Bureaucracy & the U-2

In the heavily censored transcript of the secret Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on the U-2 incident and summit failure, the U.S. last week found some more answers to some lingering public questions:

Q. Did anyone question whether the U-2 flights ought to be discontinued just before the summit meeting?

A. No, said Defense Secretary Thomas Gates. In April, a Central Intelligence Agency man briefed him on the program of flights, but nothing was said at that time, or during any subsequent conversations with State Department people, about postponing the flights. Such flights had never been suspended for any political reasons in the past; the only operative factors were weather conditions and military considerations.

Q. How did the U.S. come to produce its phony "cover story" about a weather flight that had unwittingly strayed over Soviet territory because of an apparent oxygen failure?

A. He knew that the U-2 had a secret intelligence mission, testified Dr. Hugh Dryden, deputy administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, but had no detailed information. After Khrushchev's first announcement that Russia had shot down the U2, reporters bombarded Dryden for the story. He called CIA, got the dusted-off cover story, and put together the statement that the plane was lost on a weather flight. "I was told that these statements had been cleared by CIA with the State Department. I did not independently check that fact." What nobody had bothered to tell Dryden was that President Eisenhower and his aides had earlier decided that the State Department would handle all the "publicity." Two days after Khrushchev's gloating announcement that Russians had captured U-2 Pilot Francis Gary Powers, Secretary of State Christian Herter contradicted the weather-flight story, owned up to U.S. espionage, but announced that Washington authorities had had no knowledge of the flights.

Q. Did anyone consider the perils that would result if the U.S. were caught in the lie?

A. Yes, said Gates. When the news first broke, he advised the President that if Khrushchev knew all about the U-2--and at that time, the U.S. had no information that Pilot Powers had been captured--it would be better that "the presidency should not be involved in an international lie, particularly when it would not stand up with respect to the facts." After Herter's disclaimer of presidential responsibility, Gates recommended that the President should take full responsibility. Ike did reverse the U.S. line again and publicly take the blame.

Q. Why did Gates call a military alert from Paris on the very eve of the crucial summit meeting?

A. Gates had just learned, with the President, that Khrushchev planned to scuttle the conference. "This communications alert was not an act that was either offensive or defensive. It was a sound precautionary measure." He cleared it with Ike, notified Secretary Herter, then flashed the word to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No troops were recalled from leave, nor were any forces moved, though some local commanders took optional precautions (a Denver TV station put out a "scramble" call to fighter pilots). "Under the circumstances," said Gates, "it seemed most prudent to me to increase the awareness of our unified commanders. In similar circumstances, I would take exactly the same action."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.