Only days before Gagarin's successful journey, several European newspapers and radio stations told of a top-secret Soviet launch that carried another man into space. The Soviet Union denied this story vigorously. Now, for the first time, this program reveals with direct evidence that the first man in space was not Yuri Gagarin, but Colonel Vladimir Ilyushin. Using recently declassified evidence from Kremlin archives, and interviews with Khrushchev's son as well as with the former Director of the Russian Space Agency, The Cosmonaut Cover-up tells the story of how Vladimir Ilyushin blasted into space, orbited the Earth, then crash-landed in a remote region of China, sustaining serious injuries. Afraid that a less than completely successful space flight would reveal weaknesses in its highly secret space program, the Soviet Union suppressed rumors of the flight. The Kremlin apparently destroyed all evidence of Ilyushin's mission, including film and photos, and ordered all participants to keep quiet
