On May 1, 1960, an America U-2 spy plane was shot down in Soviet airspace, causing great embarrassment to the United States, which had tried to conceal its surveillance efforts from the USSR. In 1957, the U.S. had established a secret intelligence facility in Pakistan in order to send U-2 spy planes into Soviet airspace and secretly sent the spy plane into Soviet territory.
Upon release of the news, the United States initially covered up the story by claiming the U-2 was a NASA aircraft that had gone missing north of Turkey. However, President Eisenhower had to eventually admit the mistake after the Soviets produced the missing U-2, the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, and pictures of Soviet bases that the spy plane had captured.
The relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union rapidly deteriorated as a result of this misstep, and subsequently ruined the Four Powers Summit between the United States, Soviet Union, France and the United Kingdom. Nikita Khrushchev blasted the U.S. actions, condemning the spying as an act of mistrust and aggression. He then rescinded his previous invitation for President Eisenhower to visit the Soviet Union later that year. Powers was put on trial in the USSR and eventually swapped for KGB agent Rudolf Abel, who had been arrested in Brooklyn by the FBI in 1957, as depicted in the 2015 Steven Spielberg movie Bridge of Spies.
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