Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, left, announces to the Supreme Soviet and the world that downed U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers is, in fact, alive, and says his country has Powers and the wreckage of his spy plane to prove it. "Comrades, I must tell you a secret," Khrushchev said. "When I was making my report, I deliberately did not say that the pilot was alive and in good health and that we have got part of the plane. We did so deliberately, because had we told everything at once, the Americans would have invented another version." The U.S. then admits the spy mission, while at the same time trying to shield President Eisenhower's involvement: "... Insofar as the authorities in Washington are concerned there was no authorization for any such flight as described by Mr. Khrushchev. Nevertheless it appears that in endeavoring to obtain information now concealed behind the Iron Curtain a flight over Soviet territory was probably undertaken by an unarmed civilian U-2 plane."
* State Department statement, May 7: @
* "Operation Overflight" (Gary Francis Powers memoir): @
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