The Press & the U-2

In the first days after the U-2 case broke, a general reading of the U.S. daily press could only have led to the conclusions that 1) the U.S. was almost totally in the wrong, and 2) chances for "success" at the Paris summit conference had been woefully diminished. From country publisher to Washington pundit, from cartoonist (see cuts) to editorial writer, came the outcries.

Wrote the Poplar Bluff, Mo. American Republic: "Uncle Bungle has done it again!" Said the Washington Post and Times Herald: "The incident has had the momentary effect of damaging the prestige of the U.S., of alarming or embarrassing the allies, and of fueling Mr. Khrushchev's propaganda machine. This country was caught with jam on its hands." Asked the Chicago Sun-Times: "Was the information to be obtained from the flight worth the possible political loss suffered by the capture and exploitation by the Reds? It is hard to put the wings of peace on the cloak of a spy."

"Barefaced Liar." Chicago's American criticized the U.S.'s Central Intelligence Agency for its "stupidity in sending a flying spy to risk getting caught in the middle of Russia just before the summit conference." Said the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "Do our intelligence operatives enjoy so much freewheeling authority that they can touch off an incident of grave international import by low-level decisions unchecked by responsible policymaking power?" The Post-Dispatch also called for an official investigation "into the circumstances which placed our country before the world in the light of a barefaced liar." The Sacramento Bee said the Eisenhower Administration had "left matters so subordinates could wreck the conference and possibly provoke war." Headlined the San Fran cisco Chronicle: MORAL LEADERSHIP OF U.S. HARMED.

Of all the worriers, none wrote a gloomier lead than the New York Times's Washington Bureau Chief James Reston. Said Reston, sounding somewhat like Gabriel Heatter: "This was a sad and perplexed capital tonight, caught in a swirl of charges of clumsy administration, bad judgment and bad faith."

"Wonderful News." There were, to be sure, some early exceptions to the general handwringing. The New York Daily News was predictably truculent in advising President Eisenhower about how to reply to Khrushchev's charges: "To sweet talk this rat at this time would only encourage him to further pre-summit impudence." Said Hearst's San Francisco Examiner: "The way some people are talking, you would think we had sold our world leader ship down the Volga." Said the Chicago Tribune: "In the bargaining at the sum mit, the Soviet demands and claims will be deterred only by the knowledge which the Russians have of U.S. power. The incident of the U-2 should not encourage them to believe that the U.S. is powerless."

One of the most closely reasoned early judgments came from New York Times Military Reporter Hanson W. Baldwin, who found encouragement in the fact that the Russians had been unable to shoot down previous U.S. planes flying over So viet territory: "The shooting down of a U-2 indicates not a Soviet lead in the defensive antiaircraft missiles but, on the contrary, a Soviet lag." That same idea was enthusiastically endorsed by Colum nist Joseph Alsop, who can ordinarily find a cloud to surround any silver lining: "There is also wonderful news in the bad news of the American plane that was shot down in the Soviet Union." "Manifest Absurdity." By late last week the U.S. press as a whole had had time to make some thoughtful, corrective judgments of the U-2 affair -- and of its first reaction. Wrote United Feature Syndicate Columnist William S. White: "The people who ought to be on the side of the U.S. are doing more than its enemies to destroy its influence as the irreplaceable leader of the free world. The incident of the American 'spy plane' is being inflated to manifest absurdity. Why don't we --and our friends abroad -- quit buying the melodramatic rubbish the Russians are putting out?" Even more outspoken was the New York Times, which had been marching up and down hill on the issue for several days. In one of the toughest editorials it has run in recent years, the Times, under the heading of THE BREAST BEATERS, wrote last weekend: "The fervent sincerity with which some naive Americans have been publicly beating their breasts because we have sent reconnaissance planes across the Soviet Union's frontiers is matched by tthe nauseating hypocrisy with which Premier Khrushchev, who is not naive, has been castigating us for our 'act of aggression.' The Americans should know, as Mr.

Khrushchev knows, that every nation in the world attempts, in peace as well as in war, to learn what it can about its potential enemies. That is not only a function of self-defense, it is a prime requisite.

Above all, it is not a question of morals, it is a matter of necessity. Let us have done with the whimpering about espionage being a departure 'from the code of responsible international behavior.' It has been part of the code from the beginning of time and it will be to the end. Unacknowledged, yes; distasteful, as President Eisenhower observed, yes--but necessary and inevitable . . .

"Mr. Khrushchev's injured innocence is ludicrous, though in the midst of his threats he does admit that the reconnaissance flight was made 'not as a preparation for war.' It is perfectly natural that he is exploiting all the propaganda advantage possible out of our bad luck and bad judgment--but that does not mean that we must act as though we had been caught in the middle of a Czechoslovakia or a Hungary or a Korea."

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