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> public discussion That's the reason in my opinion. (A) If the Soviets publicize US penetrations of their airspace, they look militarily weak. (B) If the US
by ethbro 9y ago
> public discussion
That's the reason in my opinion.
(A) If the Soviets publicize US penetrations of their airspace, they look militarily weak.
(B) If the US publicizes their penetrations, then (A) as the Soviet public possibly finds out, any fatalities (and there were some) now become part of public debate, and additional parties in the US are now involved in the discussion as to whether or not these should happen.
(C) If either party publicizes their own or the other, then the opposing party is likely to publicize in retaliation. Given that both parties were conducting penetrations to assess air defense systems, this was the PR equivalent of MAD.
Barring a scenario where the president needed a clear "victory" to buttress public opinion, there was no win to be had in the public being informed.
Add in the fact that deep in the Cold War most of the media outlets were still self-censoring "for the country" and there was no one with incentive to disclose.
- eesmith 9y agoThat sounds reasonable. Though I don't think your (B)(A) regarding the Soviet public was that important. Rather, if the Soviet public were influential, would there have been the gulag system, which ended less than a decade before Powers was shot down? But the US response to the Soviets shooting down Powers was to lie to the public. Surely the US could have remained silent or non-committal, rather than construct a cover-up, and walk into Khrushchev's publicity trap. According to Wikipedia, Eisenhower said to his secretary "I would like to resign." That leads to the obvious question - how often does the US government lie to the public?
- badosu 9y ago> That leads to the obvious question - how often does the US government lie to the public? Lie I don't know, but omit/diverge all the time.