Panel of advisers established in 1955 by the U.S. National Security Council to provide White House-level approval of important or sensitive covert operations. On the committee were Allen W. Dulles, the Director Of Central Intelligence, and representatives of President Eisenhower, the Department of State, and the Department of Defense.
Eisenhower's 5412 Committee, later named the Special Group, was particularly charged with examining any covert operations that could cause political damage to the Eisenhower administration. (The Dulles doctrine of Plausible Denial was designed to ease such damage.)
After the exposure of the Berlin Tunnel in 1956, Eisenhower also wanted direct knowledge of any covert action that infringed on another nation's sovereignty.
Dulles decided that the U-2 spyplane was too sensitive and secret to be brought before the 5412 Committee. Thus, as Michael R. Beschloss observed in Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev and the U-2 Affair (1986), Eisenhower "took a role essentially as U-2 project manager, making critical choices on when and sometimes where the planes should fly." When a U-2, piloted by Francis Gary Powers, was shot down over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960, the weight of the damage fell on Dulles and the CIA, not the 5412 Committee.
