My Journey on Lincoln's Assassination

[L Verge]

(01-22-2019 06:17 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(01-22-2019 04:53 PM)GustD45 Wrote:  If I remember the history of that time didn't Judah Benjamin burn all of his papers before he died in Paris, France?

Yes, Gust. In his biography of Benjamin, Eli Evans writes:

"For reasons that puzzle historians, Benjamin burned his personal papers--some as he escaped from Richmond in 1865 and almost all of the rest just before he died--because he left only six scraps of paper at his death." One historian called him a "virtual incendiary."

The sums of Confederate money (good currency) that ended up on European soil in time for Benjamin's exile there is also very interesting.

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As for the Gary Powers U-2 spy plane mission, Gen. Tidwell never went any further. I did some reading, however, and imo, that incident was a minor glitch in the whole Cold War era. Although the U.S. denied it at first, it was a spy mission with a super-duper plane designed to fly above Russian radar. Somehow, it either failed to do so or the Soviets were tipped off.

Powers took fire from more than one interceptor, and the last one hit and destroyed the tail of the plane, sending it in uncontrollable spinning. Powers could not eject because it would have severed both legs; supposedly, he failed to blow up the plane as instructed (no such orders were given); he also did not take the magic potion and kill himself (again, no such instructions to do so). He was sentenced to 10 years in a Soviet prison, but was swapped in two years. He then worked with the government and Lockheed to try and figure out what went wrong with the plane half way into a flight that was supposed to have him flying and taking photos the whole length of Russia.

He was later awarded numerous awards for his service to the U.S. He was killed in a news helicopter crash in the late-1970s.

His son now runs a Cold War Museum in Virginia, about 50 miles outside of D.C. He wrote a nice article for the Smithsonian some years ago to set the record straight.

One account that I read talks about him being interrogated by the Russians and refusing to give out information. His interrogator told him that he didn't have to -- "the American press will tell us everything." Fifty-plus years later, the press continues to blab (both actual truth and fake news).