◆ SpookStack

tll ate ann eS + tee mt he . om nee Following is a statement read by. President Eisenhower at his press conference on May 11, | together with the texts of U.S. notes of May 10 and 12 and a Soviet note of May 10. STATEMENT BY PRESIDENT EISENHOWER White House press release dated May 11 I have made some notes from which I want to talk to you about this U-2 incident. A full statement about this matter has been made by the State Department,’ and there have been several statesmanlike remarks by leaders of both parties. For my part, I supplement what the Secretary of State has had to say with the following four main points. After that, I shall have nothing fur- ther to say—for the simple reason I can think of nothing to add that might be useful at this time. First point is this: the need for intelligence- gathering activities. No one wants another Pearl Harbor. This means that we must have knowledge of military forces and preparations around the world, espe- cially those capable of massive surprise attack. Secrecy in the Soviet Union makes this essen- tial. In most of the world no large-scale attack could be prepared in secret. But in the Soviet Union there is a fetish of secrecy and concealment. This is a major cause of international tension and uneasiness today. Our deterrent must never be placed in jeopardy. The safety of the whole free world demands this. As the Secretary of State pointed out in his re- cent statement, ever since the beginning of my ad- ministration I have issued directives to gather, in every feasible way, the information required to > BULLETIN of May 23, 1960, p. 816. ee te gh ti A tient et nt ae U.S. States Position on U-2 Incident a . . protect the United States and the free world against surprise attack and to enable them to make effective preparations for defense. My second point: the nature of intelligence- gathering activities. . These have a special and secret character. They are, 80 to speak, “below the surface” activities. They are secret because they must circumvent measures designed by other countries to protect secrecy of military preparations. They are divorced from the regular, visible agencies of government, which stay clear of opera- ' tional involvement in specific detailed activities. These elements operate under broad directives to seek and gather intelligence short of the use of force, with operations supervised by responsible officials within this area of secret activities. 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, for ob- vious reasons, cannot be given latitude under broad directives but must be kept under strict con- trol in every detail. These activities have their own rules and meth-. ods of concealment, which seek to mislead and obscure—just as in the Soviet allegations there are many discrepancies. For example, there is some reason to believe that the plane in question was not shot down at high altitude. The normal agencies of our Government are unaware of these specific activities or of the special efforts to con- ceal them. . Third point: How should we view all of this activity ? : It is a distasteful but vital necessity. We prefer and work for a different kind of world—and a different way of obtaining the in- formation essential to confidence and effective de-