After the U-2: the President and his advisers (May 1960)

By the morning of Monday 9 May 1960, the cover story was gone. Eight days earlier a U-2 flown by Francis Gary Powers, a pilot employed by the CIA, had been shot down near Sverdlovsk, about 1,200 miles inside the Soviet Union². Washington's first answer, a NASA statement of 3 May, described it as a weather research aircraft lost near Lake Van in Turkey². On 5 May Khrushchev announced that an American spy plane had been shot down. On 7 May he told the Supreme Soviet that the pilot was alive and that the Soviets had his aircraft and film². The State Department then admitted that a flight to gather intelligence had probably taken place, while saying that Washington had not authorized it².

From Moscow, Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson cabled that he doubted the United States could go on denying a deliberate overflight. He recommended that the President's personal role be kept out of it if possible³. Eisenhower went the other way. The National Security Council met on 9 May, and the document printed here is the official record of that meeting, drafted by the NSC's Marion Boggs and dated 13 May¹.

What the record shows

FRUS prints only part of the memorandum. The participant list and agenda items 2 and 3 are left out (the summit discussion appears in another volume), as is the rest of the intelligence briefing under item 4. One paragraph of 15½ lines remains classified¹. What remains is the first agenda item and the opening of the fourth.

Eisenhower opened by saying the incident "had produced a great storm"¹. While the Council met, Allen Dulles was briefing congressional leaders at a session called by Secretary of State Herter, "fully but without apology." The State Department would issue a statement that afternoon, which the President said he had made less defensive¹. His argument was simple. Reconnaissance had been going on for years, the Joint Chiefs, the Director of Central Intelligence and the scientists had all insisted on it, and exposure had always been likely. What to do in future would have to be reviewed¹.

He then told the Council to say nothing to the press. Different statements from different officials would be compared, and any differences would become the story¹.

The discussion then turned, unexpectedly, to Soviet spies in America. Eisenhower complained that convicting a spy meant exposing American sources and methods, and that a convicted spy might get six years and be replaced by six more¹. Attorney General William Rogers said most Soviet bloc spies had diplomatic immunity. He noted that J. Edgar Hoover had been compiling a list of bloc spy cases and that at least sixteen bloc diplomats had been expelled. He pointed to the The Hollow Nickel case: Rudolf Abel (William Fisher), a spy with no immunity, had received a twenty-year sentence¹. The President said he hoped no one would let him forget it¹. Less than two years later, Abel would be exchanged for Powers⁴.

The Council's formal action was short. It noted the President's statement and his instruction that all executive branch officials stay silent except through authorized State Department statements¹.

Under item 4, the CIA's Deputy Director for Intelligence, Robert Amory, gave four possible reasons why Khrushchev was pressing the incident so hard. They were the Soviet leaders' belief that secrecy was a major asset, anxiety about any violation of Soviet territory, possible pressure from a military unhappy with troop cuts, and a wish to embarrass the President before the summit. Amory saw no serious opposition to Khrushchev inside the Soviet leadership¹.

What happened next

That afternoon Herter publicly conceded that the President had authorized intelligence-gathering, though not each individual flight². On 11 May Eisenhower read his own statement at a news conference². In Paris on 16 May, Khrushchev demanded an apology and punishment of those responsible. Eisenhower said overflights had been suspended but refused to apologize, and the summit collapsed². Powers was tried in Moscow on 17–19 August and sentenced to ten years' confinement². In February 1962 he was exchanged for Abel⁴.

Using the document

This record is useful because it is not a public statement. It shows the President defending the program as a whole rather than denying his own knowledge, as Thompson had recommended, and treating the affair as a problem of press discipline^1,3. It also shows the CIA's analysts already reading the incident in terms of the summit and Soviet politics¹. On the cover story, Wikipedia's account dates NASA's statement to 5 May. The FRUS editors record a first NASA statement on 3 May and further NASA and State Department statements on 5 May. This page follows FRUS^2,5.