Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (10 page)

Back in
Washington, the mood was glum. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was
leaning toward holding a closed-door investigation into the U-2 incident and
the debacle in Paris. In public, Eisenhower maintained a brave face. He
"heartily approved" of the congressional probe and would "of
course, fully cooperate," he quickly told anyone who asked. But in private
he was very troubled. For weeks he had tried to head off the investigation. His
major concern was that his own personal involvement in the overflights would
surface, especially the May Day disaster. Equally, he was very worried that
details of the dangerous bomber overflights would leak out. The massed
overflight may, in fact, have been one of the most dangerous actions ever
approved by a president.

At 8:40
A.M. on May 24, shortly before a National Security Council meeting, Gordon Gray
pulled open the curved, five-inch-thick wooden door of the Oval Office and
walked briskly across the pale green carpet bearing the presidential seal. The
president's national security adviser knew Eisenhower did not like visitors to
wait to be told to come in. Gary had bad news. "It appeared," he told
his boss, "that there was no longer any hope that congressional committees
could be restrained from conducting investigations of the U-2—Summit
matter." With the start of the hearings only three days away, Gray
suggested that during the NSC meeting, Eisenhower "would wish to indicate
to the Council how far he wished his principal advisers to go in their
testimony."

A short
while later, two dozen officials crowded into the Cabinet Room, just off the
Oval Office. Eisenhower's National Security Council meetings had the timing and
grace of Kabuki theater. At about thirty seconds before 10:00, Gray made his
announcement in the Cabinet Room. "The President," he said in a deep
voice, as if issuing a command, which in a sense he was.

As
Eisenhower entered, the Council participants awkwardly rose to their feet and
mumbled a good morning. Eisenhower then took his position at the center of the
table. Sitting on a leather-bound ink blotter was a large three-ring binder,
his "Black Book," opened to the first item on the agenda. Nearby was
a matching holder containing White House notepaper. A black dial phone with
seven buttons was to his left. Directly across from him sat Vice President Richard
M. Nixon, and behind the vice president was a bookcase containing a
gold-colored Republican elephant, a colonial soldier standing at attention, and
a shiny set of engraved leather volumes, which appeared never to have been
opened.

"Mr.
President," Gray began. "The first item is a briefing by Mr. Allen
Dulles." The CIA director was in his usual seat, at the head of the table
and to Eisenhower's right, framed by a large white fireplace. Pipe in hand, the
professor began. Moscow's decision "to play up the U-2 incident and to
call off the visit of the President to the USSR," he told the somber
officials, was made well before the summit took place. But the decision
"to wreck the Summit meeting," Dulles said, was made only
after
the
U.S. admitted presidential approval of the overflight program.

This was
not what Eisenhower wanted to hear. The blame for the disaster now reached
right to the Oval Office door. He could not allow the Senate Committee to get
any closer. He could not let them discover that, contrary to what he had told
the American public and the senior congressional leadership, he had personally
approved and overseen the bungled May Day flight and every other mission. And
he certainly could not let them discover the risky bomber overflights which,
thankfully, had not yet come to light.

Sitting
with his back to the blue drapes and the broad windows looking out onto the
North Lawn, Eisenhower bemoaned the committee's investigation. "It was
clear," he later wrote irritatedly, "that Congress would insist on
some kind of investigation of the U-2 incident and the break-up of the Summit
Conference." "Administration officials should be calm and clear, but
should not be expansive and should not permit the investigators to delve into
our intelligence system .. . ," he warned. "Some investigators were
masters at beguiling witnesses and trying to find out all about our
intelligence systems." "No information," he said sternly,
"should be divulged" concerning those operations.

Privately,
Eisenhower had no use for congressional investigations. Over a Scotch in the
family quarters of the White House, Defense Secretary Tom Gates once brought up
his apprehension concerning his scheduled testimony before Lyndon Johnson's
Preparedness Committee. The questioning was going to focus on accusations that
the administration was deliberately underestimating Soviet missiles in order to
reduce Pentagon spending and balance the budget. "What's more," Gates
said, "that's under oath. That's an investigation." But Eisenhower quickly
brushed aside the defense secretary's concern. "Just stand up there and
tell 'em you won't take their oath."

Another
official fearful of the probe and seeking to scuttle it was General Nathan
Twining. It was he who had been most responsible for the bomber overflights, and
now, at the May 24 meeting, he was concerned that the investigators might soon
turn away from the CIA and toward his own organization. "The
investigation, once started, would seek to explore our whole intelligence
operation," he protested. "If the investigators probed CIA, they
would then want to investigate JCS operations." He then questioned
"whether there was anything we could do to stop the investigation."

After a
few moments, Eisenhower brought up the concept of executive privilege but
quickly rejected it as unworkable. The investigators could be stopped from
probing into advice given him by his personal staff, he said, but not into the
activities of other administration officials.

"Accordingly,"
he complained, "the investigation could not be stopped." But to limit
the possibility of a leak, he said, "administration officials should
testify themselves and not allow their subordinates to speak."

One other
possibility brought up by Eisenhower was to have Allen Dulles simply stonewall
all questions. "Mr. Dulles," he said, "might have to say that
CIA [is] a secret organization of the U.S. Government."

Still
another possibility was to try to turn the public against the Committee.
Secretary of the Treasury Robert Anderson suggested to Eisenhower that he go on
television and appeal to the American public to reject the investigation.
"The speech," he said, "should express the hope that no one in
this country will engage in activities which will imperil the capability of the
country to protect itself in the future. The speech should contain the
implication that there is a limit beyond which investigation cannot go without
imperiling our security." To further make the point about the dangers to
security such an investigation might cause, Anderson told Eisenhower he should
evoke the terrible image of Pearl Harbor.

But
Eisenhower was resigned to the inevitability of the investigation. He turned to
the most difficult topic: covering up his own involvement in the scandal.
"Congress could be told that overflights have been going on with the
approval of the secretary of State," he said, "and our scientific
advisers, who have indicated that this method of gathering intelligence is
necessary. It should be made clear that basic decisions respecting
reconnaissance overflights of denied territory have been made by the
president."

That, Eisenhower decided, was all the investigators would get.
Full stop. The fact that he had actually micromanaged the program from the Oval
Office would have to be denied. According to formerly top secret documents
obtained for
Body of Secrets,
Eisenhower was so fearful of the probe
that he went so far as to order his Cabinet officers to hide his involvement in
the scandal even while under oath. At least one Cabinet member directly lied to
the committee, a fact known to Eisenhower. Subornation of perjury is a serious
crime, one that had it been discovered might have led to calls for his
impeachment and to the prosecution of senior Cabinet members.

"The
impression," Eisenhower ordered his senior Cabinet members and National
Security Council team, "should not be given that the president has
approved specific flights, precise missions, or the timing of specific
flights." Yet that was precisely what the president had approved: the
specific flights, the precise missions, and the timing of the specific flights.

The issue
was never the protection of "our intelligence systems," as Eisenhower
told the NSC officials. It was covering up his role in the botched project.
After all, the U-2 program had virtually no secrets left. For four years the
Russians had been tracking each flight over and along their country. They now
had a pilot, who had given them a signed confession and was talking. And
sitting on display in Moscow's Gorki Park were major parts of the plane,
largely intact. Included were the damaged camera and NSA eavesdropping gear, as
well as pictures made from the exposed film showing the quality of photography.
Visitors to the exhibit could even listen to the spy plane's intercept tapes
giving off the beeping signals of Soviet radar installations. Tapes once
destined for NSA.

Nor was
the public release of sensitive information an issue. The testimony was to be
taken entirely in secret by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which as a
matter of course heard highly classified testimony concerning such topics as
intelligence operations and nuclear weapons. Furthermore, to ensure security,
the CIA itself was to be in charge of censoring any information that was
eventually to be made public, and the stenographer's tapes were to be put
through a shredder.

Rather,
what Eisenhower feared most was the leak of politically damaging information to
the American public during a key election year. Powers's capture was the most
serious national security blunder in more than a decade, one that caused the
collapse of an important summit and plunged the country into an enormous crisis
with Russia. Eisenhower was at the epicenter of the debacle, the man pulling
the strings from the beginning. On top of that, at a time when his vice
president was in a heated neck-and-neck race for the White House, his
administration had been lying to the public and to senior members of Congress
for weeks about his lack of personal involvement.

The U-2
affair was now part of the political landscape. Even before Eisenhower had
returned from Europe, two-time Democratic rival Adlai E. Stevenson began
throwing brickbats. "We handed Khrushchev the crowbar and sledgehammer to
wreck the meeting," he huffed. "Without our series of blunders, Mr.
Khrushchev would not have had the pretext for making his impossible demand and
his wild charges." Mike Mansfield, the Senate Democratic Whip, said the
committee should "trace the chain of command, or lack of it" that
controlled the May Day flight and get to the bottom of the "confusing
zigzags of official pronouncements." But Republican Senator Barry
Goldwater thought the Senate should stay out of the matter: "What the CIA
has done was something that had to be done," he argued. Goldwater,
however, was in the minority.

On May 26,
the morning before the start of the probe, Eisenhower made a quiet last-minute
plea to senior leaders in Congress to stay away from sensitive areas in their
investigation. Over eggs and toast with the leaders of both parties in the
State Dining Room, Eisenhower almost laughably said how he "heartily
approved of the inquiry." Then he said how he "was worried that
members of Congress in conducting the inquiry would try to dig into the
interior of the CIA and its covert operation." He added that he was sure
the leaders of Congress realized that "such attempts would be harmful to
the United States." A little more than a dozen years later, Richard Nixon
would also attempt to use the rubric of "national security" and "CIA
intelligence operations" to hide his personal involvement in a politically
damaging scandal.

The
members asked a few polite questions but never quizzed Eisenhower about his own
role. Senator Mike Mansfield asked, "What would the President think if there
were to be established in the Congress a joint congressional committee which
would oversee the activities of the CIA?" The thought no doubt horrified
Eisenhower. "The operation of the CIA was so delicate and so secret in
many cases," he said, "that it must be kept under cover."

The next
morning the doors to the Foreign Relations Committee Room were shut and
guarded. Chairman J. William Fulbright gaveled the Senate hearings to order.
Seated along the broad witness table, each administration official followed
Eisenhower's instructions and dodged, ducked, or lied outright about the
president's involvement in the U-2 program. Allen Dulles chose to stonewall.
"I don't discuss what the president says to me or I say to the
president." Years later, Under Secretary of State C. Douglas Dillon
referred to the testimony given the committee as "just gobbledy-gook"
and admitted, "Our testimony was not totally frank because we were
defending—we were trying to hide the White House responsibility for this."

But
Dillon's boss went much further than gobbledy-gook. When asked point-blank by
Fulbright if there was "ever a time" that the president approved each
U-2 flight, Secretary of State Christian Herter simply swallowed hard and then
told a bold-faced lie. "It has never come up to the president."