The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance; The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954-1974

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Chapter 3
Colonel Goodpaster with
President Eisenhower
wke it as a certainty that no pilot would survive .. . and that al­
though they would know where the plane came from, it would be
difficult to prove it in any convincing way."
CIA assurances that the U-2 would probably not be detected. and
that a crashed U-2 could not be traced back to the United States,
helped overcome the President's worries about overflights. The most
important reason why President Eisenhower decided to send recon­
naissance aircraft over the Soviet Union, however, was the urgent
need for accurate intelligence to confirm or disprove claims of Soviet
advances in long-range bombers and missiles. The initial sighting of
the new Soviet Bison bomber in the spring of 1954 had been followed
by reported sightings of more than 30 of these bombers in the spring
and summer of 1955 (in reality these were sightings of the same
group of IO aircraft that circled around out of sight and made several
passes during a Soviet air show). Soon members of Congress were
calling for investigations into the relative strength of the US and
" Quoted in Bc:schloss, Mayday. p. 118.
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