OPINION:
BROTHERHOOD OF SPIES: THE U-2 AND THE CIA’S SECRET WAR
By Monte Reel
Doubleday, $27.95, 368 pages
The U-2 spy plane stands as one of the Central Intelligence Agency’s landmark accomplishments.
Reviewing the decades of its service, from the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 to current wars in the Middle East, former Director George Tenet termed the U-2 as “possibly the greatest achievement of any intelligence service, anywhere in the world, at any point in history.”
During the frostiest years of the Cold War, when nuclear war was a legitimate national worry, the U-2 kept national security officials informed of the strength of Soviet missile programs.
Hard evidence gathered from altitudes of more than 70,000 feet dashed the myth of the so-called “missile gap,” created in large part by the scare stories from columnist Joseph Alsop.
U-2 facts meant that the U. S. government did not squander uncountable billions of dollars to “keep up with the Russians” in a race that did not really exist.
Author Monte Reel gives fresh and fascinating life to an oft-told story by concentrating on the four men who were instrumental in the U-2 story.
• Edwin Land, grandson of Russian Jewish immigrants, first tinkered with optics as a teenager. His inventions included the Polaroid camera and the first successful 3-D movie, becoming one of the richest men in America.
• Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, one of nine children born to Swedish immigrants, went to work in a machine shop at age 12 and managed to work his way through the University of Michigan. He blossomed into a genius of designing aircraft for Lockheed, revered by a generation of fighter pilots. Designed for stealth, Johnson’s U-2 “did not fly through the air as much as float upon it.” The wingspan was twice as long as the nose-to-tail length.
• Richard Bissell, from a prosperous Connecticut family, was a Yale graduate with a knack for bureaucratic efficiency, first during wartime logistics, then with the Marshall Plan. CIA director Allen Dulles tapped him to oversee the top-secret U-2 project, and to keep it from being seized by a jealous Gen. Curtis LeMay.
• Francis Gary Powers was born in rural Kentucky, son of a “fifth-grade dropout who scratched out a living as a coal miner.” Mr. Powers joined the Air Force and volunteered for the U-2 program — totally unaware of what was involved. Powers was not the first pilot to fly a U-2 mission. Five earlier flights covered suspected missile sites away from Moscow, photographing thousands of square miles.
But President Eisenhower and aides wanted a look at the Moscow area in advance of a scheduled arms talk in Paris with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. There were concerns about a new Soviet plane, the Bison, capable of bombing runs all the way to the U.S.
Ike had one big worry: What if the plane somehow crashed and the pilot was captured?
Mr. Bissell and other CIA officials said Mr. Powers had an “L” pill — meaning “lethal” — containing a dose of prussic acid that would kill him within 30 seconds. Mr. Dulles was “absolutely categorical” that the pilot would not survive a crash.
As events played out, a Soviet anti-aircraft missile sent the U-2 tumbling to Earth. Mr. Powers parachuted to safety, ignoring the “L pill.”
For several days the White House clung to a cover story that the U-2 was a weather plane that went off course during a storm.
Then Khrushchev dropped a bombshell: He produced not only Mr. Powers but also significant wreckage revealing the plane’s true mission. He angrily canceled the meeting with Mr. Eisenhower.
Ike had warned earlier that if the mission failed “I’m the one who is going to catch hell.” And indeed he did, both from the American left and foreign critics.
The unanswerable question is whether the Paris talks would have produced concrete agreement on arms limitation. Khrushchev recently issued his famed threat to “bury” the U.S. and showed no signs of conciliation.
Author Reel’s story is marred somewhat by his contention that such spying as was carried out by the U-2 is somehow immoral; that covert intelligence is not in the American tradition.
In criticizing the U-2 overflight as an unethical invasion of another nation’s airspace, he ignores Soviet Sputnik flights beginning in 1957 — three years before the Powers U-2 incident — that overflew the U.S. daily.
On the value of covert intelligence, I refer the fellow to a quotation from his own book. Historian Arthur S. Schlesinger Jr., a Kennedy aide, termed the Cuban Missile Crisis “the most dangerous moment in human history.” Intelligence gathered by the U-2 permitted JFK to end the crisis without war.
Amusingly, one prominent CIA figure voiced tongue-in-cheek criticism of the U-2. Mr. Dulles, director from 1951 to 196l, greeted the success with a good-natured grouse. “You’re taking all the fun out of intelligence.”
• Joseph C. Goulden writes frequently on intelligence and military matters.
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