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UNITED STATES INTELLIGENCE FLIGHTS OVER THE SOVIET UNION: THE U-2
INCIDENT


(1) United States Note to the U.S.S.R., May 6, 1960.

(2) State Department Statement, May 7, 1960.

(3) Statement by Secretary of State Herter, May 9, 1960.

(4) Soviet Note to the United States, May 10, 1960

(5) News Conference Statement by the President, May 11, 1960

(6) United States Note to the U.S.S.R., May 11, 1960.

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(1) United States Note to the U.S.S.R., May 6, 1960.

(Dept. of State Bulletin, May 23, 1960, p 818.)

The Embassy of the United States of America by instruction of
its Government has the honor to state the following:

The United States Government has noted the statement of the
Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics, N. S. Khrushchev, in his speech before the
Supreme Soviet on May 5 that a foreign aircraft crossed the
border of the Soviet Union on May 1 and that on orders of the
Soviet Government, this aircraft was shoot down.  In this same
statement it was said that investigation showed that it was a
United States plane.

As already announced on May 3, a United States National
Aeronautical Space Agency unarmed weather research plane based
at Adana, Turkey, and piloted by a civilian American has been
missing since May 1.  The name of the American civilian pilot is
Francis Gary Powers, born on August 17, 1929, at Jenkins,
Kentucky.

In the light of the above the United States Government requests
the Soviet Government to provide it with full facts of the
Soviet investigation of this incident and to inform it of the
fate of the pilot.

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(2) State Department Statement, May 7, 1960.

(Department of State Bulletin, May 23, 1960, p. 818-819)

The Department has received the text of Mr. Krushchev's further
remarks about the unarmed plane which is reported to have been
shot down in the Soviet Union.  As previously announced, it was
known that a U-2 plane was missing.  As a result of the inquiry
ordered by the President it has been established that insofar as
the authorities in Washington are concerned there was no
authorization for any such flight as described by Mr.
Khrushchev.

Nevertheless it appears that in endeavoring to obtain
information now concealed behind the Iron Curtain a flight over
Soviet territory was probably undertaken by an unarmed civilian
U-2 plane.

It is certainly no secret that, given the state of the world
today, intelligence collection activities are practiced by all
countries, and postwar history certainly reveals that the Soviet
Union has not been lagging behind in this field.

The necessity for such activities as measures for legitimate
national defense is enhanced by the excessive secrecy practiced
by the Soviet Union in contrast to the free world.

One of the things creating tension in the world today is
apprehension over surprise attack with weapon of mass
destruction.

To reduce mutual suspicion and to give a measure of protection
against surprise attack the United States in 1955 offered its
open-skies proposal - a proposal which was rejected out of hand
by the Soviet Union.  It is in relation to the danger of
surprise attack that planes of the type of unarmed civilian U-2
aircraft have made flights along the frontiers of the free world
for the past 4 years.

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(3) Statement by Secretary of State Herter, May 9, 1960.

(Dept. of State Bulletin, May 23, 1960, pp. 816-817.)

On May 7 the Department of State spokesman made a statement with
respect to the alleged shooting down of an unarmed American
civilian aircraft of the U-2 type over the Soviet Union.  The
following supplements and clarifies this statement as respects
the position of the United States Government.

Ever since Marshal Stalin shifted the policy of the Soviet Union
from wartime cooperation to postwar conflict in 1946 and
particularly since the Berlin blockade, the forceful takeover of
Czechoslovakia, and the Communist aggressions in Korea and Viet-
nam the world has lived in a state of apprehension with respect
to Soviet intentions.  The Soviet leaders have almost complete
access to the open societies of the free world and supplement
this with vast espionage networks.  However, they keep their own
society tightly closed and rigorously controlled. With the
development of modern weapons carrying tremendously destructive
nuclear warheads, the threat of surprise attack and aggression
presents a constant danger.  This menace is enhanced by the
threats of mass destruction frequently voiced by the Soviet
leadership.

For many years the United States in company with its allies has
sought to lessen or even to eliminate this threat from the life
of man so that he can go about his peaceful business without
fear.  Many proposals to this end have been put up to the Soviet
Union.  The President's open-skies proposal of 1955 was followed
in 1957 by the offer of an exchange of ground observers between
agreed military in the U.S., the U.S.S.R., and other nations
that might wish to participate. For several years we have been
seeking the mutual abolition of the restrictions on travel
imposed by the Soviet Union and those which the United States
felt obliged to institute on a reciprocal basis.  More recently
at the Geneva disarmament conference the United States has
proposed far-reaching new measure of controlled disarmament.  It
is possible that the Soviet leaders have a different version and
that, however unjustifiedly, they fear attack from the West.
But this is hard to reconcile with their continual rejection or
our repeated proposal for effective measures against surprise
attack and for effective inspection of disarmament measures.

I will say frankly that it is unacceptable that the Soviet
political system should be given an opportunity to make secret
preparations to face the free world with the choice of abject
surrender or nuclear destruction.  The Government of the United
States would be derelict to its responsibility not only to the
American people but to free peoples everywhere if it did not, in
the absence of Soviet cooperation, take such measures as are
possible unilaterally to lessen and to overcome this danger of
surprise attack.  In fact the United States has not and does not
shirk this responsibility.

In accordance with the National Security Act of 1947, the
President has put into effect since the beginning of his
administration directives to gather by every possible means the
information required to protect the United States and the free
world against surprise attack and to enable them to make
effective preparations for their defense.  Under these
directives programs have been developed and put into operation
which have included extensive aerial surveillance by unarmed
civilian aircraft, normally of a peripheral character but on
occasion by penetration.  Specific missions of these unarmed
civilian aircraft have not been subject to Presidential
authorization.  The fact that such surveillance was taking place
has apparently not been a secret to the Soviet leadership, and
the question indeed arises as to why at this particular juncture
they should seek to exploit the present incident as a propaganda
battle in the cold war.

This Government had sincerely hoped and continues to hope that
in the coming meeting of the Heads of Government in Paris
Chairman Khrushchev would be prepared to cooperate in agreeing
to effective measures which would remove this fear of sudden
mass destruction from the minds of people everywhere.  Far from
being damaging to the forthcoming meeting in Paris, this
incident should serve to underline the importance to the world
of an earnest attempt there to achieve agreed and effective
safeguards against surprise attack and aggression.

At my request and with the authority of the President, the
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Honorable Allen
W. Dulles, is today briefing Members of the Congress fully along
the foregoing lines.

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(4) Soviet Note to the United States, May 10, 1960

The Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
considers it necessary to state the following to the Government
of the United States of America.

On May 1 of this year at 5 hour 36 minutes, Moscow time, a
military aircraft violated the boundary of the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics and intruded across the borders of the
Soviet Union for a distance of more than 2,000 kilometers.  The
Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics naturally
could not leave unpunished such a flagrant violation of Soviet
state boundaries.  When the intentions of the violating aircraft
became apparent, it was shot down by Soviet rocket troops in the
area of Sverdlovsk.

Upon examination by experts of all data at the disposal of the
Soviet side, it was incontrovertibly established that the
intruder aircraft belonged to the United States of America, was
permanently based in Turkey and was sent through Pakistan into
the Soviet Union with hostile purposes.

As Chairman of the U.S.S.R. Council of Ministers N. S.
Khrushchev made public on May 7 at the final session of the
U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet, exact data from the investigation leave
no doubts with respect to the purpose of the flight of the
American aircraft which violated the U.S.S.R. border on May 1.
This aircraft was specially equipped for reconnaissance and
diversionary flight over the territory of the Soviet Union.  It
had on board apparatus for aerial photography for detecting the
Soviet radar network and other special radio-technical equipment
which form part of U.S.S.R. anti-aircraft defenses.  At the
disposal of the Soviet expert commission which carried out the
investigation, there is indisputable proof of the espionage-
reconnaissance mission of the American aircraft: films of Soviet
defense and industrial establishments, a tape recording of
signals of Soviet radar stations and other data.

Pilot Powers, about whose fate the Embassy of the United States
of America inquired in its note of May 6, is alive and, as
indicated in the aforementioned speech of Chairman of the
U.S.S.R. Council of Ministers N. S. Khrushchev, will be brought
to account under the laws of the Soviet state.  The pilot has
indicated that he did everything in full accordance with the
assignment given him.  On the flight map taken from him there
was clearly and accurately marked the entire route he was
assigned after take-off from the city of Adana (Turkey): Peshwar
(Pakistan) - the Ural Sea - Sverdlovsk - Archangel - Murmansk,
followed by a landing at the Norwegian airfield at Bude.  The
pilot also stated that he served in subunit number 10-10 which
under cover of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
is engaged in high altitude military reconnaissance.

This and other information revealed in speeches of the head of
the Soviet Government completely refuted the U.S. State
Department's concocted and hurriedly fabricated version,
released May 5 in the official announcement for the press, to
the effect that the aircraft was allegedly carrying out
meteorological observations in the upper strata of the
atmosphere along the Turkish-Soviet border.

After the complete absurdity of the aforementioned version had
been shown and it had been incontrovertibly proven that the
American aircraft intruded across the borders of the Soviet
Union for aggressive reconnaissance purposes, a new announcement
was made by the U.S. State Department on May 7 which contained
the forced admission that the aircraft was sent into the Soviet
Union for military reconnaissance and, by the very fact, it was
admitted that the flight was pursuing aggressive purposes.

In this way, after two days, the State Department already had to
deny the version which obviously had been intended to mislead
world public opinion as well as American public opinion itself.

The State Department considered it appropriate to refer in its
announcement to the "open skies" proposal made by the Government
of the United States of America in 1955 and to the refusal of
the Soviet Government to accept this proposal.  Yes, the Soviet
Government, like the governments of many other states, refused
to accept this proposal which was intended to throw open the
doors of other nations to American reconnaissance.  The
activities of American aviation only confirm the correctness of
the evaluation given to this proposal at the time by the Soviet
Government.

Does this not mean that, with the refusal of a number of states
to accept this proposal for "open skies," the United States of
America is attempting arbitrarily to take upon itself the right
"to open" a foreign sky?  It is enough to put the question this
way, for the complete groundlessness of the aforementioned
reference to the United States of America "open skies" proposal
to become clear.

It follows from the aforementioned May 7 announcement of the
U.S.A. State Department that the hostile acts of American
aviation, which have taken place numerous times in relation to
the Soviet Union, are not simply the result of activity of
military commands of the United States of America in various
areas but are the expression of a calculated U.S.A. policy.
That which the Soviet Government has repeatedly declared in its
representations to the Government of the United States of
America in connection with the violations of U.S.S.R. national
boundaries by American airplanes has been confirmed, namely,
that these violations are premeditated.  All this testifies that
the Government of the United States of America, instead of
taking measures to stop such actions by American aviation, the
danger of which has more than once been pointed out by the
Soviet Government, officially announces such action as its
national policy.

Thus, the Government of the United States of America, in the
first place, testifies to the fact that it answers to
representations of the Soviet Government were only for the sake
of form, behind which were concealed an effort to avoid the
substance of the issue, and that all violations by American
aircraft of the national boundaries of the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics represented actin conforming to U.S.A.
policy.

In the second place, and this is the main point, by sanctioning
such actions of American aviation, the Government of the United
States of America aggravates the situation even more.

One must ask, how is it possible to reconcile this with
declarations on the part of leading figures of the United States
of America, that the Government of the United States of America,
like the Soviet Government, also strives for improvement of
relations between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and
the United States of America, for relaxation of international
tension, and strengthening of trust between states.  Military
intelligence activities of one nation by means of intrusion of
its aircraft into the area of another country can hardly be
called a method for improving relations and strengthening trust.

It is self-evident that the Soviet Government is compelled,
under such circumstances, to give strict orders to its armed
forces to take all necessary measures against violation of
Soviet boundaries by foreign aviation.  The Government of the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics regretfully states that,
while it undertakes everything possible for normalization and
improvement of the international situation, the Government of
the United States of America follows a different path.  It is
impossible to exclude the thought that, apparently the two
Governments view differently the necessity for improving
relations between our countries and for creation of a favorable
ground for the success of the forthcoming summit meeting.

The Soviet Government, as well as all of the Soviet people,
considered that the personal meetings and discussions with the
President of the United States of America and other American
official figures which the Chairman of the Council of Ministers
of the Union of Soviet Socialist Rep7ublics had during his visit
to the United States of America, made a good beginning in the
cause of normalizing Soviet-American relations and therefore the
improvement of the entire international situation as well.
However, the latest actions of American authorities apparently
seek to return the state of American-Soviet relations to the
worst times of the "cold war" and to poison the international
situation before the summit meetings.

The Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics cannot
avoid pointing out that the State Department's statement, which
is unprecedented in its cynicism, not only justifies provocative
flights of aircraft of the armed forces of the United States of
America but also acknowledges that such actions are "a normal
phenomenon" and thus in fact states that in the future the
United States intends to continue provocative invasions into the
confines of the airspace of the Soviet Union for the purpose of
intelligence.

Thus the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
concludes that the announcement of the State Department that the
flight was carried out without the knowledge and permission of
the Government of the United States of America does not
correspond to reality, since in the very same announcement the
necessity for carrying on intelligence activities against the
Soviet Union is justified.  This means that espionage activities
of American aircraft are carried on with the sanction of the
Government of the United States of America.

The Government of the Soviet Union makes an emphatic protest to
the Government of the United States of America in connection
with aggressive acts of American aviation and warns that, if
similar provocations are repeated, it will be obliged to take
retaliatory measures, responsibility for the consequences of
which will rest on the governments of states committing
aggression against other countries.

The Soviet Government would sincerely like to hope that the
Government of the United States of America recognizes in the
final analysis that the interests of preserving and
strengthening peace among peoples including the interests of the
American people itself, whose striving for peace was well
demonstrated during the visit of the head of the Soviet
Government, N. S. Khrushchev, to the United States of America,
would be served by cessation of the aforementioned dangerous
provocative activities with regard to the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics, by cessation of the "cold war," and by a
search through of joint efforts with the Soviet Union and with
other interested states for solution of unsettled international
problems, on a mutually acceptable basis, which is awaited by
all peoples.

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(5) News Conference Statement by the President, May 11, 1960

I have made some notes from which I want to talk to you about
this U-2 incident.

A full statement about this matter has been made by the State
Department, and there have been several statesmanlike remarks by
leaders of both parties.

For my part, I supplement what the Secretary of State has had to
say with the following four main points.  After that I shall
have nothing further to say - for the simple reason that I can
think of nothing to add that might be useful at this time.

First point is this: the need for intelligence-gathering
activities.

No one wants another Pearl Harbor.  This means that we must have
knowledge of military forces and preparations around the world,
especially those capable of massive surprise attack.

Secrecy in the Soviet Union makes this essential.  In most of
the world no large-scale attack could be prepared in secret.
But in the Soviet Union there is a fetish of secrecy and
concealment.  This is a major cause of international tension and
uneasiness today.  Our deterrent must never be placed in
jeopardy.  The safety of the whole free world demands this.

As the Secretary of State pointed out in his recent statement,
ever since the beginning of my administration I have issued
directives to gather, in every feasible way, the information
required to protect the United States and the free world against
surprise attack and to enable them to make effective
preparations for defense.

My second point: the nature of intelligence-gathering
activities.

These have a special and secret character.  They are, so to
speak, "below the surface" activities.

They are secret because they must circumvent measures designed
by other countries to protect secrecy of military preparations.

They are divorced from the regular, visible agencies of
government, which stay clear of operational involvement in
specific detailed activities.

These elements operate under broad directives to seek and gather
intelligence short of the use of force, with operations
supervised by responsible officials within this area of secret
activities.

We do not use our Army, Navy, or Air Force for this purpose,
first, to avoid any possibility of the use of force in
connection with these activities and, second, because our
military forces, for obvious reasons, cannot be given latitude
under broad directives but must be kept under strict control in
every detail.

These activities have their own rules and methods of
concealment, which seek to mislead and obscure - just as in the
Soviet allegations there are many discrepancies.  For example,
there is some reason to believe that the plane in question was
not shot down at high altitude.  The normal agencies of our
Government are unaware of these specific activities or of the
special efforts to conceal them.

Third point: How should we view all of this activity?

It is a distasteful but vital necessity.

We prefer and work for a different kind of world - and a
different way of obtaining the information essential to
confidence and effective deterrence.  Open societies, in the day
of present weapons, are the only answer.

This was the reason for my open-skies proposal in 1955, which I
was ready instantly to put into effect, to permit aerial
observation over the United States and the Soviet Union which
would assure that no surprise attack was being prepared against
anyone.  I shall bring up the open-skies proposal again in
Paris, since it is a means of ending concealment and suspicion.

My final point is that we must not be distracted from the real
issues of the day by what is an incident or a symptom of the
world situation today.

This incident has been given great propaganda exploitation.  The
emphasis given to a flight of an unarmed, nonmilitary plane can
only reflect a fetish of secrecy.

The real issue are the ones we will be working on at the summit
- disarmament, search for solutions affecting Germany and
Berlin, and the whole range of East-West relations, including
the reduction of secrecy and suspicion.

Frankly, I am hopeful that we may make progress on these great
issues.  This is what we mean when we speak of "working for
peace."

And, as I remind you, I will have nothing further to say about
this matter.

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(6) United States Note to the U.S.S.R., May 11, 1960.

The Embassy of the United States of America refers to the Soviet
Government's note of May 10 concerning the shooting down of an
American unarmed civilian aircraft on May 1, and under
instruction from its Government, has the honor to state the
following.

The United States Government, in the statement issued by the
Department of State on May 9, has fully states its position with
respect to this incident.

In its note the Soviet Government has stated that collection of
intelligence about the Soviet Union by American aircraft is a
"calculated policy" of the United States.  The United States
Government does not deny that it has pursued such a policy for
purely defensive purposes.  What it emphatically does deny is
that this policy has any aggressive intent, or that the unarmed
U-2 flight on May 1 was undertaken in an effort to prejudice the
success of the forthcoming meeting of the Heads of Government in
Paris or to "return the State of American-Soviet relations to
the worst times of the cold war."  Indeed, it is the Soviet
Government's treatment of this case which, if anything, may
raise questions about its intentions in respect to these
matters.

For its part, the United States Government will participate in
the Paris meeting on May 16 prepared to cooperate to the fullest
extent in seeking agreements designed to reduce tensions,
including effective safeguards against surprise attack which
would make unnecessary issues of this kind.

Collected and transcribed by
Larry W. Jewell
[e-mail]