarantee that no more overflights would take place. One more surprise for the American president. 

But the apology Khrushchev was looking for would not come. Despite having trespassed on the Soviet Union for the past four years with scores of flights by both U-2s and heavy bombers, the old general still could not say the words; it was just not in him. He did, however, declare an end to overflights through the end of his term. But it was not enough. A time bomb had exploded, prematurely ending the summit conference. Both heads of state returned to Orly Airport for their flights home. Also canceled was Khrushchev's invitation to Eisenhower for a Moscow visit before leaving office. "We couldn't possibly offer our hospitality," Khrushchev later said, "to someone who had already, so to speak, made a mess at his host's table." 

Back in Washington, the mood was glum. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was leaning toward holding a closed-door investigation into the U-2 incident and the debacle in Paris. In public, Eisenhower maintained a brave face. He "heartily approved" of the congressional probe and would "of course, fully cooperate," he quickly told anyone who asked. But in private he was very troubled. For weeks he had tried to head off the investigation. His major concern was that his own personal involvement in the overflights would surface, especially the May Day disaster. Equally, he was very worried that details of the dangerous bomber overflights would leak out. The massed overflight may, in fact, have been one of the most dangerous actions ever approved by a president. 

At 8:40 A.M. on May 24, shortly before a National Security Council meeting, Gordon Gray pulled open the curved, five-inch-thick wooden door of the Oval Office and walked briskly across the pale green carpet bearing the presidential seal. The president's national security adviser knew Eisenhower did not like visitors to wait to be told to come in. Gary had bad news. "It appeared," he told his boss, "that there was no longer any hope that congressional committees could be restrained from conducting investigations of the U-2—Summit matter." With the start of the hearings only three days away, Gray suggested that during the NSC meeting, Eisenhower "would wish to indicate to the Council how far he wished his principal advisers to go in their testimony." 

A short while later, two dozen officials crowded into the Cabinet Room, just off the Oval Office. Eisenhower's National Security Council meetings had the timing and grace of Kabuki theater. At about thirty seconds before 10:00, Gray made his announcement in the Cabinet Room. "The President," he said in a deep voice, as if issuing a command, which in a sense he was. 

As Eisenhower entered, the Council participants awkwardly rose to their feet and mumbled a good morning. Eisenhower then took his position at the center of the table. Sitting on a leather-bound ink blotter was a large three-ring binder, his "Black Book," opened to the first item on the agenda. Nearby was a matching holder containing White House notepaper. A black dial phone with seven buttons was to his left. Directly across from him sat Vice President Richard M. Nixon, and behind the vice president was a bookcase containing a gold-colored Republican elephant, a colonial soldier standing at attention, and a shiny set of engraved leather volumes, which appeared never to have been opened. 

"Mr. President," Gray began. "The first item is a briefing by Mr. Allen Dulles." The CIA director was in his usual seat, at the head of the table and to Eisenhower's right, framed by a large white fireplace. Pipe in hand, the professor began. Moscow's decision "to play up the U-2 incident and to call off the visit of the President to the USSR," he told the somber officials, was made well before the summit took place. But the decision "to wreck the Summit meeting," Dulles said, was made only after the U.S. admitted presidential approval of the overflight program. 

This was not what Eisenhower wanted to hear. The blame for the disaster now reached right to the Oval Office door. He could not allow the Senate Committee to get any closer. He could not let them discover that, contrary to what he had told the American public and the senior congressional leadership, he had personally approved and overseen the bungled May Day flight and every other mission. And he certainly could not let them discover the risky bomber overflights which, thankfully, had not yet come to light. [Jesus Christ man,how fucking stupid do you think people are?You are the god damn commander in chief of U.S.Military,of course you gave the O.K.,otherwise clown you had a coup going on right under your nose Ike! DC]

Sitting with his back to the blue drapes and the broad windows looking out onto the North Lawn, Eisenhower bemoaned the committee's investigation. "It was clear," he later wrote irritatedly, "that Congress would insist on some kind of investigation of the U-2 incident and the break-up of the Summit Conference." "Administration officials should be calm and clear, but should not be expansive and should not permit the investigators to delve into our intelligence system .. . ," he warned. "Some investigators were masters at beguiling witnesses and trying to find out all about our intelligence systems." "No information," he said sternly, "should be divulged" concerning those operations. 

Privately, Eisenhower had no use for congressional investigations. Over a Scotch in the family quarters of the White House, Defense Secretary Tom Gates once brought up his apprehension concerning his scheduled testimony before Lyndon Johnson's Preparedness Committee. The questioning was going to focus on accusations that the administration was deliberately underestimating Soviet missiles in order to reduce Pentagon spending and balance the budget. "What's more," Gates said, "that's under oath. That's an investigation." But Eisenhower quickly brushed aside the defense secretary's concern. "Just stand up there and tell 'em you won't take their oath." 

Another official fearful of the probe and seeking to scuttle it was General Nathan Twining. It was he who had been most responsible for the bomber overflights, and now, at the May 24 meeting, he was concerned that the investigators might soon turn away from the CIA and toward his own organization. "The investigation, once started, would seek to explore our whole intelligence operation," he protested. "If the investigators probed CIA, they would then want to investigate JCS operations." He then questioned "whether there was anything we could do to stop the investigation." 

After a few moments, Eisenhower brought up the concept of executive privilege but quickly rejected it as unworkable. The investigators could be stopped from probing into advice given him by his personal staff, he said, but not into the activities of other administration officials. 

"Accordingly," he complained, "the investigation could not be stopped." But to limit the possibility of a leak, he said, "administration officials should testify themselves and not allow their subordinates to speak." 

One other possibility brought up by Eisenhower was to have Allen Dulles simply stonewall all questions. "Mr. Dulles," he said, "might have to say that CIA is a secret organization of the U.S. Government." 

Still another possibility was to try to turn the public against the Committee. Secretary of the Treasury Robert Anderson suggested to Eisenhower that he go on television and appeal to the American public to reject the investigation. "The speech," he said, "should express the hope that no one in this country will engage in activities which will imperil the capability of the country to protect itself in the future. The speech should contain the implication that there is a limit beyond which investigation cannot go without imperiling our security." To further make the point about the dangers to security such an investigation might cause, Anderson told Eisenhower he should evoke the terrible image of Pearl Harbor.

But Eisenhower was resigned to the inevitability of the investigation. He turned to the most difficult topic: covering up his own involvement in the scandal. "Congress could be told that overflights have been going on with the approval of the secretary of State," he said, "and our scientific advisers, who have indicated that this method of gathering intelligence is necessary. It should be made clear that basic decisions respecting reconnaissance overflights of denied territory have been made by the president." 

That, Eisenhower decided, was all the investigators would get. Full stop. The fact that he had actually micromanaged the program from the Oval Office would have to be denied. According to formerly top secret documents obtained for Body of Secrets, Eisenhower was so fearful of the probe that he went so far as to order his Cabinet officers to hide his involvement in the scandal even while under oath. At least one Cabinet member directly lied to the committee, a fact known to Eisenhower. Subornation of perjury is a serious crime, one that had it been discovered might have led to calls for his impeachment and to the prosecution of senior Cabinet members. 

"The impression," Eisenhower ordered his senior Cabinet members and National Security Council team, "should not be given that the president has approved specific flights, precise missions, or the timing of specific flights."Yet that was precisely what the president had approved: the specific flights, the precise missions, and the timing of the specific flights. 
[What a cowardly piece of shit this guy was,far from the 'icon' they taught him to be.DC]


The issue was never the protection of "our intelligence systems," as Eisenhower told the NSC officials. It was covering up his role in the botched project. After all, the U-2 program had virtually no secrets left. For four years the Russians had been tracking each flight over and along their country. They now had a pilot, who had given them a signed confession and was talking. And sitting on display in Moscow's Gorki Park were major parts of the plane, largely intact. Included were the damaged camera and NSA eavesdropping gear, as well as pictures made from the exposed film showing the quality of photography. Visitors to the exhibit could even listen to the spy plane's intercept tapes giving off the beeping signals of Soviet radar installations. Tapes once destined for NSA. 

Nor was the public release of sensitive information an issue. The testimony was to be taken entirely in secret by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which as a matter of course heard highly classified testimony concerning such topics as intelligence operations and nuclear weapons. Furthermore, to ensure security, the CIA itself was to be in charge of censoring any information that was eventually to be made public, and the stenographer's tapes were to be put through a shredder.

Rather, what Eisenhower feared most was the leak of politically damaging information to the American public during a key election year. Powers's capture was the most serious national security blunder in more than a decade, one that caused the collapse of an important summit and plunged the country into an enormous crisis with Russia. Eisenhower was at the epicenter of the debacle, the man pulling the strings from the beginning. On top of that, at a time when his vice president was in a heated neck-and-neck race for the White House, his administration had been lying to the public and to senior members of Congress for weeks about his lack of personal involvement. 

The U-2 affair was now part of the political landscape. Even before Eisenhower had returned from Europe, two-time Democratic rival Adlai E. Stevenson began throwing brickbats. "We handed Khrushchev the crowbar and sledgehammer to wreck the meeting," he huffed. "Without our series of blunders, Mr. Khrushchev would not have had the pretext for making his impossible demand and his wild charges." Mike Mansfield, the Senate Democratic Whip, said the committee should "trace the chain of command, or lack of it" that controlled the May Day flight and get to the bottom of the "confusing zigzags of official pronouncements." But Republican Senator Barry Goldwater thought the Senate should stay out of the matter: "What the CIA has done was something that had to be done," he argued. Goldwater, however, was in the minority. 

On May 26, the morning before the start of the probe, Eisenhower made a quiet last-minute plea to senior leaders in Congress to stay away from sensitive areas in their investigation. Over eggs and toast with the leaders of both parties in the State Dining Room, Eisenhower almost laughably said how he "heartily approved of the inquiry." Then he said how he "was worried that members of Congress in conducting the inquiry would try to dig into the interior of the CIA and its covert operation." He added that he was sure the leaders of Congress realized that "such attempts would be harmful to the United States." A little more than a dozen years later, Richard Nixon would also attempt to use the rubric of "national security" and "CIA intelligence operations" to hide his personal involvement in a politically damaging scandal. 

The members asked a few polite questions but never quizzed Eisenhower about his own role. Senator Mike Mansfield asked, "What would the President think if there were to be established in the Congress a joint congressional committee which would oversee the activities of the CIA?" The thought no doubt horrified Eisenhower. "The operation of the CIA was so delicate and so secret in many cases," he said, "that it must be kept under cover." 

The next morning the doors to the Foreign Relations Committee Room were shut and guarded. Chairman J. William Fulbright gaveled the Senate hearings to order. Seated along the broad witness table, each administration official followed Eisenhower's instructions and dodged, ducked, or lied outright about the president's involvement in the U-2 program. Allen Dulles chose to stonewall. "I don't discuss what the president says to me or I say to the president." Years later, Under Secretary of State C. Douglas Dillon referred to the testimony given the committee as "just gobbledy-gook" and admitted, "Our testimony was not totally frank because we were defending—we were trying to hide the White House responsibility for this." 

But Dillon's boss went much further than gobbledy-gook. When asked point-blank by Fulbright if there was "ever a time" that the president approved each U-2 flight, Secretary of State Christian Herter simply swallowed hard and then told a bold-faced lie. "It has never come up to the president." 

In the hearing room, overseeing the testimony for the CIA and making sure no secrets were released to the public, was Richard Helms, who would later go on to become the agency's director. Years later, he would look back on the testimony and say: "They were all sworn. Knowing what they knew and what actually went on, if it isn't perjury I don't understand the meaning of the word." 

Richard Helms had reason to be interested in the perjury over the U2. In 1977 he was convicted in federal court and sentenced to two years in prison for a similar offense. Questioned by the chairman of the same Senate committee about the CIA's involvement in a coup in Chile, he lied to Fulbright and claimed there was none. Although Helms would later assert that his oath of secrecy to the CIA permitted him to lie to Congress, federal judge Barrington D. Parker strongly disagreed. Telling Helms, "You now stand before this court in disgrace and shame," the judge went on to ridicule his claim that lying to Congress to protect secrets was acceptable. 

If public officials embark deliberately on a course to disobey and ignore the laws of our land because of some misguided and ill-conceived notion and belief that there are earlier commitments and considerations which they must observe, the future of our country is in jeopardy. 

There are those employed in the intelligence security community of this country . . . who feel that they have a license to operate freely outside the dictates of the law and otherwise to orchestrate as they see fit. Public officials at every level, whatever their position, like any other person, must respect and honor the Constitution and the laws of the United States. 

Despite his stern lecture, Parker suspended Helms's sentence and added a $2,000 fine. 

Although Fulbright treated the president's men with kid gloves and Eisenhower's role never emerged, there was great bitterness within the administration over the hearings. Dulles told Herter that he was "very disturbed" by the action, then added, like a gangster in a Mafia movie: "We should have kept our mouths shut."1 
1 As for Powers, a Soviet court found him guilty of espionage and sentenced him to ten years in prison. But in 1962 he was set free as part of an exchange with the United States for the Russian master spy Colonel Rudolf Abel.
At NSA, the implications of the latest intercepts were clear. Cuban bomber pilots were now being trained within the Soviet bloc. 

On January 19, 1961, Washington was caught in the icy grip of the coldest weather in memory. Carpenters, bundled like Inuits, hammered away on the grandstand for the next day's inauguration. An artist carefully dabbed white paint on the last few stars surrounding the great seal emblazoned on the presidential reviewing box. Opposite, in the White House, two men took their places at the highly polished table in the Cabinet Room. Dwight David Eisenhower, looking tired, sat for the last time in the tall leather chair from which he had led so many momentous discussions over the past eight years. With the Cold War still as frozen as the rows of stiff rosebushes outside his tall windows, Eisenhower's early dream of amity with Russia was dashed. 

Seated beside the president was John Fitzgerald Kennedy, tan and youthful. Like a store owner whose family business has been seized by the bank, Eisenhower briefed his successor on a wide assortment of pending business. Oddly, although sitting on his desk were the plans for a massive, highly secret U.S.-sponsored invasion of Cuba, primed and ready to go within weeks, Eisenhower barely mentioned the island during the lengthy foreign policy briefing. The subject came up, in a sort of by the-way manner, only during a discussion concerning Laos: "At the present time," Eisenhower said, "we are helping train anti-Castro forces in Guatemala." He added, "It was the policy of this government to help such forces to the utmost." 

In his last hours as president, Eisenhower issued what sounded to his successor like an order. "In the long run," he insisted, "the United States cannot allow the Castro Government to continue to exist in Cuba." At almost that same moment, across the river in the Pentagon's Gold Room, the Joint Chiefs had come to a decision of their own. The only answer, Joint Chiefs chairman Lyman L. Lemnitzer concluded, was for an all-out U.S. military invasion. War.

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