Washington Post Report on the U-2 Spy Plane Mission, Francis Gary Powers, and the Eisenhower Administration’s Cover Story (1960)

Date: May 12, 1960

Original or Replica: Original

Era: The Presidency

Collection: Eisenhower Presidential Library

Citations: Office of the Staff Secretary, Subject Series, Alphabetical Subseries, Box 15, Intelligence Matters (15); NAID #12009414

This May 12, 1960 Washington Post column by journalist Jack Anderson reports on the U-2 Incident and attempts to reconstruct the final reconnaissance mission of American pilot Francis Gary Powers. On May 1, 1960, Powers was flying a secret U-2 intelligence mission over the Soviet Union when his aircraft was brought down near Sverdlovsk. The article reports that American monitoring stations intercepted Soviet radio communications as pilots pursued the U-2 and examines speculation that the Soviets may have anticipated the flight. It ultimately concludes that advance Soviet knowledge was unlikely.

The article describes Powers’s planned route from Pakistan across Soviet territory and discusses the U-2’s high-altitude capabilities, his survival equipment, and the circumstances surrounding the aircraft’s destruction. It then focuses on the Eisenhower administration’s response. After learning the aircraft was missing, officials developed a cover story claiming that a civilian NASA weather plane had experienced an oxygen failure over Turkey. When Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev revealed that Powers had survived and that Soviet authorities possessed evidence of the espionage mission, the administration abandoned the cover story. The article illustrates how information about the secret U-2 program and the government’s initial deception rapidly became public.