Operation Overflight

by Francis Gary Powers

  “There may be another way. You go back to your cell and think about it.”

  I did. And I knew it had to be one of two things. That I defect to Russia or that I become a double agent.

  At our next session the major asked me if I had thought about the matter we had discussed. I said I had, and that I still couldn’t figure out what he meant.

  With that the subject was dropped.

  Obviously they didn’t want to make the suggestion themselves. If made, it would have to be my idea.

  I hoped they were holding their breaths.

  Torture, I decided, would be better than not knowing.

  On Tuesday, May 10, on being taken to the morning interrogation, I told my inquisitors that I would refuse to answer further questions, on any subject, until I had proof the American government had been informed I was alive.

  Refusing to back down, I was returned to my cell. That afternoon, when the guard unlocked the door and motioned me out, I had the feeling this might be my last walk.

  Instead I was taken to a larger interrogation room. Rudenko and a number of other people were present. The interpreter had a copy of The New York Times, dated Sunday, May 8, only two days ago. He then read from a speech purportedly made by Khrushchev in which he said: “We have parts of the plane, and we also have the pilot, who is quite alive and kicking. The pilot is in Moscow, and so are the parts of the plane.”

  “Can I see the paper?” I asked.

  “Not permitted.”

  “You could be making that up. Or you could have had that paper printed right here in Moscow.”

  They brought out other U.S. papers, quoting from interviews giving the reactions of my wife and both my parents to the news. My wife, the articles said, had been flown back to Milledgeville, Georgia, where her mother lived. The comments of my mother and father were so typical that I couldn’t doubt their veracity. “I’m going to appeal to Mr. Khrushchev personally,” my father said, “to be fair to my boy. As one old coal miner to another, I’m sure he’ll listen to me.”

  I couldn’t help it. I broke down and cried.

  My interrogators didn’t know what to make of this. But they weren’t experiencing the relief I felt.

  Just knowing that my family knew I was alive and thinking of me, I was suddenly no longer as alone.

  Back in my cell, realizing that Khrushchev had released the news of my capture, that it had appeared on the front page of The New York Times and other papers, I began to sense for the first time that in the outside world this was not being treated as just another instance of a plane being shot down. That this was to be no ordinary case.

  Five

  The release of news of my capture marked a turning point in the interrogations: they became tougher. Now I had to try to outguess not one adversary but two: Russian intelligence, and the American press.

  “You lied to us!”

  The blunt accusation stunned me. “What do you mean?”

  They had caught me at something, but what? The actual altitude of the U-2, the number of overflights I’d made? These and a dozen other possibilities ran through my mind as I waited for the interpreter to translate the reply.

  “You told us you had never taken a lie-detector test. But it says right here, in The New York Times, that you did!”

  I hadlied about that: I didn’t want them suggesting that inasmuch as I had already taken one such test, I certainly couldn’t object to another.

  At the time it had seemed a safe lie. It was the kind of information I felt sure they would have no way of checking. I hadn’t counted on a newspaper giving it to them, for ten cents.

  “It says here that all the CIA job applicants are required to take polygraph tests.”

  “That may be true of the agents,” I replied. “But we were pilots. Hired to fly airplanes.”

  From then on each familiar question became charged with a hidden meaning. Why were they asking that again? Did it mean they had learned something?

  Often it did.

  “You told us the U-2’s maximum altitude is sixty-eight thousand feet. Yet this newspaper says the plane ’can actually rise to close to one hundred thousand feet’! How do you explain that?”

  “The writer of that article has never flown a U-2. I have.”

  There was one saving grace. Given two contradictory statements, they had to make a choice. Although I couldn’t be sure, I felt they were often inclined toward accepting my version, since I had proven truthful on the things they could verify. Nor was this particular contradiction a dangerous one: other newspapers and magazines gave the U-2’s maximum altitude as ninety, eighty, seventy, sixtyfive, sixty, and fifty-five thousand feet.

  Yet, in my particular situation, the incorrect information was often as dangerous as the correct, especially since it was often attributed to “an authoritative government source.” If they were getting their questions from the newspapers, a fantastic amount of misinformation was being published. While much of it was undoubtedly conjecture, I wondered whether some of it might have been intentionally “leaked” by the agency. But from the way they quizzed me, in bits and pieces, never letting me see the papers themselves, it was impossible to discern the background pattern. All I knew was that the U-2 had become world news.

  While I was most anxious to read the newspapers, I came to dread the sight of them.

  “See,” Major Vasaelliev would say, brandishing a paper, “there’s no reason for you to withhold information. We’ll find it out anyway. Your press will give it to us.”

  Often they did. From American newspapers they learned that Watertown was in Nevada, not Arizona; that flights had been made from English bases; that the U-2s were used to measure fallout from Soviet hydrogen-bomb tests.

  “Did you know that President Eisenhower personally authorized the flights over Russia?”

  “No, I didn’t. Is that true?”

  A trick? Or had the incident become much bigger than I suspected?

  With the release of the news, there was another change: gradually nature took over, and I began to eat again. At first it was only a cup of yoghurt at breakfast and lunch, but before long I was even trying the foul-smelling fish soup. Though I never found any pieces of fish in it, from the aroma it was obvious a very ripe one had at least swum through.

  I estimated my weight loss to be between ten and fifteen pounds. The heart palpitation remained, however, and that worried me.

  As did what was going on in the United States.

  Toward the middle of May, I received additional clues. I was taken out of the prison for the second time, to examine the wreckage of the plane. A display had been set up in a building in Gorky Park. On the walls were large signs in Russian and English, the latter reading: THIS Is WHAT THE AMERICAN SPY WAS EQUIPPED WITH; POWERS FRANCIS GARY THE PILOT OF THE SHOT AMERICAN PLANE; AMMUNITION AND OUTFIT OF THE AMERICAN SPY. Below the signs were displays with my maps; identification; parachute, helmet, pressure suit; survival gear—knife, pistol, ammunition, first-aid kit.

  The poison pin was prominently displayed. As were the gold coins and flag reading “I am an American…”in fourteen languages.

  Accompanied by an interpreter, stenographer, and a dozen technical experts, I was questioned about each piece of equipment. If it was a standard aircraft part, such as the tachometer, I’d identify it readily. But if part of the special equipment, I’d examine it curiously, as if seeing it for the first time.

  And in a sense I was. Never before had I realized how identifiable everything on the plane was. The engine was stamped “Pratt & Whitney”; the camera bore, in addition to its model number, focal length and other specification, the name plates of its U.S. manufacturers; the destruct device was labeled “DESTRUCTOR UNIT, Beckman and Whitley, Inc.,” with the penciled-in date on which it had been received at Incirlik—August, 1959; the radio parts had the trademarks of General Electric, Sylvania, Raytheon, Hewlett-Packard, and others.

  Nor was it surprising that they kept insisting I
was military. The granger was stamped “MILITARY EQUIP.” A sign under the fueling hatch read:“Fuel only with MIL-D-25524A. Permission to use emergency fuel and climb limitations must be obtained from Director of Materiél.”

  No effort had been made to disguise the nationality of the plane. Yet, had the destruct device been used, only a small portion of the aircraft, that containing the surveillance equipment, would have been destroyed. Again it seemed no one had really considered the possibility the plane might go down in hostile territory.

  The aircraft itself was a mess, some parts missing entirely. The instrument panel revealed indications of a fire in the cockpit, but apparently a small one, since the maps and other papers were merely singed. The wings and tail were displayed separately from the battered fuselage. I was especially interested in examining the tail, to determine whether there was evidence it had been shot off.

  But there were no scorch marks, and the paint was intact.

  Everything I saw confirmed my belief that the aircraft had not been hit, but disabled by a near-miss.

  Seeing the display, I no longer had any doubt that the Russians were exploiting the incident for maximum propaganda value.

  From being worried that no one knew I was alive I had gone full circle to being much too well known. I was not at all sure it was a desirable change.

  Shortly after this I was informed I would be tried for espionage under Article 2 of the Soviet Law on Criminal Responsibility for Crimes Against the State. Maximum penalty, seven to fifteen years’ imprisonment, or death.

  This aroused no great hope. Before, they could have killed me and no one would have been the wiser. Now they would have to observe the amenities. But the end result would be the same. After a secret trial, I would be shot.

  Could I see an attorney now? The investigation is not yet completed. When will it be completed? When we have learned everything we wish to know.

  With the press each day adding to their knowledge, I knew that sooner or later they would succeed in trapping me in one or more lies. Should that happen, they would question everything I had already told them. Thus far I had succeeded in withholding the most important information in my possession. But this didn’t mean I could do so indefinitely. There were other ways to make me talk.

  One reason I was so concerned was an incident that had occurred a few nights earlier.

  Because the bed was so uncomfortable, I always slept fitfully. Very late that night I had rolled over and opened my eyes, to find one of the guards in my cell. It startled me. Seeing I was awake, he picked up my ashtray, indicating it was smelling up the cell. Another guard was standing in the doorway. After handing it to him to empty, the first guard then returned it to the table, closed and locked the door. I returned to sleep, only to reawaken sometime later, in a haze, seeing him there again. This time he left without explanation.

  Nothing like this had happened before. Once locked in my cell at night, I had been left alone. It bothered me. Had I dreamed it? No. There was the empty ashtray. Perhaps his excuse was true. But if so, why had he returned? Since, so far as I knew, neither guard spoke English, the idea that I was talking in my sleep and they were trying to listen seemed unlikely, as did the possibility that they feared I had obtained a weapon or some other contraband and were searching my cell. Still another explanation occurred to me. That I might have been drugged. For the first time, I seriously wondered.

  The incident remained unexplained. But it made me more anxious than ever that they not doubt my story.

  My interrogators now held most of the cards. They knew what had happened since my capture. I didn’t. Each new question increased the possibilities of contradiction, exposure. In some way I’d have to further limit those possibilities.

  Notification of the pending trial gave me the excuse I needed. Since I was to be tried for my May 1 activities, I now refused to answer any questions, of whatever kind, on anything happening prior to that date.

  This would count against me in the trial, they warned. Reading the appropriate section of their criminal code, they pointed out, as they had on many previous occasions, that the only possible mitigating circumstances in my case were: (1) voluntary surrender; (2) complete cooperation; and (3) sincere repentance.

  I had surrendered voluntarily. But as for the last, I had already repudiated that.

  Earlier in the questioning, they had asked me if, having it to do over, I would have made the flight. Yes, I replied, were it necessary for the defense of my country.

  Since I was unrepentant, the only things now in my favor were my voluntary surrender and complete cooperation.

  I stuck to my resolve. I would discuss nothing that happened prior to May 1.

  Perhaps it was in an attempt to change my mind that they now decided to make a radical departure.

  For the first time since my capture more than two weeks before, they raised the Iron Curtain, giving me a glimpse at what had happened outside Russia.

  It was much too good a story to keep to themselves. They had to brag about it. Thus I finally learned from my interrogators what the rest of the world had long known.

  On May 2 the public information officer at Incirlik AFB, Adana, Turkey, had released the news that an unarmed weather reconnaissance aircraft, of the U-2 type, had vanished during a routine flight over the Lake Van area of Turkey and that a search for the missing plane was in progress. During his last radio communication, the pilot—a civilian employee of Lockheed on loan to NASA—had reported trouble with his oxygen equipment.

  This was the cover story the CIA had prepared for such an eventuality.

  Nobody had ever bothered to share it with the pilots.

  The next several days brought further details from NASA, including information that all U-2s had been grounded to have their oxygen equipment checked.

  On May 5, in a speech before the Supreme Soviet in Moscow, Premier Khrushchev had announced that on May Day an American plane, in “an aggressive provocation aimed at wrecking the Summit Conference,” had invaded Soviet territory and, on his personal orders, been shot down by a missile.

  Just that. Nothing more.

  The trap had been baited.

  The same day NASA announced that the U-2 previously reported missing from Incirlik might have strayed across the border on automatic pilot while its pilot—now identified as thirty-year-old Francis G. Powers, of Pound, Virginia—was unconscious from lack of oxygen.

  On May 6 a U.S. State Department spokesman uncategorically stated to reporters that “There was no—N-O—deliberate attempt to violate Soviet air space, and there has never been.” The suggestion that the United States would try to fool the world about the real purpose of the flight was “monstrous.”

  While a formal note of inquiry was sent to the Soviet government, requesting additional information as to the fate of the pilot, various U.S. senators and congressmen waxed indignant over the shooting down of the unarmed weather plane. That Khrushchev could order such action so close to the Summit was a clear indication of bad faith.

  Apparently it was presumed by almost everyone, including the agency, that I had not survived the crash.

  On May 7 Premier Khrushchev sprang his trap. “Comrades, I must tell you a secret,” he confided to the Supreme Soviet, and the world.”When I was making my report, I deliberately did not say that the pilot was alive and in good health and that we have got parts of the plane. We did so deliberately, because had we told everything at once, the Americans would have invented another version.”

  The pilot was “quite alive and kicking,” he had confessed that he was an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, and, acting on orders of his detachment commander, a United States Air Force colonel, had flown on a spying mission over Russia, taking off from Peshawar, Pakistan, intending to land at Bodö, Norway. Only en route, when over Sverdlovsk, he had been brought down by a Soviet rocket. Flying at twenty thousand meters (65,000 feet), he had thought himself to be safe from rockets. But his capture had proven
otherwise.

  With great glee Khrushchev debunked “official” U.S. statements about the plane:

  “If one believes the version that the pilot lost consciousness owing to oxygen trouble and that the aircraft was subsequently controlled by the automatic pilot, one must also believe that the aircraft controlled by the automatic pilot flew from Turkey to Pakistan, touched down at Peshawar Airport, stayed there three days, took off early in the morning of May 1, flew more than two thousand kilometers over our territory for a total of some four hours.”

  Nor was Khrushchev finished setting traps. He noted it was possible President Eisenhower was unaware of the flight. But if so, that meant the militarists in his country were actually “bossing the show.”

  Thus Eisenhower was left with two choices, neither pleasant: to admit he had authorized espionage, an unprecedented admission for a President to make, or to deny knowledge of the flights, with the clear implication that he wasn’t in charge.

  In reaction, the U.S. State Department then admitted that the U-2 had probably made an information-gathering flight over Soviet territory, but stressed that “there was no authorization for any such flight” from authorities in Washington.

  What happened behind the scenes—the setting up of a scapegoat to be blamed for the whole incident; CIA head Allen Dulles’ offer to resign and take responsibility for the flight; President Eisenhower’s vacillation, finally culminating in his unprecedented decision—I was not to learn until much later.

  What I was told, however, was that on May 11, two days after Secretary of State Christian Herter stated that specific U-2 missions were not subject to Presidential authorization, the President of the United States himself admitted he had personally approved the flights. Espionage was, he said, “a distasteful but vital necessity,” mandatory because of Soviet secrecy, the rejection of his Open Skies Plan of 1955, and to avert “another Pearl Harbor.”

  The President of the United States had pleaded guilty for me.

  Yet, because I had no doubt as to my ultimate fate, this concerned me far less than one other thing my interrogators told me.