President Eisenhower's Spy Plane

During the cold war, and President Eisenhower’s was a spy plane that crashed over Soviet air space. This is known as one of the most embarrassing moments of Eisenhower’s term, when the U.S tried to cover it up. The United States denied having anything to do with the spy plane over Soviet Union airspace publically not knowing that the Soviets had the pilot. Eventually the Soviet Union government revealed the proof they had that the United States was involved. Which therefore President Eisenhower was forced to admit and make a public apology. Throughout the essay there will be detail of Eisenhower’s plans for the U.S and Soviet Union relations with the U.S as well as what led up to the incident, what happened when the plane crashed, and what

and Soviet relations when Eisenhower took his presidency seemed to be optimistic because just weeks after he became President, the Soviets leader, Stalin died. The successors wanted negotiations in order to resolve east and west differences. Nikita Khrushchev took reign after Stalin’s death and he wanted to have a “peaceful coexistence”. However President Eisenhower was skeptical of the Soviets claim for this peaceful coexistence. Although skeptical Eisenhower met with Khrushchev and the western leaders in Switzerland, in July of 1955, making it the first meeting since 1945. The meeting eased the tensions between the U.S and the Soviet Union, although it “failed to meet an agreement on arms control and other international issues.” President Eisenhower offered a proposal called “open skies” which would allow for both countries to use air surveillance to gather intelligence on the other countries military capabilities, however Khrushchev declined his proposal. Hopes for an agreement came again in September of 1959 when Khrushchev came to the United States. Unfortunately there wasn’t an agreement made but both agreed to meet in Paris in May of 1960. Then bitterness arose over the U2 spy plane incident, Khrushchev demanded an apology from President Eisenhower at the meeting in Paris. Eisenhower refused to apologize Khrushchev walked out of the meeting and then escalated the Cold

relations, Dwight Eisenhower, had new ideas for the national security policy. He wanted to maintain the U.S. economy while assembling adequate strength to take on the Cold War. Another idea he wanted to use nuclear weapons to prevent communist attacks or if need be to use in war. Eisenhower also gave the CIA more power by using them to carry out covert missions. Finally he wanted to strengthen U.S allies and become allies with the nonaligned governments. In fact, in November of 1954 President Eisenhower started a “program to produce thirty special high performance aircraft”, that wouldn’t be able to be tracked. Which would result in a cost of 35 million, but it created a problem with a project that is to be classified. Mr. Dulles, Director of CIA, informed Eisenhower his organization would not be able to produce something that is so costly without drawing attention to it. Therefore the defense would take on a substantial part of financing the aircrafts. Then in December of 1958 four years after the initial meeting an enthusiastic President Eisenhower was very happy about the development of the U-2 reconnaissance plane. However, he had some concern because on almost every mission the U-2 spy plane was able to be tracked. That was his intentions for building the aircraft was to have the element of