Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and the U-2 Affair

540 Pages·2016·5.57 MB·English

by  Michael Beschloss

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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.