(2 of 2)
Reversing the Policy. Before he left for Paris, Secretary of State Herter made a statement justifying continued overflights. Reporters were told to draw their own conclusions. Press Secretary Hagerty bluntly denied a New York Times story that U-2 flights had been canceled. Ike, in his final pre-Paris press conference, seemed to echo Herter's position.
The purpose of all such subterfuge was to give Ike a bargaining point at the conference table. He planned to offer the U-2 and its equipment to the U.N. for international "open skies" inspection, and in the same package to abandon overflights of Russia. But he waited too long. Khrushchev boldly played his propaganda high card, one that could easily have been finessed by a pre-Paris announcement that the flights had been discontinued.
Finally, under Khrushchev's intense pressure, Hagerty announced that Ike had actually ordered the U-2 flights canceled just before leaving for Paris. The order had gone, said Hagerty, to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Nathan Twining, and to Defense Secretary Gates (thus casually demolishing the President's earlier statements that the military had no part in the U-2 program). Actually, the U-2 program died the very day Pilot Powers was shot down. As an intelligence-gathering instrument, the flights had been compromised by discovery, and CIA Director Allen Dulles, the man in charge, had canceled the program without a moment's hesitation.
By all the signs, Khrushchev intended to walk out of the game regardless of the play of cards. But his own cover story for his wrecking operation earned more credence than it should have.