Cold War

“It wasn't until the Russians could develop the SA–2 surface-to-air missile and successfully shoot them down——”

“Indeed, sir. In fact, there is a very real example when we built the U–2 spy plane and flew it over then-Russia and were taking reconnaissance. And when we first started flying the aircraft, it flew so high and so fast we thought they were not tracking us. In reality, they were tracking every flight”

“I think there are several reasons. I think at the time when this first—this reality became evident to the U.S. Government, we were in the middle of a cold war with then-Soviet Union, and we did not want to tip our hands to what our knowledge base was on this topic. We did not want to broadcast that to the community”