Khrushchev and the U-2 wreckage
This revelation completely demolished the US cover story, and senior administration officials then debated what the appropriate course of action should be. Allen Dulles offered to take responsibility for the overflight and resign, but President Eisenhower did not want to give the world the impression that he was not in control of his administration. On Wednesday, 11 May, the President read a statement to the press in which he assumed full responsibility for the U-2 mission but left open the question of future overflights, even though four days earlier he had approved the recommendation of his key foreign policy advisers to terminate all provocative intelligence operations against the Soviet Union. $ ^{35} $
The U-2 affair had its greatest consequences when the long-awaited summit meeting in Paris began less than a week later on 16 May. Soviet Premier Khrushchev insisted on being the first speaker and read a long protest about the overflight, ending with a demand for an apology from President Eisenhower. In his reply