Free Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency by James Bamford Page B

daggers. An hour later, reaching
penetration altitude of 66,000 feet, he passed over the Soviet border, high
above the village of Kirovabad in the remote Tadjik Republic. Oddly, Powers
felt the Russians knew he was coming.
    In this,
he was perceptive. Soviet radar had begun tracking the plane before it ever
reached the border. Immediately, an alert was telephoned to command
headquarters and air defense staff officers were summoned to their posts.
    In still-darkened
Moscow, gaily decorated for the grand May Day celebration, a telephone rang
next to Party Chairman Khrushchev's bed. "Minister of Defense Marshal
Malinovsky reporting," said the voice on the other end. Malinovsky told
his boss that a U-2 had crossed the border from Afghanistan and was flying in
the direction of Sverdlovsk, in central Russia. "Shoot down the plane by
whatever means," barked the Soviet leader. "If our antiaircraft units
can just keep their eyes open and stop yawning long enough," he added,
"I'm sure we'll knock the plane down." The days of protest were over.
"We were sick and tired of these unpleasant surprises—sick and tired of
being subjected to these indignities," Khrushchev later wrote. "They were
making these flights to show up our impotence. Well, we weren't impotent any
longer."
    But Powers
was in luck. A missile battalion more than a dozen miles below was not on alert
duty that day. A missile launch was considered but then rejected as unfeasible.
Instead, fighter aircraft were scrambled in an attempt to shoot down the plane.
"An uncomfortable situation was shaping up," recalled former Soviet
Air Force colonel Alexander Orlov, who was involved in air defense at the time.
"The May Day parade was scheduled to get underway at mid-morning, and
leaders of the party, the government, and the Armed Forces were to be present
as usual. In other words, at a time when a major parade aimed at demonstrating
Soviet military prowess was about to begin, a not-yet-identified foreign
aircraft was flying over the heart of the country and Soviet air defenses
appeared unable to shoot it down."
    "Shame!"
Khrushchev screamed at Marshal S. S. Biryuzov, the chief of the Air Defense
Forces. "The country was giving air defense everything it needs, and still
you cannot shoot down a subsonic aircraft!" Biryuzov had no excuses.
"If I could become a missile," he fumed, "I myself would fly and
down this damned intruder." The tension was palpable. "Nerves of
military people at airfields," said Orlov, "missile positions,
command-and-control facilities, the Air Force, and the Air Defense Forces were
badly frayed. . . . Khrushchev demanded that the intruding aircraft be shot
down at all costs. The Soviet leader and his lieutenants clearly viewed the
violation of their nation's skies by a foreign reconnaissance aircraft on the
day of a Soviet national holiday, and just two weeks before a summit conference
in Paris, as a political provocation."
    Russian
radar continued to follow the U-2 across the Central Asian republics. By the
time Powers reached the Tashkent area, as many as thirteen MiGs had been
scrambled in an unsuccessful attempt to shoot him down. Far below, Powers could
see the condensation trail of a single-engine jet moving fast in the opposite
direction. Five to ten minutes later he saw another contrail, this time moving
in the same direction, paralleling his course. "I was sure now they were
tracking me on radar," he later recalled, "vectoring in and relaying
my heading to the aircraft."
    But Powers
knew that at his altitude there was no way for the pilots even to see him, let
alone attack him. "If this was the best they could do," he thought,
"I had nothing to worry about." He then wondered how the Russians
felt, knowing he was up there but unable to do anything about it. Had he known
of a top secret CIA study the previous summer he might not have been so cocky,
but the pilots were never informed of its findings. The study gave the U-2 a
very limited life because of