The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance; the U-2 and Oxcart Programs, 1954-1974

Secret NOFORN

Chapter 4

that the Soviets had discontinued radar tracking of the flight's progress two hours earlier (0529Z), southwest of Sverdlovsk. Although there was no word from the Soviet Union concerning the missing U-2, key project personnel assembled in the Agency control center that morning (with the exception of Bissell, who was out of town and did not arrive until 1530) to analyze the latest information and discuss courses of action. They quickly established a new project, known as Operation MUDLARK, to gather and evaluate all available information about the downed U-2. $ ^{31} $

Bissell and the other project officials did not know whether Powers was dead or if the plane and camera had been destroyed, but they believed that there was no way that a pilot could survive a crash from an altitude above 70,000 feet. They, therefore, decided to stick with the standard cover story for U-2 flights: that they were weather flights staged by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)—originally the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, renamed in 1958. This cover story had been approved by the President in 1956.

By the end of the day, the Operation MUDLARK officials had prepared a statement based on the standard cover story but modified to fit the available information on Powers' flight and to show Adana as the aircraft's base in order to conceal Pakistan's role in the mission. This revised cover story, along with a mission flight plan consistent with it, was sent to the field commander at Adana, to Air Force Europe headquarters, to replace the cover story that had been prepared and distributed in advance of the mission. The first announcement of the new cover story came late on 2 May by the Adana base commander, but it did not appear in print until the following day. On Tuesday, 3 May, NASA released a statement about a high-altitude weather plane that was missing on a flight inside Turkey. The statement had been designed to provide an explanation for the presence of wreckage inside the Soviet Union by noting that "the pilot reported over the emergency frequency that he was experiencing oxygen difficulties." $ ^{32} $ Thus, if the Soviets protested and pointed to wreckage inside their borders, NASA could claim that the pilot had lost consciousness and the aircraft had then flown into the Soviet Union before crashing.