Approved for Release: 2013/06/25
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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 3
109
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SOVIET PROTEST NOTE
The 4 and 5 July overflights brought a strong protest from the Soviet Union on 10 July in the form of a note handed to the US Embassy in Moscow. The note said that the overflights had been made by a “twin-engine medium bomber of the United States Air Force” and gave details of the routes flown by the first two missions. The note did not mention Moscow or Leningrad, however, because the Soviets had not been able to track these portions of the overflights. The Soviet note stated that the flights could only be evaluated as “intentional and conducted for the purposes of intelligence.” As soon as the note arrived at the White House on the evening of 10 July 1956, Colonel Goodpaster called Bissell and told him to stop all U-2 overflights until further notice. The next morning Goodpaster met with Bissell to review the U-2 situation. Bissell said three additional flights had taken place since the missions mentioned in the Soviet note but added that no more were planned.³⁵
Later Eisenhower told Goodpaster that he “didn’t like a thing” about the Soviet note and was going to discuss the matter with Secretary of State Dulles. With the strong approval of President Eisenhower, Goodpaster informed DCI Dulles that “there is to be no mention of the existence of this project or of operations incident to it, outside the Executive Branch, and no mention within the Executive Branch to others than those who directly need to know of the operation, as distinguished from output deriving from it.”³⁶
During these initial overflights, the U-2 flew above 69,000 feet and could be seen only fleetingly by pilots of the Soviet interceptor aircraft. Thus, it appears that the Soviet claim that the intruder was a twin-engine bomber was probably based on the assumption that this was another overflight by a reconnaissance version of the twin-engine Canberra bomber, similar to the RAF overflight of Kapustin Yar in 1953. The US reply, sent to the Soviets on 19 July, truthfully denied that any US “military planes” had overflown the Soviet Union on the days in question. Meanwhile, on 16 July the Polish Ambassador to
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³⁵ “Alleged Violations of Soviet Territory: Soviet Note of July 10, 1956 with U.S. Reply,” *US Department of State Bulletin*, 30 July 1956, pp. 191-192; Andrew J. Goodpaster, Memorandum for the Record, 11 July 1956, WHOSS, Alpha, DDEL (TS).
³⁶ Andrew J. Goodpaster, Memorandum for the Record, 11 July 1956, WHOSS, Alpha, DDEL (TS).
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Approved for Release: 2013/06/25