Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (9 page)

A CRITIC
message was sent to NSA, the White House, and other locations in Washington.
The information reached the CIA's Operations Center at 3:30 A.M.

They flew
in low and swift, arriving with the dawn. The rhythmic
thwap, thwap, thwap
of
the long blades competed briefly with the sounds of electric shavers and
percolating coffee in town houses in northwest Washington and in split-levels
in the nearby Maryland and Virginia suburbs. Almost simultaneously, they began
landing on dirt fields, creating miniature dust storms, and in vacant lots,
where commuters were briefly startled to see large, dark helicopters in their
favorite parking spaces.

At the
White House the sun was just starting to peek from behind the Washington
Monument, casting an early-morning shadow across the neatly landscaped Ellipse
and illuminating the few remaining cherry blossoms along the Tidal Basin.
President Eisenhower had been awakened by the phone call only minutes earlier
and now he was being rushed out through the curved diplomatic entrance to his
waiting chopper, ducking his head to avoid the slice of the still-spinning
blades.

A few
miles to the east, the wife of Secretary of Defense Thomas Gates, still in her
nightgown, negotiated through traffic as her husband read out lefts and rights
to a secret landing spot within NSA's heavily protected naval headquarters on
Nebraska Avenue. The secretary was in for trouble, however: his pass was still
sitting back home on his dresser.

When the
White House switchboard reached the president's science adviser he was standing
under the hot spray of his shower. There was no time to dry off, he was told as
he quickly jotted down instructions.

In
Georgetown, CIA Director Allen Dulles managed to get a ride from another senior
official when his car picked this of all mornings to stall.

It was
Thursday, the fifth of May. Within half an hour of the emergency calls, part of
this long-planned "Doomsday" practice exercise, helicopters carrying
the nearly two dozen senior national security officials were flying south over
the thick green canopy that covers the Virginia countryside. Their destination
was a secret command center dug deep into Mount Weather in the Blue Ridge
Mountains and built on a series of giant nuclear-shock-absorbing steel springs.
Its code name was High Point, but members of the president's inner circle also
called it simply "the hideout."

In Moscow
at that very moment, a bald, rotund ex-miner in a tent-like business suit stood
before the Supreme Soviet and punched the air with his fist like a
bare-knuckles boxer. "Shame to the aggressor!" he bellowed,
"Shame to the aggressor!" Standing on the stage of the
white-chambered Great Kremlin Palace, Chairman Nikita S. Khrushchev had just
brought some news to the thirteen hundred members of the Soviet parliament.
"I must report to you on aggressive actions against the Soviet Union in
the past few weeks by the United States of America," he said, his voice
rising to a shout. "The United States has been sending aircraft that have
been crossing our state frontiers and intruding upon the airspace of the Soviet
Union. We protested to the United States against several previous aggressive
acts of this kind and brought them to the attention of the United Nations
Security Council. But as a rule, the United States offered formalistic excuses
and tried in every way to deny the facts of aggression—even when the proof was
irrefutable."

Then the
surprise. Five days before, on May Day, "early in the morning, at 5:36
Moscow time, an American plane crossed our frontier and continued its flight
deep into Soviet territory. . . . The plane was shot down." The packed
auditorium broke into pandemonium, shaking with applause and wild cheers,
stamping their feet. "Just imagine what would have happened had a Soviet
aircraft appeared over New York, Chicago or Detroit," he added, "How
would the
United States
have reacted? . . . That would mean the outbreak
of war!"

Pointing
to the west and stabbing the air once again, Khrushchev yelled, "The
question then arises: who
sent
this aircraft across the Soviet frontier?
Was it the American Commander-in-Chief who, as everyone knows, is the
president? Or was this aggressive act performed by Pentagon militarists without
the president's knowledge? If American military men can take such action on
their own," he concluded, "the world should be greatly
concerned." More earsplitting applause.

The timing
of the long-planned Doomsday rehearsal seemed almost uncanny to the casually
dressed officials in the cement bunker beneath Mount Weather. Five days earlier
the U-2 spy plane carrying Francis Gary Powers had gone down over Central
Russia—and then, not a peep. All concluded that the aircraft had crashed,
killing the pilot. A standard cover story had been issued the next day.
Approved by Eisenhower in 1956, at the beginning of the overflight program,
this cover story had it that the missing plane belonged to the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and had been on a routine air
sampling mission in Turkey. "Following cover plan to be implemented immediately,"
said the CIA's top secret message to its field stations. "U-2 aircraft was
on weather mission originating Adana, Turkey. Purpose was study of clear air
turbulence. During flight in Southeast Turkey, pilot reported he had oxygen
difficulties. ..."

Deep in the
hideout, Eisenhower's astonishment grew as each new page of Khrushchev's speech
was handed to him. It had flashed across the wires shortly after the U.S.
officials were airborne. The Soviets were not only taking credit for blasting
the spy plane out of the sky with a missile, they were pointing the finger of
responsibility directly at the president. The American press was also beginning
to raise similar questions. Eisenhower could see the darkening clouds of an
enormous election-year scandal forming.

At 10:32
A.M. Russia's imaginary nuclear strike ended. But Eisenhower was now left to
respond to Khrushchev's verbal bombshell, and against that the High Point
bunker could offer no protection. As the rest of the senior national security
team headed back to Washington, the president huddled with his closest
advisers. Gathered on sofas and overstuffed chairs in the bunker's small
informal lounge, most agreed with Douglas Dillon that a new statement should be
issued, replacing the NASA cover story, to counter Khrushchev's explosive
charges. A former Wall Street banker and owner of a French winery, Dillon was
filling in for Secretary of State Christian Herter, who was out of the country.

But
Eisenhower would have none of it. All Khrushchev had was a dead pilot and a
stack of scrap metal. As weak and as full of holes as the NASA cover story was,
they would stick with it. Allen Dulles agreed. He had given birth to the U-2,
nurtured it, and pressed the reluctant president to let it fly deep and often.
Now was no time for weakness. Besides, he had long ago given the White House
"absolutely categorical" assurances that a U-2 pilot would never
survive a crash.

This
certainty was curious, for a number of safety devices were built into the
aircraft, including a specially designed ejection seat. Dulles's
"absolutely categorical" guarantee lends weight to the suspicion that
the U-2 was rigged to prevent any possibility of a pilot surviving. Adding
weight to this theory was a later comment by top Eisenhower aide Andrew Goodpaster
that "we had an understanding . . . that the plane would be destroyed and
that it was impossible for the pilot to survive."

Once set
in motion, however, the lie would soon gain a life of its own and no one would
be able to control it. At NASA, long respected around the world for the open
and honest way it managed America's space program, spokesman Walter Bonney was
forced to stand before television cameras and tell lie after lie for the better
part of an hour. Two days later, on Saturday, May 7, Khrushchev let his other
boot drop. "Comrades," he said with a smile, looking down on the
delegates attending the meeting of the Supreme Soviet. "I must let you in
on a secret. When I made my report two days ago, I deliberately refrained from
mentioning that we have the remains of the plane—
and we also have the pilot,
who is quite alive and kicking!"
The gathering howled with laughter
and shook the walls with applause. Then, in an action that certainly sent
shivers down the spines of senior officials at NSA, he told the crowd that the
USSR had also recovered "a tape recording of the signals of a number of
our ground radar stations—incontestable evidence of spying."

Notified
of the news while at Gettysburg, Eisenhower replied with one word:
"Unbelievable."
In Washington, it was chaos. Senior aides, like masons, began to quickly
build a wall of lies around the president, and the cover story seemed to change
by the hour. Like a character from
Alice in Wonderland,
State Department
spokesman Lincoln White was left to scurry down the rabbit hole again and
again. Everything said previously was untrue, he told a dumbfounded press. One
reporter later wrote, "Almost instantly you could feel the anger harden.
Newsmen discovered, to their horror, that they had participated in a lie."

At one
point Secretary of Defense Gates called Secretary of State Herter and demanded
that someone give a straight story. "Somebody has to take responsibility
for the policy," Gates insisted. "While the President can say he
didn't know about this one flight, he did approve the policy." Herter
gripped the black receiver tight and shot back, "The president didn't
argue with this but for the moment [he] doesn't want to say anything and we
have been trying to keep the president clear on this."

When the
president walked into the Oval Office on the morning of May 9, his normal good
humor had given way to depression. "I would like to resign," he said
to his secretary, Ann Whitman. Talk was beginning to spread that Congress might
call for a vigorous probe into the U-2 affair, something Eisenhower wanted to
avoid at all costs. Later in the day Herter and Dulles were scheduled to go
behind closed doors and brief a handful of senior senators and congressmen on
the scandal. Dulles, Eisenhower said, should tell the delegation from the Hill
only that the project had operated for four years under a general, blank
presidential authorization. No more. Then, to discourage any thoughts of an
investigation, the spy chief should "point out that any informal investigation
would be very bad."

For
Eisenhower, the whole process was quickly turning into Chinese water torture.
Every day he was being forced to dribble out more and more of the story. But he
had decided that one secret must never be revealed, even if members of his
Cabinet had to lie to Congress to keep it: his own personal involvement in the
U-2 and bomber overflights. Before the congressional meeting, Goodpaster called
Herter to emphasize the point. The "president wants no specific tie to him
of this particular event," he warned.

As Dulles
and Herter were on Capitol Hill, Eisenhower was meeting with members of his
National Security Council, warning them to avoid the press. "Our
reconnaissance was discovered," he said ruefully, "and we would just
have to endure the storm and say as little as possible." A short time
later, in what had become by now an almost laughable daily routine, Lincoln
White read still another statement, which contradicted the three previous
announcements. Now the administration was admitting to "extensive aerial
surveillance by unarmed civilian aircraft, normally of a peripheral character
but on occasion by penetration. Specific missions . . . have not been subject
to presidential authorization." With that, Eisenhower had drawn a line in
the sand. No matter what the cost, a blanket of lies must forever hide his
personal involvement in the ill-fated project.

From the
very beginning, he had had a sense that the overflight programs would end in
disaster. But his advisers, especially Allen Dulles and General Nathan Twining,
the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had pushed and pushed and pushed. No
more. "Call off any provocative actions," the president ordered Gates
following a June 1960 Cabinet meeting, barely able to hide his anger. NSA's
peripheral ferret flights, however, could continue—as long as they remained in
international airspace. Then Eisenhower motioned for Herter and Goodpaster to
follow him into his office and told them in no uncertain terms that all further
U-2 overflights of the USSR would cease. "Inform Allen Dulles," he
said abruptly. The next day Eisenhower was to depart for Paris and a
long-awaited summit conference with Khrushchev. He wanted no more surprises.

Aboard his
four-engine Il-18, as it passed over the dark forests of Byelorussia on its way
to Paris, Khrushchev once again began smoldering over the timing of the U-2
mission. "It was as though the Americans had deliberately tried to place a
time bomb under the meeting," he thought, "set to go off just as we
were about to sit down with them at the negotiating table." He was
particularly concerned over his nation's loss of prestige within the Soviet
bloc. "How could they count on us to give them a helping hand if we
allowed ourselves to be spat upon without so much as a murmur of protest?"
The only solution was to demand a formal public apology from Eisenhower and a
guarantee that no more overflights would take place. One more surprise for the
American president.

But the
apology Khrushchev was looking for would not come. Despite having trespassed on
the Soviet Union for the past four years with scores of flights by both U-2s
and heavy bombers, the old general still could not say the words; it was just
not in him. He did, however, declare an end to overflights through the end of
his term. But it was not enough. A time bomb had exploded, prematurely ending
the summit conference. Both heads of state returned to Orly Airport for their
flights home. Also canceled was Khrushchev's invitation to Eisenhower for a
Moscow visit before leaving office. "We couldn't possibly offer our
hospitality," Khrushchev later said, "to someone who had already, so
to speak, made a mess at his host's table."