The CIA and Navy overcame considerbale obstacles to guarantee more efficient intelligence-gathering systems. Here's What You Need To Remember: First flown in 1957, the 63-foot-long, jet-powered U-2—capable of flying as high as 70,000 feet—is still used by the U.S. Air Force. On May 1, 1960, the Soviet Union shot down a CIA U-2 spy plane and captured its pilot, Francis Gary Powers. It was an international crisis for America’s intelligence agencies. (This first appeared last year.) A planned summit between Pres. Dwight Eisenhower and Premier Nikita Khrushchev was scuttled, much to Eisenhower’s embarrassment and to the fury of the Pakistanis, from whose territory the flight had been launched.