Eruption at the Summit

The high-powered international diplomatic pressure generated by the May Day U-2 intelligence flight over Russia by U.S. Pilot Francis Gary Powers erupted spectacularly this week at the Big Four summit conference in Paris.

Sitting across the table from the President of the U.S., Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev vented a bitter attack on the U.S. and on Dwight Eisenhower. He withdrew his invitation to the President to visit Russia next month. He demanded an apology for the U-2 flight, threatened to break up the summit conference unless the U.S. would promise to punish all responsible for the flight and promise that all such overflights cease. He suggested, in the kind of face to face insult that strained even cold war diplomacy, that the summit should be adjourned until the U.S. could elect a new president.

The President accused Khrushchev of coming all the way from Moscow to Paris to deliver an "ultimatum" and to "sabotage" the summit meeting, yet offered to meet with him in a private two-way conversation to try to save the summit. But Eisenhower assured Khrushchev that U.S. intelligence overflights had been sus pended "and are not to be resumed." Then the President disclosed that he in tends to go to the United Nations with a new plan for aerial inspection of all countries to guard against surprise attack -- a plan similar to his "open-skies" proposal made to the 1955 summit conference at Geneva, which Russia has repeatedly and emphatically turned down.

Right to Look. The summit eruption was brought on not only by the U-2 flight itself {see following story), but by the fact that all last week the U.S. took the firm position that, in the circumstances of the cold war, it had a right to defend itself against surprise attack by intelligence activities. This policy was laid down first by Secretary of State Christian Herter in a formal statement. "The Government of the United States," said he, as he prepared to go to the summit, "would be derelict to its responsibility not only to the American people but to free peoples everywhere if it did not, in the absence of Soviet cooperation, take such measures as are possible unilaterally to lessen and to overcome this danger of surprise attack. In fact, the U.S. has not and does not shirk this responsibility." When Khrushchev responded with a threat to "strike" and "hit" at any nation that provided an airbase for such U.S. intelligence flights, the State Department replied that the U.S. would defend any foreign nation whose bases were so attacked.

"Utmost Confidence." Herter's proposition was recognized from the beginning as straining the bounds of international law (see box, next page), and promised a briefcase full of problems. But both par ties in Congress closed ranks behind it. In the Senate, Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson said: "Espionage and intelligence gathering are not something that cause the cold war. Nikita Khrushchev cannot use this incident in such a way as to divide the American people and to weaken our national strength. The American people are united in a determination to preserve our freedoms, and we are not going to be shaken from that course."

In the House, Missouri Democrat Clarence Cannon, a trained lawyer, brought his colleagues to a standing ovation by revealing that his special subcommittee on appropriations had secretly approved the U.S. overflights of the U.S.S.R. from the very beginning, and by praising President Eisenhower, "in whose military capacity [we] have the utmost confidence."

The President told his press conference that the real cause of world tension is not the U.S. policy of high flights but the Soviet "fetish of secrecy and concealment" behind which the U.S.S.R. could prepare a large-scale attack without detection. "No one wants another Pearl Harbor. This means that we must have knowledge of military forces and preparations around the world, especially those capable of massive surprise attacks. Secrecy in the Soviet Union makes this essential . . . Ever since the beginning of my Administration, I have issued directives to gather in every feasible way the information required to protect the United States and the free world against surprise attack and to enable them to make effective preparations for defense."

The secret operations are "supervised by responsible officials," he went on. "We do not use our Army, Navy or Air Force for this purpose, first to avoid any possibility of the use of force in connection with these activities, and second, because our military forces cannot be given latitude under broad directives but must be kept under strict control."

Common Cause.The right-to-spy proposition had its domestic critics from the beginning. Adlai Stevenson recognized the need for intelligence but asked: "Is it possible that we. the United States . . . could do the very thing we dread: carelessly, accidentally trigger the holocaust?" Columnist Walter Lippmann kept up a running battle from the legal flank: "To avow that we intend to violate Soviet sovereignty is to put everybody on the spot . . . The avowal is an open invitation to the Soviet government to take the case to the United Nations, where our best friends will be grievously embarrassed."

Nikita Khrushchev did threaten last week to take the issue to the U.N. But the first hours of the summit conference this week proved that his goal was not so much discussion of issues as massive propaganda. And if he wrecked the prospects of meaningful high-level international negotiation in the process, he did not much seem to care.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.