Operation Overflight

by Francis Gary Powers

  I looked intently for my family, but could not find them in the crowd.

  The presiding judge was speaking to me. The trial was to be conducted in Russian but simultaneously translated, via a headset arrangement, into English, French, German, and Spanish. Did I have any objections to the interpreters? I replied no.

  There was a bench built into the dock. Noticing that everyone else was seated, I sat down.

  “Defendant,” observed the presiding judge. “You are obliged to stand when the Court addresses you.”

  While I was still smarting from the rebuke, the judge asked my name, nationality, date and place of birth, family status, occupation, and whether I had received a copy of the indictment.

  Four witnesses were then introduced. I recognized them as the men who had helped me when I had landed in the field. Following this, some dozen “expert witnesses” came forward. I had never seen any of them before.

  PRESIDING JUDGE: Defendant Powers, you also have the right to challenge the selection of experts.

  I hesitated before answering. Having no idea as to who they were, their qualifications, or the nature of their testimony, how could I challenge them? This was my defense counsel’s job. But Grinev remained silent.

  DEFENDANT POWERS: I have no objections.

  The secretary of the court then read the indictment, in full. Aloud, it became even more a propaganda attack.

  PRESIDING JUDGE: Defendant Powers, you have heard the reading of the indictment against you. Do you understand the charge brought against you? Have you understood?

  DEFENDANT POWERS: Yes.

  All too well. This was no trial, but a show. And I wanted no part of it.

  PRESIDING JUDGE: Accused Powers, do you plead guilty of the charge?

  DEFENDANT POWERS: Yes, I plead guilty.

  The judge then ordered a twenty-minute recess. As I was being led out, I spotted Barbara, waving from a box in the rear of the courtroom, and saw my family for the first time. Neither of my parents had ever been outside the United States before. They looked so alone, so alien in this strange land, that I choked up.

  I was thankful for the break. I didn’t want a thousand people to see the tears in my eyes.

  Hundreds of foreign journalists were attending the trial, an interpreter effused during the recess. Interest was so great, he said, that crowds had to be turned away. Television crews were photographing the entire proceedings, so they could be shown on Soviet television and in movie theaters.

  As for the auditorium in which the trial was being held, he went on, it was known as the Hall of Columns. Built in the first year of the reign of Catherine the Great, it had been the setting for many historic events. While a concert hall, its performers had included Liszt, Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninoff. For a time a private club, it had numbered Pushkin and Tolstoy among its members. And both Lenin and Stalin had lain in state here following their deaths.

  He neglected to mention that it was here that the infamous purge trials of the 1930’s had taken place, also before the military division of the Supreme Court of the USSR.

  I was not in any frame of mind to appreciate the fact that a new chapter was being added to the history of the Hall of Columns.

  Returned to the dock, I learned another difference between U.S. and Soviet courtroom procedures. The first witness against the accused was to be the accused himself.

  Prosecutor Rudenko asked the questions.

  Q. Defendant Powers, when did you get the assignment to fly over the territory of the Soviet Union?

  A. On the morning of May 1.

  If a representative of the agency was present, and I was sure there must be at least one in the huge crowd, he would know this was a lie. Thus alerted, I hoped he would listen carefully to my further replies, especially if the altitude of the flight was mentioned.

  Additional questions established that the order for the flight had come from Colonel Shelton, that he was commanding officer of the 10-10 detachment at Adana, Turkey, that the flight had taken off from Peshawar, Pakistan.

  Q. How did the U-2 plane get to the Peshawar airfield?

  A. It was brought to the airfield the night before, April 30.

  Q. By another pilot?

  A. Yes.

  Q. But it was brought for you to fly in it into the Soviet Union?

  I spotted his trap. All through the interrogations I had maintained I had learned of having to make the flight only a couple of hours before takeoff. He was attempting to make me admit otherwise.

  A. At the time, I didn’t know I had to make the flight, but, apparently, the plane was brought there for that purpose.

  Q. Were you the only one prepared for the flight, or were there other pilots prepared too?

  A. There were two of us being prepared at the same time.

  Q. Why?

  A. I had no idea why. …

  This was typical of the dilemmas that had confronted me during interrogation. How much was it safe to tell them, how much safe to hold back? I was unsure what information the United States would release concerning the flights. If I failed to mention the backup pilot, and the United States did, the Russians would know I was intentionally withholding something. On the other hand, mention of him might set them to wondering about the other flights.

  If there was a backup pilot on each mission, why hadn’t I ever served my turn? Maybe I had, and was lying when I claimed to know nothing about the earlier overflights. Trying to straddle both sides of the fence, I had indicated that, as far as I knew, having an extra pilot sit in on briefings seemed to be a new practice.

  Rudenko asked about the U-2. “Is it a reconnaissance military plane?”

  Again the attempt to make me military.

  A. Well, I wouldn’t call it exactly a military plane, but it is an airplane of the type which is for reconnaissance as well as research work at high altitudes.

  Q. And for military purposes?

  A. Well, as I said, I don’t know whether it was military or not.

  Q. But it did belong to your detachment?

  A. Yes.

  Q. That is, the 10-10 detachment?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Is this a military detachment?

  A. Well, it is commanded by military personnel, but the main part of the personnel were civilians.

  Having failed in court to get me to say the unit was military, they found a much easier way. In the “official” Soviet transcript of the trial, published both in the USSR and the United States in English translation, “Well” was changed to “Yes.”

  The transcript contains a number of such changes. That each involved an important point, such as the above, proves that the cause was not simply poor translation.

  Fortunately, several of the reporters present did not depend on the authorized text released by the Soviets but kept their own shorthand notes.

  Q. Did you see any identification marks on the U-2 before the flight?

  A. Well, I could not inspect the plane because I was wearing my special flying suit, and hence I do not know if it had any markings. It was hard for me to look at all the sides of the plane.

  Q. But did you see any identification marks?

  A. No, I did not observe the plane at close range.

  Q. But at any time, Defendant Powers, did you see any identification marks on the U-2?

  A. All the planes based in Turkey had identification marks.

  Q. But I ask you about this U-2.

  A. I personally did not see any identification marks on this plane, but all the other planes which I have seen did have identification marks.

  Rudenko was getting exasperated.

  Q. It is important for me to establish that the plane on which Defendant Powers flew did not have identification marks. Why were there not any identification marks?

  A. I cannot be positive that there were none.

  Q. But you just informed this court that you did not see any identification marks.

  A. I did not look for any.

&nb
sp; Q. You further stated that the absence of the identification marks was for the purpose of hiding the national identity of these planes.

  A. Would you repeat the question?

  Although the length of the stage separated us, I was sure Rudenko’s face had turned livid.

  Q. In the preliminary investigation you stated that the absence of identification marks was for the purpose of hiding the national identity of these planes.

  Rudenko was lying, and we both knew it.

  A. I do not remember.

  Q. You do not remember. We will leave it to the experts to prove that there were not any identification marks. …

  Realizing that flying an aircraft without identification marks was in violation of international law, and not sure whether such an admission would worsen the case against me and further compromise the United States, I had insisted during the interrogations that all the U-2s at Adana bore national identity marks. This was true, at least part of the time. Such marks appeared on the tail. Prior to each overflight, the markings were removed. But I had no intention of admitting this. Nor, since I had stuck to that story throughout the interrogations, had I any intention of changing it now.

  When I originally told them this, of course, I had been unsure how much of the plane had survived the crash. That was why I had qualified my statement, saying that prior to this particular flight I hadn’t noticed the markings. It was not until seeing the wreckage in the Gorky Park exhibit that I realized those portions of the plane on which the markings should appear had come through relatively intact.

  As with many of my statements during interrogation, this particular fiction was tied in with several others. If I had admitted that sometimes the planes bore markings, sometimes not, the Russians could have asked how often I had seen the planes without markings, and when—giving them at least a clue as to the number and timing of the overflights.

  It may well be that I credited their questions with far more subtlety and deviousness than was actually the case. But at the time, each one had seemed a potential trap.

  After questioning me about the time of my takeoff and the time I crossed the Soviet border, Rudenko asked the big question. I had been waiting for this, afraid he might not ask.

  Q. At what altitude were you supposed to fly?

  A. At the maximum altitude. Altitude varies with fuel load. As the fuel burns out, the plane climbs higher.

  Q. To what altitude?

  A. The maximum altitude is sixty-eight thousand feet.

  A few minutes later, after asking questions about my flight chart, reserve fields, landing arrangements at Bodö, air speed, etc., he returned to it.

  Q. At what height did the flight occur?

  A. The flight began approximately at sixty-seven thousand feet and as the fuel burned out I rose to sixty-eight thousand feet.

  Rudenko was obviously anxious to get the point across, to prove that the USSR did indeed possess rockets capable of reaching the higher altitudes.

  For a change, we were in complete accord.

  Q. On your plane there was aerial-reconnaissance photo equipment. What instructions were you given?

  A. I was not given any special instructions to operate the equipment. I was to turn switches on and off as indicated on the chart.

  Q. With what purpose did you switch on the equipment.

  A. I was instructed how to do this. It was indicated on the map that the equipment was to be turned on.

  Q. Defendant Powers, you probably know the purpose for which you had to turn off and on the equipment?

  A. I could very well guess the purpose for which I turned on and off the equipment. However, to be very exact, I would have to say no.

  Q. Surely Defendant Powers knew of this equipment?

  A. Not at first. But now that I have seen its results, I now know better what this equipment is for.

  Q. I think that Defendant Powers did not doubt that this was a reconnaissance plane from the moment he started his flight.

  A. No, I didn’t doubt it.

  Q. On your plane were found radio intelligence equipment, tape recordings of various Soviet radar stations. Is that so?

  A. I have been told that there were tape recorders, but I don’t know. However, much of the general equipment, I do not know what it looked like except what I’ve seen here.

  Q. But you, Defendant Powers, were trained enough to know that such equipment is designed for special spying flights?

  A. I didn’t know anything about the equipment before.

  Q. But you were sufficiently informed that this flight had espionage aims?

  A. I saw no other reason for such a flight. I ask that the lights of the cameras be taken away. They are blinding my eyes.

  PRESIDING JUDGE: I ask that the lights be taken away. …

  What most of the audience couldn’t know was that this was an old battle, one which, like those of the Civil War, had been verbally fought over and over again.

  At the interrogations, I had insisted I had never seen the special equipment, wasn’t sure exactly what it did, had never been informed that the purpose of my flight was espionage, though my suspicions were another matter.

  An affirmative response to any of these points would have opened the door to questions I didn’t want to answer.

  In short, I was just an airplane jockey, not a spy, paid to fly along an assigned route flipping on and off switches as indicated on a map, with little knowledge of the results of my actions, and even less curiosity.

  During the interrogations, I had succeeded, I felt, in making this sound plausible, even convincing. Out of context, however, as it was now, it sounded extremely dubious.

  Yet, having stuck to this story during more than a thousand hours of intensive grilling, I wasn’t about to change it now to give Rudenko a perfect case.

  I wondered what my parents were thinking. How confused and frightened they must be, seeing their only son on trial for his life in a Moscow courtroom, charged with spying! And Barbara, with all her problems and weaknesses, what was going through her mind? More than anything, I wanted to make it easier for them. But there was no way I could do so, nothing I could say or do to help. Most of all, I was worried about the effect of the verdict. The longer I remained on the stand, the more helpless the situation appeared.

  There followed an attempt to make me verify that the granger was supposed to deflect SAMs as well as air-to-air missiles; another to make me admit that in marking down the unlisted airdrome and other observations on my map, I was, knowingly and intentionally, committing espionage.

  Q. With what purpose did you make these marks?

  A. I was instructed to record everything that was not shown on my map. This is a “pilot’s habit.”

  Q. A habit which has espionage purposes?

  A. I would have done it over the territory of the United States, too.

  Q. But I asked you about the flight over the territory of the Soviet Union. Consequently, it was an intrusion for espionage purposes?

  A. I suppose it was.

  Q. You do not deny that you invaded Soviet airspace in violation of the law.

  A. No, I do not deny it.

  To do otherwise, considering the evidence, would have been ridiculous.

  Q. Therefore, this intrusion pursued intelligence espionage aims?

  A. I suppose so.

  Having failed to get an unqualified admission, Rudenko approached from another direction.

  Q. You stated here, and during the primary investigation as well, that you switched the equipment on and off at definite points.

  A. I did what the chart indicated.

  Q. Not knowing what the special apparatus was?

  A. I never saw the apparatus.

  Q. With the same ease, you could have pulled a switch and released an atom bomb?

  A. It could have been done. But this is not the type of plane for carrying and dropping such bombs.

  Touché, Prosecutor Rudenko.

  I’d caught tha
t one. But Rudenko had been questioning me for more than two hours. And I had been standing every minute. I was extremely tired, mentally as well as physically. And the tiredness was rapidly changing into depression. I had to force myself to stay alert, to listen and consider carefully each question and answer, in order not to make a slip.

  Still again: Q. At what altitude was your plane when it was struck by the rocket?

  A. It was at the maximum altitude, at about sixty-eight thousand feet.

  If the agency hadn’t gotten the message by now, they never would.

  Rudenko then switched to the destruct device. I was sure he was going to imply that I didn’t use it because I feared my own destruction also, but he didn’t. Instead he moved on to my survival equipment.

  Q. For what purpose were you given the noiseless ten-shot pistol?

  A. For hunting.

  Q. And for that they also gave you 205 cartridges?

  A. Yes.

  Q. As far as we know, it is the custom to hunt with hunting rifles.

  A. It is difficult to carry hunting rifles on this plane.

  Q. Yes, especially on this plane, which has espionage purposes.

  A. I think that the pistol that was given to me had nothing to do with the purpose of the flight.

  What was he getting at with mention of the pistol? Whatever it was, I wanted to forestall it.

  Q. Who gave you the poison needle?

  A. It was given to me by Colonel Shelton during the briefing at Peshawar.

  Q. For what purpose?

  We were back on familiar ground. I knew exactly what he wanted to imply.

  A. In case I was captured, tortured, and couldn’t stand the torture and would rather be dead.

  Q. This means your superiors directed you in this flight not to spare your life?

  A. It was more or less up to me whether to use that pin.

  Q. But they gave you that needle with poison?

  A. Yes.

  Q. They wanted you to blow up the plane, kill yourself, and wipe out all trace?

  A. No, they didn’t tell me to kill myself.

  Q. But they gave you the needle to kill yourself?

  A. If I was tortured.

  Q. You were told torture would be used in the Soviet Union?

  A. I don’t remember being told, but I expected it.