Download or read book Spy Pilot written by Francis Gary Powers (Jr.) and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most talked-about events of the Cold War was the downing of the American U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960. The event was recently depicted in the Steven Spielberg movie Bridge of Spies. Powers was captured by the KGB, subjected to a televised show trial, and imprisoned, all of which created an international incident. Soviet authorities eventually released him in exchange for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. On his return to the United States, Powers was exonerated of any wrongdoing while imprisoned in Russia, yet a cloud of controversy lingered until his untimely death in 1977. Now his son, Francis Gary Powers Jr., has written this new account of his father's life based on personal files that have never been previously available. Delving into old audio tapes, the transcript of his father's debriefing by the CIA, other recently declassified documents about the U-2 program, and interviews with his contemporaries, Powers sets the record straight. The result is a fascinating piece of Cold War history. Almost sixty years after the event, this will be the definitive account of a famous Cold War incident, one proving that Francis Gary Powers acted honorably through a trying ordeal in service to his country.
Download or read book Operation Overflight written by Francis Gary Powers and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-03 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this new edition of his classic 1970 memoir about the notorious U-2 incident, pilot Francis Gary Powers reveals the full story of what actually happened in the most sensational espionage case in Cold War history. After surviving the shoot-down of his reconnaissance plane and his capture on May 1, 1960, Powers endured sixty-one days of rigorous interrogation by the KGB, a public trial, a conviction for espionage, and the start of a ten-year sentence. After nearly two years, the U.S. government obtained his release from prison in a dramatic exchange for convicted Soviet spy Rudolph Abel. The narrative is a tremendously exciting suspense story about a man who was labeled a traitor by many of his countrymen but who emerged a Cold War hero.
Download or read book The CIA and the U 2 Program 1954 1974 written by Gregory W. Pedlow and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1998 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive & authoritative history of the CIA's manned overhead reconnaissance program (MORP), which from 1954 to 1974 developed & operated 2 extraordinary aircraft, the U-2 & the A-12 OXCART. Describes not only the program's technological & bureaucratic aspects, but also its political & international context. The MORP, along with other overhead systems that emerged from it, changed the CIA's work & structure in ways that were both revolutionary & permanent. The formation of the Directorate of S&T in the 1960s, principally to develop & direct reconnaissance programs, is the most obvious legacy of the events in this study.
Download or read book The Defiant Border written by Elisabeth Leake and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores why the Afghan-Pakistan borderlands have remained largely independent of state controls throughout the twentieth century.
Download or read book Mayday written by Michael Beschloss and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-08-16 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The “definitive” book on the U-2 episode and its disastrous impact on the future of the Cold War (Kirkus Reviews). On May Day 1960, Soviet forces downed a CIA spy plane flown deep into Soviet territory by Francis Gary Powers two weeks before a crucial summit. This forced President Dwight Eisenhower to decide whether, in an effort to save the meeting, to admit to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev—and the world—that he had secretly ordered Powers’s flight, or to claim that the CIA could take such a significant step without his approval. In rich and fascinating detail, Mayday explores the years of U-2 flights, which Eisenhower deemed “an act of war,” the US government’s misconceived attempt to cover up the true purpose of the flight, Khrushchev’s dramatic revelation that Powers was alive and in Soviet custody, and the show trial that sentenced the pilot to prison and hard labor. From a U-2’s cramped cockpit to tense meetings in the Oval Office, the Kremlin, Camp David, CIA headquarters, the Élysée Palace, and Number Ten Downing Street, historian Michael Beschloss draws on previously unavailable CIA documents, diaries, and letters, as well as the recollections of Eisenhower’s aides, to reveal the full high-stakes drama and bring to life its key figures, which also include Richard Nixon, Allen Dulles, and Charles de Gaulle. An impressive work of scholarship with the dramatic pacing a spy thriller, Mayday “may be one of the best stories yet written about just how those grand men of diplomacy and intrigue conducted our business” (Time).
Download or read book The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance written by Gregory Pedlow and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-03-15 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The CIA’s 2013 release of its book The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance 1954–1974 is a fascinating and important historical document. It contains a significant amount of newly declassified material with respect to the U-2 and Oxcart programs, including names of pilots; codenames and cryptonyms; locations, funding, and cover arrangements; electronic countermeasures equipment; cooperation with foreign governments; and overflights of the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, and other countries. Originally published with a Secret/No Foreign Dissemination classification, this detailed study describes not only the program’s technological and bureaucratic aspects, but also its political and international context, including the difficult choices faced by President Eisenhower in authorizing overflights of the Soviet Union and the controversy surrounding the shoot down there of U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers in 1960. The authors discuss the origins of the U-2, its top-secret testing, its specially designed high-altitude cameras and complex life-support systems, and even the possible use of poison capsules by its pilots, if captured. They call attention to the crucial importance of the U-2 in the gathering of strategic and tactical intelligence, as well as the controversies that the program unleashed. Finally, they discuss the CIA’s development of a successor to the U-2, the Oxcart, which became the world’s most technologically advanced aircraft. For the first time, the more complete 2013 release of this historical text is available in a professionally typeset format, supplemented with higher quality photographs that will bring alive these incredible aircraft and the story of their development and use by the CIA. This edition also includes a new preface by author Gregory W. Pedlow and a foreword by Chris Pocock. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
Download or read book Bridge of Spies written by Giles Whittell and published by Doubleday Canada. This book was released on 2010-11-09 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who were the three men the Soviet and American superpowers exchanged on Berlin's Glienicke Bridge on February 10, 1962, in the first and most legendary prisoner exhange between East and West? Bridge of Spies vividly traces the journeys of these men, whose fate defines the complex conflicts that characterized the most dangerous years of the Cold War. Bridge of Spies is a true story of three men — a Soviet Spy who was a master of disguise; Gary Powers, an American who was captured when his spy plane was shot down by the Russians; and Frederic Pryor, a young American doctor mistakenly identified as a spy and captured by the Soviets. The men in this three-way political swap had been drawn into the nadir of the Cold War by duty and curiosity, and the same tragicomedy of errors that induced Khrushchev to send missiles to Castro. Two of them — the spy and the pilot — were the original seekers of weapons of mass destruction. The third was an intellectual, in over his head. They were rescued against daunting odds by fate and by their families, and then all but forgotten. Even the U2 spy-plane pilot Powers is remembered now chiefly for the way he was vilified in the U.S. on his return. Yet the fates of those men exemplified the pathological mistrust that fueled the arms race for the next 30 years. This is their story.
Download or read book We Were Never There written by Kevin Wright and published by Europe@War. This book was released on 2021-09-30 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines early CIA U-2 operations looking at the missions flown and the sensors carried and describes how the imagery and electronic intelligence captured produced thousands of images and tape recordings that were used to produce high quality intelligence on the USSR's most secret military and scientific activities.
Download or read book Diplomacy Shot Down written by E. Bruce Geelhoed and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2020-03-26 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of the Cold War is littered with what-ifs, and in Diplomacy Shot Down, E. Bruce Geelhoed explores one of the most intriguing: What if the Soviets had not shot down the American U-2 spy plane and President Dwight D. Eisenhower had visited the Soviet Union in 1960 as planned? In August 1959, with his second term nearing its end, Eisenhower made the surprise announcement that he and Soviet premier Nikita S. Khrushchev would visit each other’s countries as a means of “thawing some of the ice” of the Cold War. Khrushchev’s trip to the United States in September 1959 resulted in plans for a four-power summit involving Great Britain and France, and for Eisenhower’s visit to Russia in early summer 1960. Then, in May 1960, the Soviet Union shot down an American U-2 surveillance plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers. The downing of Powers’s plane was, in Geelhoed’s recounting of this episode in Cold War history, not just a diplomatic crisis. The ensuing collapse of the summit and the subsequent cancelation of Eisenhower’s trip to the Soviet Union amounted to a critical missed opportunity for improved US-Soviet relations at a crucial juncture in the Cold War. In a blow-by-blow description of the diplomatic overtures, the U-2 incident, and the aftermath, Diplomacy Shot Down draws upon Eisenhower’s projected itinerary and unmade speeches and statements, as well as the American and international press corps’ preparations for covering the aborted visit, to give readers a sense of what might have been. Eisenhower’s prestige within the Soviet Union was so great, Geelhoed observes, that the trip, if it had happened, could well have led to a détente in the increasingly dangerous US-Soviet relationship. Instead, the cancelation of Ike’s visit led to an escalation in hostilities that played out around the globe and nearly guaranteed that the “missile gap” would reemerge as an issue in the 1960 presidential campaign. A detailed account of an episode that defined the Cold War for a generation, Diplomacy Shot Down is, in its insights and revelations, something rarer still—a behind-the-scenes look at history in the unmaking.
Download or read book Spy Flights of the Cold War written by Paul Lashmar and published by US Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the story of the secret aerial espionage war between the West and the Soviet Union during the Cold War era. Uncovers evidence of secret missions flown by US Air Force and Royal Air Force crews into the Soviet Union, drawing on interviews with US, UK, and Soviet pilots, and reveals details of an alarming 1950s US Air Force plan to use spy flights to provoke a nuclear war that would wipe out the Soviet Union and China. Distributed by Books International. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower written by Sergei N. Khrushchev and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 849 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Age of Eisenhower written by William I. Hitchcock and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 895 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times–bestselling biography: a “complete and powerful assessment” of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency (Booklist, starred review). Drawing on newly declassified documents and thousands of pages of unpublished material, The Age of Eisenhower tells the story of a masterful president guiding the nation through the great crises of the 1950s, from McCarthyism and the Korean War through civil rights turmoil and Cold War conflicts. This is a portrait of a skilled leader who, despite his conservative inclinations, found a middle path through the bitter partisanship of his era. At home, Eisenhower affirmed the central elements of the New Deal, such as Social Security; fought the demagoguery of Senator Joseph McCarthy; and advanced the agenda of civil rights for African-Americans. Abroad, he ended the Korean War and avoided a new quagmire in Vietnam. Yet he also charted a significant expansion of America’s missile technology and deployed a vast array of covert operations around the world to confront the challenge of communism. As he left office, he cautioned Americans to remain alert to the dangers of a powerful military-industrial complex that could threaten their liberties. Today, presidential historians rank Eisenhower fifth on the list of great presidents, and William Hitchcock’s “rich narrative” shows us why Ike’s stock has risen so high. He was a gifted leader, a decent man of humble origins who used his powers to advance the welfare of all Americans (The Wall Street Journal).
Download or read book The Cold War 1945 1991 written by Michael Shally-Jensen and published by Salem Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides in-depth analysis of eighty-six primary source documents and historic events related to the Cold War era.
Download or read book Risk Taking in International Politics written by Rose McDermott and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the way leaders deal with risk in making foreign policy decisions
Download or read book The Kremlinologist written by Jenny Thompson and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2018-03 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Kremlinologist chronicles major events of the Cold War through the prism of the life of one of its top diplomats, Llewellyn Thompson. His life went from the wilds of the American West to the inner sanctums of the White House and the Kremlin. As the ambassador to Moscow, he became an important advisor to presidents and a key participant in major twentieth-century events, including the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. Yet, unlike his contemporaries McGeorge Bundy and George C. Marshall--who considered Thompson one of the most crucial actors in the Cold War and the "unsung hero" of the Cuban Missile Crisis--he has not been the subject of a major biography until now. Thompson's daughters Jenny Thompson Vukacic and Sherry Thompson set out to document their father's life as thoroughly as possible. Relying on primary sources and interviews, they received generous assistance from archivists, historians, and colleagues of their father. They also acquired documents and information from Russian archives, including the KGB archives. As family, they had unprecedented access to his FBI dossier, State Department personnel files, family archives, letters, diaries, speeches, and documents. Their original research brings new material to light including important information on the U-2, Kennan's containment policy, and Thompson's role in US covert operations machinery. The book refutes historical misinterpretations of events in the Berlin Crisis, the Austrian State Treaty, and the Cuban Missile Crisis."--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Intelligence Revolution 1960 written by Edward A. Miller and published by United States Department of Defense. This book was released on 2012 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Overview: Provides a history of the Corona Satellite photo reconnaissance Program. It was a joint Central Intelligence Agency and United States Air Force program in the 1960s. It was then highly classified.
Download or read book Unlimited Horizons written by Peter W. Merlin and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Designed as a stopgap measure to provide overhead reconnaissance capability during the early years of the Cold War, the versatile U-2 has since evolved to meet changing requirements well into the 21st century. Though many authors have documented the airplane's operational history, few have made more than a cursory examination of its technical aspects or its role as a NASA research platform. This volume includes an overview of the origin and development of the Lockheed U-2 family of aircraft with early National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) involvement, construction and materials challenges faced by designers and builders, releasable performance characteristics and capabilities, use of U-2 and ER-2 airplanes as research platforms, and technical and programmatic lessons learned.
