The U-2 Spy Plane Incident 50 Years Later - Francis Gary Powers, Coward or Hero? Was Khrushchev Drunk at the Summit? What Happened in Ike's Cabinet?

Fifty years ago today -- May 1, 1960 -- Francis Gary Powers was shot down while piloting his U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union.

What followed led to the biggest crisis in Dwight Eisenhower's presidency. Through a series of misjudgments, poor advice from his closest aides, the machinations of Nikita Khrushchev and just plain bad luck, Ike's hopes for a triumphant summit meeting of the day's superpowers in Paris (which could have made for a fitting capstone to his military and political careers) were crushed.

For those interested in the details of the event -- as well as rarely discussed analysis of why Khrushchev behaved as he did -- I have posted an article I recently wrote as a grad student at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. The paper includes citations from a just-released book by two Russian historians who had access to declassified Soviet files.

The article also sheds light on the debate over Powers' actions, an incident with a possibly inebriated Khrushchev in a French village during the Paris summit and insight into the mutual suspicions and misjudgments between the US and the USSR during the Cold War.