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little different view of this. I think he had a view that
the press looked on the President as someone who was not in
full charge of the State Department at time, and he thought
this would contribute to that, which would be very bad for
the President. So we were thinking of it more from the
international aspect. We had the contrary feeling.

Mr. Baron. Did the President's trust in Allen Dulles
diminish significantly after the U-2 affair.

Mr. Dillon. No, because there was nothing wrong with the
U-2 affair, except that the President had authorized it
specifically, it was flying on the day after he authorized it.
The only bolix that came was in the after events, where this
silly press release announcement was put out by NASA, I guess
it was, that this plane had just been sort of flying around and
got lost, or something like that. And we really had a very
difficult time about that at the morning meeting where the
news came to us, which was out in the Virginia hills. The
President had a meeting of a restricted nature afterwards,
including me and Allen Dulles, the Secretary of Defense, and
Colonel Goodpastor.

And he put me in charge of handling the whole thing, and
gave me the responsibility. And he wasn't fully briefed on
all the cover stories or anything of this nature. And I
went back to the State Department and was working diligently
on this and talking to Mr. Dulles as to what we would say.

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