Col. Fletcher Prouty on the Gary Powers U2 flight

“Gary Powers’ U-2 is Shot Down Over the Soviet Union - More than one-third of all the Federal Taxes you and I pay goes into something called “Defense“; yet, we have almost no defense at all. We do have some offense, though, and that offense is supposed to operate on a “fail-safe“ system. How safe is fail-safe? What happens when fail-safe fails? Within the chambers of Government there are channels. Underground, moles burrow from agency to agency and in and out of the White House. They are master bureaucrats who know their way around blindfolded. While Congress and the President work at controlling the Government by manipulating the Budget, these bureaucrats benefit from what our tax money buys. Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, and Eisenhower had their power as President jerked out from under them by these underground forces. Nixon was the victim of a piece of tape on a Watergate door; Johnson lost to the runaway madness of the Vietnam War; Kennedy was wiped out by the hired guns of Dallas; and Eisenhower was broken down by a secret team who launched an unauthorized U-2 flight. The power of the Presidency is elusive and Presidents are never sure when they really have it. Momentous acts, presumably carried out with Presidential knowledge and approval, can in fact be committed without the President’s authorization. In many cases, the presumption of authorization is standard operating procedure for action. But in 1960 when President Eisenhower launched his Crusade for Peace to bring about a lasting detente with the Soviet Union, one U-2 airplane, one pilot, and the invisible enemy shattered his dream. That U-2, flown into the USSR on May 1, 1960 by Francis Gary Powers was not on a spy mission as had been alleged. It was launched for the sole purpose of destroying whatever chance there was for peace. It was the weapon of the war lovers -- the missile of the industrial complex. Ike learned what other world leaders have learned: it is easier to wage war than to make peace. In war the enemy is visible, and he is usually on the other side. For years the U-2 and everything about its clandestine operations for the CIA had been cloaked in a mantle of such secrecy that very few people knew anything about the plane or its missions. When the U-2 was lost over the USSR and then claimed by Khrushchev to have been shot down, few people knew what was true and what was not. The whole world was caught off guard. It was not difficult to believe the contrived NASA-CIA cover story that a plane had been lost while on an upper-atmosphere research flight. However, that cover story was a lie -- twice over!...“ Reed more: THE SABOTAGING OF THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY by L. Fletcher Prouty