EARLY BIRD BOOKS FRESH EBOOK DEALS, DELIVERED DAILY BE THE FIRST TO KNOW— NEW DEALS HATCH EVERY DAY! Mayday Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and the U-2 Affair Michael Beschloss For Steven Beschloss Contents Preface Prologue: April 30, 1960 1. “I’ve Had It Now!” 2. Eisenhower’s Dilemma 3. The Espionage Assignment 4. Building a Covert Operation 5. “The Most Soul-Searching Decision” 6. “Every Blade of Grass” 7. Khrushchev’s Ultimatum 8. Camp David 9. “The Great Thaw” 10. “I Would Like to Resign” 11. Debacle at Paris 12. Cold War 13. Final Reckoning 14. Who Shattered Détente? Epilogue: After the Storm Image Gallery Appendix Historiographical Note General Sources Notes Index Acknowledgments About the Author I had thought the President sincerely wanted to change his policies and improve relations. Then, all of a sudden, came an outrageous violation of our sovereignty. And it came as a bitter, shameful disappointment.… Now, thanks to the U-2, the honeymoon was over. —Nikita Khrushchev If I’d said, “I had nothing to do with this,” and picked some goat below me and canned him, Khrushchev might have behaved differently in Paris, but I don’t think so. I think it would have come out the same, once that original mistake was made of not stopping the flights. —Dwight Eisenhower Preface For much of the world, the spring of 1960 seemed to hold bright promise for improved relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. Then on May Day, like a clap of thunder, a CIA U-2 spy plane fell from the skies at Sverdlovsk, followed by some of the most perilous years of the Cold War. This book is an effort to explain what happened. The U-2 episode deserves renewed attention because of the light it sheds on American-Soviet diplomacy and other battles being fought in our own day. The four years of flights into Soviet airspace are an instance of the oft-hidden influence of espionage and covert action on the deeds and emotions that drive nations toward war or peace. The downing of the U-2 was the CIA’s first massive public failure, the first time many Americans discovered that their government practiced espionage. May 1960 was the first time many learned that their leaders did not always tell them the truth. The U-2 provides evidence for the student of historical reputation. Western historians have lately shown new appreciation of Dwight Eisenhower’s shrewdness and commitment to curbing the arms race. Some who once saw Nikita Khrushchev purely as the Butcher of Budapest and a careless rattler of missiles have come to view him also as a man committed—however ambivalently—to reducing the harshness of the Cold War. It is difficult to write with absolute assurance about still-sensitive matters of national security only a generation after they occur. Historical perspective and access to secret documents are more difficult to obtain than after a half-century or more. But history is, among other things, a policy science: the study of issues and institutions that are still vital provides guidance to diplomats, generals, political leaders and, above all, citizens. This volume draws on Western private diaries and letters, oral history interviews, memoirs and papers, including White House, State Department, Pentagon, FBI and CIA documents, many released under the Freedom of Information Act. Like every history dealing with the Cold War, it suffers from the paucity of Soviet sources open to Western scholars.