A Cover-Up Gone Wrong
KGB Museum in Lubyanka Building, the former headquarters of the main security agency for the Soviet Union – KGB, in Moscow, Russia, on March 15th, 1990. Pictured: Francis Gary Powers equipment. (Photo by Wojtek Laski/Getty Images)
With the ongoing Cold War tensions between America and the Soviet Union, the Americans, at the time led by President Eisenhower, acted quickly to try and cover-up the truth. They believed that Powers had died and the plane had been destroyed, so invented a story that a ‘weather plane’ had crash-landed after the pilot passed out due to a lack of oxygen. Meanwhile, the Soviets, led by Premier Khrushchev, set a trap to embarrass their American counterparts. They revealed that a plane had indeed crash landed, but did not state that the pilot was alive and had been captured. The Americans continued with their ‘weather plane’ story until Khrushchev eventually revealed the truth, making the US look pretty foolish and humiliating Eisenhower.