Now we begin to find the Achilles heel of the entire U-2 program, and perhaps the single link that gave someone the power to ensure the success or failure of any go-for-broke U-2 mission. Here was a way to demolish the Eisenhower-Khrushchev peace talks.

Consider the scenario. A tiny group of top-level technicians with access to this hydrogen lifeline is charged with the responsibility of getting it to the Powers U-2. However, someone has arranged for less than a full cannister to be installed in the U-2 just before takeoff. The preflight check shows "Hydrogen-OK" because the preflight inspection only shows that the cannister is there, not how much hydrogen is in it. The pilot has no way of knowing that there is not sufficient hydrogen in the cannister for 3,900 miles because there is no gauge on his instrument panel. So, the 24,000-pound aircraft takes off, accelerates to 114 knots, and begins the long climb to altitude. Everything appears to be perfectly normal. The engine runs fine. All equipment functions. Then, at precisely the predetermined time, the hydrogen runs out. The plane is as high as it can fly because it must make the longest flight it has ever made. At that great height, the pilot hears a slight rumble, typical of a flame-out, and his engine goes dead. One way or another, he lands.

Persuaded none too gently by the Soviets that the rumble was in reality a near-miss rocket strike, he goes along with the story. Why shouldn't he? It's plausible. He says he was shot down. Allen Dulles, who knows better, says he was not hit. And there is the case. Someone preplanned for that U-2 to come down by arranging to starve it of hydrogen. That is when Powers radioed, or the telemeter radioed, a flame-out.

There were certain upper-echelon officials in research and development who knew about the U-2's special characteristics and could easily have arranged for the flame-out to occur.

When it was discovered that the U-2 had not completed the trip but had gone down, a group at NASA began the unpleasant task of getting out the canned cover story to account for that flight. On May 5, 1960 high-level experts working within the framework of an approved scenario issued a story which had the U-2 taking off from Turkey and crossing the Soviet border inadvertently. But then they said other things that were very strange. They stated that the U-2 was a "plane chartered from Lockheed by NASA" and that it was being flown at the time by "a Lockheed employee." Furthermore, they said the plane was "marked with `NASA' and the black and gold NASA seal," and that the pilot "had reported having oxygen difficulties." These were all official U.S. Government statements. They were flashed all over the world, even though other men in the Government knew they were lies.

To those familiar with the intricacies of preparing cover stories or canned lies, the above may not seem crucial. But here were top-echelon officials putting out an important public release affecting national policy matters, and they caught themselves in a trap. Telling Khrushchev that the plane left from Turkey when Khrushchev had the plane, the pilot, the navigation maps, and the camera with all its film was just plain stupid. But the trouble was not stupidity. That NASA cover-story team did not know what some others hidden away in the Government did know -- that the plane had left from Pakistan, that it did not have "NASA" and the gold seal painted on it, and that the Lockheed employee had Air Force identification and orders from Dulles (according to Dulles) to declare that he worked for the CIA. It became obvious that President Eisenhower did not know those things either. It was not in his interest to have approved the release of such lies.

Knowing that it might have to use the NASA cover story someday, the CIA worked with that agency to provide a cover story. Sometimes U-2's did fly for NASA. The CIA had even placed a high official (who used to be in the CIA's ultra-secret air division) in NASA at a high-level job to have him there for just such an eventuality. But no one had told him the facts of the operation; or if they had, he did not tell his NASA associates. Yet he worked in NASA's public affairs department. The May fifth cover story was so unbelievable that Khrushchev burst forth a day later with his own story about having the pilot and the plane, and he demolished the official lies of the U.S. Government.

Then came the challenge to Eisenhower. Did the President, who had worked so hard and so long to prepare for the ultimate summit conference and for his Crusade for Peace, direct that U-2 to overfly the USSR on May Day -- the day of its most important celebration? The idea was absurd, and Khrushchev knew it. Later Khrushchev gave Eisenhower every opportunity to admit that others in the U.S. Government had sent out that flight to sabotage the conference, stating that such an admission would salvage the meeting.

At this point, chances for world peace hung tenuously between the two men who liked and understood each other. Khrushchev said: "These missions are sent to prevent peace." He was ready to accept Eisenhower's innocence.

Khrushchev played the whole event with great patience. When he first announced the downing of the plane, he gave out very little information, waiting to see what our side would say. Then he displayed pictures of a heap of metal which he claimed to be the U-2, but was obviously some other junk. He kept drawing us out.

This was the period when some of the Government's media lackeys groped for ways to cover up the episode. In a strange editorial in its May 7, 1960 edition, The New York Times said that the U-2 flight was an "accidental violation," as several other border crossings may have been. They challenged Khrushchev's statement that the plane had no identification. The Times quoted NASA's report saying the plane had "NASA" and the NASA black and gold seal on it. Both NASA and the Times were wrong. The Times was repeating NASA's lies. Next the Times said: "Khrushchev said American militarists sent the plane, whereas it was just a NASA flight." The Times must have known better by May seventh.

After everyone had been thoroughly taken in by Khrushchev's traps and the U.S. Government's lies, the big news broke on May eighth. The Times, caught flat-footed, came out with a big headline: "Russians Hold Downed Pilot as Spy." Who determined that a man carrying a number of U.S. military identifications was a spy?

At the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings, Senator Capehart asked Dulles: "Why did you have to admit that we were spying?" This is the point. Who was covering what? Was the CIA providing a cover story, "the Powers spy gambit," to hide the real purpose of this flight?

The stark Times headline almost made it look as if it was the Soviets' fault. Then they quoted Khrushchev saying: "I deliberately did not say that the pilot was alive and well," and with amazement, Khrushchev added: "How many silly things they have said." He picked up one point which had been in the cover stories. NASA had intimated that most likely Powers' oxygen supply had failed and that he had flown out over USSR territory unconscious on automatic pilot. Khrushchev quickly replied: "The oxygen did not fail." Then he pointed out that if the oxygen had failed, Powers could not have performed as skillfully as he had. He had performed perfectly until his engine failed, and the developed film from Powers' cameras proved it. Miles of clear photos were in Khrushchev's possession.

Here is one of the most unusual facets of this operation, a key point which it has been possible to piece together from recently discovered evidence. How could Khrushchev know Powers had performed his mission skillfully as far as Sverdlovsk? Khrushchev knew because he had the U-2's camera, the film, and the pictures. These pictures clearly showed rows and rows of Soviet aircraft on a military airfield and industrial installations. Khrushchev declared that he had been able to accurately determine the actual altitude of the U-2 from the results of that photography -- 65,600 feet. This immediately raises the basic question of why Powers wasn't at his maximum and safest altitude, above 80,000 feet (a point brought out by Allen Dulles' testimony.)

The camera the Russians recovered from Powers' U-2 was a military-type, 73B, serial number 732400. With wide-angle capability, it took pictures of a 125-mile-wide strip. The film was twenty-four centimeters wide and two thousand meters long, capable of shooting four thousand paired aerial pictures.

That camera was not the one routinely used by the CIA spy U-2's. This U-2 had been doctored in Japan by someone who was willing to give away the plane but unwilling to reveal the technology of the newer U-2 camera. This was skillful deception from the inside.

Dr. Ray S. Cline, former Deputy Director of the CIA, wrote in his book, Secrets, Spies and Scholars, "The invention of the U-2 high-flying aircraft and the camera capable of taking pictures from 80,000 feet, pictures that would permit analysts to recognize objects on the ground with dimensions as small as 12 inches . . . this technical miracle revolutionized intelligence collection."[ 2 ]

The pictures Khrushchev showed to the public and to newsmen gave away the ruse. The industrial installations and the rows of aircraft exhibited were tiny dots on regular film, and even with the best enlargement, they would never have met Dr. Cline's criterion of twelve inches from 30,000 feet.

This is a crucial point. The U-2 incident was a clever and sinister deception. Its perpetrators intended for the Russians to find the U-2 and to think Powers was doing a spy's work. Yet, these perpetrators were far enough up in Government circles to know that it was the technology of the camera which must not be given away.

Eventually, President Eisenhower took the blame for the whole thing, and his dream of a summit conference, trip to Moscow, and an around-the-world Crusade for Peace was shattered. Certainly he had the U-2 double-cross in mind when he delivered his famous "military-industrial complex" speech at the end of his term of office.

Nixon played a significant role in all of this. All clandestine activities must be directed by the National Security Council. The law requires that the NSC direct the CIA. To perform these most sensitive activities quietly, the NSC established a small and very powerful group for this purpose. That special group, 5412/2 as it was known then (later the 303 committee and the 40 group), was chaired by the Vice President. Its key members were the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, or their designated representatives. In the spring of 1960, that group consisted of Nixon, Christian Herter, and Thomas Gates. Since these were very busy men, they generally appointed a key official to represent them at meetings.

Here we get to the most important point of the entire U-2 fiasco. Who authorized it? Who sent it out?

Late in the Senate hearings, Senator Gore got right to the point.

Gore: You [Dulles] have told this Committee that you received this approval [for the Powers flight] or authority after April ninth. [There had been a previous successful U-2 flight over the USSR on April 9, 1960.] Dulles: That is my recollection. Gore: . . . from whom did you receive this authorization, who were the parties, and was the President one of them? Dulles: Well, we had a group. Gore: Who? Dulles: Well, I don't know that I should go into names, but there was someone in the Department of State, DOD, and someone at the White House to keep general track of the operations, and it was through that little group that we received, after a flight was made, we were given a general clearance to make another flight. [Dulles calls that crucial NSC clearance which is required by law, a "general clearance." Furthermore, Dulles does not mention the Vice President, who had to be there.] Gore: Well, if this hearing is to serve any useful purpose, and I sure hope it will, it seems to me that it can only come through learning of whatever error that was committed, if committed, in order to avoid it in the future, and to improve such techniques.

You told us you received your authorization from a group and you have three agencies, the White House -- I don't like to refer to the White House -- I would say the President, the Office of the President, and the DOD, and one from the Department of State. Is that your chain of command? Dulles: My line of command, yes sir, so far as the policy of flying or not flying was concerned. Gore: Who designates these people from these three agencies? Dulles: Well, there was no formalized delegation. This grew up as the best method of handling this, and I just can't answer that. I assume that they were properly authorized. They always seemed to act with full authority. And I don't know whether any formal designation was ever made or not. [This is untrue, and in light of Watergate, it is a fantastic statement. Who in hell is running things? Dulles assumes they were authorized.] Gore: Your authorization, your authority on this particular flight stemmed from this group? Dulles: That is correct. Gore: You do not know, then, whether the man representing the Office of the President was personally designated by the President? Dulles: I assume he was agreeable to the President. Gore: I would, too, but do you of your personal knowledge, do you know whether or not this man was personally selected by the President, or by one of his assistants? Dulles: I assume that he was, but have never questioned that. Gore: Do you know whether he personally reported to the President? Dulles: I assume that he did, but I never questioned him on that . . . Gore: I would assume so too.

Here is the most astonishing piece of evidence about the misuse of Presidential authority to come to light, including the Nixon tapes. The powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee was asking the Director of Central Intelligence where he got his authority for this infamous flight, and all Allen Dulles could reply was, "Well, we had a group." Then, when Senator Gore asked if Dulles knew whether the men in that group hat the proper authority to issue such orders, all that the Director of the CIA could say was, "I assume that he did." There is the whole crux of the U-2 flight, the breakup of the summit conference, the chance for peace.

Because actual authorization could be bypassed by the assumption of authorization, and this has become standard procedure, illegal acts like the U-2 incident can be committed by those whose motives are to undermine the power and the process of the elected Government.

Then, to sum up and to underscore this terrible fact, Senator Gore repeated: "I was only asking you if you knew that he had reported directly to the President with respect to the approval of this particular program."

And Dulles replied: "No, I don't know that." What Dulles was really saying was that he really didn't know who had sent out that plane. It is fairly common practice to give some of these approvals by telephone. But how did he know who was on the phone?

To verify this procedure I can tell you that I have been called at night by a person who said he was the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, General Thomas D. White. I was told by that voice to go to Allen Dulles' home and follow the Director's orders. I went there and was told that he had immediate need of an airplane for an emergency in Tokyo. Upon receiving this order I had a plane turned around in flight over the Pacific and returned to Tokyo, where it was used for the clandestine mission. The mission was successful, and I received a written commendation from the CIA.

The point is that we did this by telephone. I ordered the action across the Pacific by telephone, and, as it happened, that deft move prevented a coup d'etat in a distant country. Of course, I knew General White's voice. But the fact remains that a clandestine operation run as Dulles and Gore described it is evidence of a very feeble method.

In this ominous byplay, we see the shadow of hands behind the scenes. If Eisenhower did not order the flight, who did? If Dulles didn't know whether the men whom he said authorized the flight had that authority, who knew? If someone had the inside knowledge to get away with launching an unauthorized flight, who was it? And if those people knew that the cameras must be protected, who were they? By the time you answer those questions, even by the time you ask them, you can draw the strings tightly around that very small group who actually did operate the U-2's in 1960. There were only three or four men able to do those things, and their names are in the Pentagon telephone book of 1960. I will not name names as it is not my intention to jeopardize these men's lives.

Later in the hearings the Senators wanted to find out if any orders had gone out suspending overflights because of the summit conference schedule. Dulles waffled that question, so they asked about prior events and learned that flights had been cancelled when Khrushchev met with Eisenhower at Camp David.

Later on Gore said: "One of the big questions before the country in millions of peoples' minds is why this flight was undertaken so near the summit."

In reply to another question Dulles said: "I think the question could be raised, if it was done without the President's knowledge, as to who was directing the ship of state." [author's emphasis]

Now, there it is! This was a most crucial line. Allen Dulles was beginning to have some grave doubts himself about the series of events. His answer supports the notion that he too did not know what really had taken place. Following is a first-hand experience that will prove to even the greatest skeptic that the Director of the CIA does not always know of clandestine activities undertaken by his own organization.

I was with Dulles and Bissell the evening they found out that a plane was missing over the Soviet Union. They knew nothing about it, and they had told the Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, and the President that not a single U.S. aircraft -- military, Government, or commercial -- was missing, as the Soviets claimed. Dulles called me to his house to meet with him and Bissell to see if I could locate a missing plane. I went to the Pentagon Command Center where I was later able to discover and confirm that a plane carrying nine U.S. Air Force men on a CIA mission was shot down over the USSR. It turned out to be Allen Dulles' own CIA VIP airplane! He did not know about that, just as he did not know about the Powers U-2.

During the first six months of 1960, I was the focal-point officer assigned by the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force to provide special Air Force support to certain clandestine CIA overflight operations. In April 1960, a member of the Chief's Pentagon office staff was in Thailand overseeing a major series of long-range overflights into Tibet and far northwestern China. Later that spring, orders came down to stop those overflights. The given reason was that the President wanted nothing to interfere with the success of his forthcoming Paris summit conference. Orders were sent from my office to ground the overflights.

These same orders applied to the U-2 program. We all took our orders from the same authorities. The U-2's were supposed to have been grounded along with the Tibetan overflights. So, when Allen Dulles himself wonders who was directing the ship of state, it becomes apparent that he did not know who was running the country!

The U-2 is nearly forgotten today, and there will perhaps never be any further investigation of this crucial event. Eisenhower and Khrushchev, both old warriors, might have pulled off a real peace agreement. We shall never know. But we do know some things. Many of the top-echelon men who were in the Pentagon during those fateful days of spring 1960 are back there now in the Carter Administration. Others are in top positions throughout Washington. It may be that they know how easy it was to pull the rug out from under Eisenhower, and they know how they could do the same thing again today.