How It All Began - The U-2 and the Bay of Pigs To understand the
origins of the Power Control Group, it is necessary to return to
the last years of the Eisenhower administration and examine what
was going on in the Cold War. Eisenhower had suffered several
strokes and a heart attack. He was partially immobilized, and
entrusted a major share of the coordination of clandestine
activities being conducted by the CIA against the "Red Menace"
to Richard Nixon, his vice president. While Ike was warning
against the military-industrial-complex's domestic influence,
and attempting to move toward detente with the Soviets through a
summit meeting, he was being sabotaged by the plans section of
the CIA and by Richard Nixon. A part of the CIA arranged for a
U-2 with Gary Powers as pilot to go down over Russia, thus
giving Khrushchev a chance to expose American spying and to
cancel the summit meeting. This was one of the earliest moves of
the nucleus of what later evolved into the Power Control Group.
In the spring of 1960,