Operation Overflight

by Francis Gary Powers

  Q. For what reason?

  A. I would assume that it was done for intelligence reasons.

  In the transcript this was edited to remove Borisoglebsky’s second question and revise my reply as follows: “As it was told to me, I was to follow the route and turn switches on and off as indicated on the map. It stands to reason that this was done for intelligence reasons.”

  Q. You testified in this court yesterday that Colonel Shelton was particularly interested in rocket-launching sites.

  A. Yes, he did mention one place on the map where there was a possible rocket-launching site.

  Q. Would it be correct to say that the main objective of your flight on May 1 was to discover and register on the map all rocketlaunching sites?

  A. I can only express my opinion on this matter. I feel sure that the experts who studied the film from my camera know what interested the people who sent me, but in my own opinion Soviet rockets interest not only us but the whole world as well. And I assume a flight like this would be to look for them, I suppose. But I repeat, I do not know, and I’m only expressing my own opinion.

  As previously mentioned, the rocket-launching site, Tyuratam Cosmodrome, was not a primary target on this particular overflight but had been thrown in since I would be in the vicinity. I had emphasized it in the interrogations in the hope, successful I felt, that the Russians would focus on this rather than our major objectives.

  Q. Defendant, did you realize that by intruding into the airspace of the Soviet Union you were violating the sovereignty of the USSR?

  A. Yes, I did.

  Q. Why did you agree?

  A. I was ordered to do so.

  Q. Do you think now you did your country a good or an ill service?

  A. I would say a very ill service.

  Q. Did it not occur to you that by violating the Soviet frontiers you might torpedo the Summit Conference?

  A. When I got my instructions, the Summit was farthest from my mind. I did not think of it.

  Q. Did it occur to you that a flight might provoke military conflict?

  A. The people who sent me should have thought of these things. My job was to carry out orders. I do not think it was my responsibility to make such decisions.

  Q. Do you regret making this flight?

  Grinev had warned me the question was coming. I had expected it from him or Rudenko, not the presiding judge. If I had entertained any doubts that they were working as a team, this settled them.

  A. Yes, very much.

  I didn’t add that I regretted it only because it was unsuccessful.

  Another of the judges, Major General Alexander I. Zakharov of the Air Force, now had his inning. As might be anticipated, his questions dealt with my flight training, details of the May 1 mission, instrumentation, and so forth. Except for a query about the granger, in which I managed to make clear it was designed for air-to-air rockets, none were loaded questions. Most of those which followed, from Major General Dmitry Z. Vorobyev of the Artillery, were. Vorobyev tried to trap me into saying I was familiar with the special equipment, but failed.

  It was interesting how the questions dovetailed. What Rudenko left out, Grinev or one of the judges put in.

  Finally I was allowed to sit down. Counting the previous day, I’d been on the stand nearly six hours.

  Looking exceedingly uncomfortable in suits and ties, and obviously nervous about appearing before such a large audience, the four men from the state farm (who were later decorated by the USSR for heroism) related the details of my “capture.”

  Something was missing from their testimony, but not until the last one had finished did I realize what it was. None of the four had mentioned the second parachute we had seen.

  Why?

  At the time, I had assumed the parachute was in some way connected with the rocket. Now I began to wonder if, in addition to the U-2, the Soviets had also shot down one of their own planes.

  With that same “first shot.”

  Asked if I had any questions for them, I said, “I want to express my thanks for the help that was shown to me by all these people on that day. This is the first opportunity I have had to thank them. I am happy to thank them.”

  Since “voluntary surrender” was one of the mitigating circumstances, I wanted it clearly established that I had not resisted capture and felt no antagonism toward them.

  It was now the turn of the “expert witnesses.” Functioning as a committee, each group had been assigned for study a certain portion of the evidence.

  The first group, after examining the various documents found on me or on the plane, concluded that “the pilot Francis Powers belongs to the Air Force of the United States of America.”

  Grinev didn’t object. But by now I had given up expecting him to. The court seemed to accept their finding as fact.

  The next group had been given the task of examining the wreckage and determining whether there were identification marks on the aircraft. They concluded that there were not and had never been.

  I knew better. Given a chance to question their spokesman, I asked whether the identification marks could have been placed on top of the paint and then removed. Though he conceded the possibility, the presiding judge made clear that he accepted the original testimony. I realized it was useless to persist.

  Other witnesses, after lengthy examination of the special equipment—cameras, exposed film, radio receiving instruments, magnetic recorders, etc.—concluded that they had been used for reconnaissance and that the purpose of the flight was espionage.

  After this, there was a break for lunch. This time the guards kept me surrounded. Apparently they had sensed that I was ready to bolt and were determined to give me no second chance.

  With the start of the second session at 4:30 P.M. there was no longer any doubt as to why Rudenko had earlier emphasized the pistol.

  The expert witness, a lieutenant colonel in the Engineers, stated:

  “The pistol is designed for noiseless firing at people in attack and defense.”

  I was now to be made a potential assassin, even though my weapon was only a .22.

  But he didn’t stop at that. Examining other portions of my survival equipment, he observed: “The above-mentioned vials represent an incendiary means consisting of a packing, combustible substance and a friction-type ignition device. On the exterior surface of the packing there is a brief instruction for use of the vials written in English. Such vials are manufactured for special use when it is necessary for flame to act for a comparatively long time on the object to be set on fire.”

  The implication was obvious. If I was shot down and succeeded in escaping, I was to act as an agent, either assassinating people or engaging in sabotage, using these “incendiary vials” to burn down important buildings, and similar acts.

  I couldn’t let this pass.

  DEFENDANT POWERS: Would it be possible for me to see one of those things referred to as a vial?

  After being handed one, I asked if the interpreter could read aloud the instructions on the cover.

  INTERPRETER: “Ignition vial M-2, combustible. To ignite, break open red lid with pin, pull wire from inside. Do not handle red section. Use thin piece of dry wood as shown in drawing.” And there is the illustration of a campfire. Defendant Powers claims that this substance is used to light campfires, and in particular, with damp wood.

  DEFENDANT POWERS: AS regards the pistol, it was given only for hunting, and I took it for this purpose. Unfortunately, nobody but myself knows that I cannot kill a person even to save my own life.

  PRESIDING JUDGE: Defendant Powers, you are aware that at an altitude of sixty-eight thousand feet it is difficult to hunt game.

  DEFENDANT POWERS: Yes, I know. This was to be used only in case I had a forced landing.

  Other experts had examined the destruct mechanism. Again there were implications. “The elements of the remote-control circuit were not found…. The safety catch may be connected mechanically with any part of the ai
rcraft that separates when the plane is abandoned by the pilot, for example with the cockpit ejector system.”

  In short, they were implying that had I tried to use the ejection seat, I would have been destroyed with the plane.

  Since the elements of the remote-control circuit were missing (or rather, I suspected, simply hadn’t been introduced into evidence), there was no way for me to prove otherwise.

  On coming to the poison pin, they stated that it had been “found at the place where the plane, piloted by Powers, fell.” Obviously they didn’t want to admit the truth: that it had been missed in three separate searches, being discovered only after I had been taken to Sverdlovsk.

  Well aware of its effect on the audience, they got maximum propaganda value out of the pin. An expert testified: “An experimental dog was given a hypodermic prick with the needle extracted from the pin, in the upper third part of the left hind leg. Within one minute after the prick the dog fell on his side, and a sharp slackening of the respiratory movements of the chest was observed, a cyanosis of the tongue and visible mucous membranes was noted. Within ninety seconds after the prick, breathing ceased entirely. Three minutes after the prick, the heart stopped functioning and death set in.”

  As if this weren’t gory enough, he went on to describe similar experiments with a white mouse, finally concluding: “In view of the extremely high toxicity and the nature of the effect of the poison on animals and also the relatively large amount of it on the needle, it can be considered that if a person is pricked with this needle, poisoning and death sets in just as quickly as in animals.”

  With this they had their headlines for the second day. Shortly afterward, the court adjourned until the next morning.

  Nine

  The first sentences of Rudenko’s speech were typical of his whole oration: “Comrade Judges! I begin my speech for the prosecution in the present case fully conscious of its tremendous importance. The present trial of the American spy-pilot Powers exposes the crimes committed not only by Defendant Powers himself, but it completely unmasks the criminal aggressive actions of United States ruling circles, the actual inspirers and organizers of monstrous crimes directed against the peace and security of the peoples!”

  And on it went. “The Soviet people, the builders of a communist society, are engaged in peaceful creative labor and abhor war.“ The ruling circles in the United States ”are stubbornly opposing measures for universal disarmament and the destruction of rockets and nuclear weapons….”

  Peace v. War. The USSR v. the USA and Francis Gary Powers.

  “Powers became a staff pilot, ready to commit any crime to further the interests of the American military who are in service of the monopoly capital…. Here we have the bestial, misanthropic morality of Mr. Dulles and company which for the sake of that yellow devil, the dollar, disregards human life…. If the assignments received by Powers had not been of a criminal nature, his masters would not have supplied him with a lethal pin….”

  There were only two surprises in the early portions of Rudenko’s speech. One was that in May President Eisenhower had given assurances “that spy flights by American planes in the Soviet airspace would be stopped.”

  But Rudenko immediately damned Eisenhower for going back on his word.

  Had the overflights stopped or hadn’t they?

  There was another brief and tantalizing reference. After tracing the history of the U-2 incident, Rudenko stated: “A great wave of indignation swept the world when it became known that new perfidious acts had been committed by the rulers of the United States who sent an RB-47 military reconnaissance bomber on a criminal provocative flight into the Soviet Union on July 1, I960.”

  This explained why shortly after July 11 had been quizzed again on the RB-47 flights. Obviously there had been another “incident,” but how serious? Rudenko gave no details.

  “Defendant Powers, whose crimes the American intelligence service paid for so generously, is not an ordinary spy, but a specially and carefully trained criminal…. Such is the true face of Defendant Powers. And had his masters tried to unleash a new world war, it is precisely these Powerses, reared and bred by them in the conditions of the so-called free world, who would have been ready to be the first to drop atom and hydrogen bombs on the peaceful earth, as similar Powerses did when they threw the first atom bombs on the peaceful citizens of the defenseless cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki….”

  So I was to be blamed even for that.

  Listening to him, I felt sick at heart, knowing I was at least in part responsible for giving him the opportunity to mount his harangue. Yet, as he continued—he had passed the two-hour mark by now—not only stating his case but overstating, magnifying, distorting, and exaggerating, raving rabidly about the “American aggressors” being “newly baked imitators of Hitler,” I began to wonder if maybe he wasn’t going too far, carrying Soviet propaganda to such extremes it might backfire, precipitating a reverse reaction.

  Suddenly the hall grew quiet. Rudenko was reaching the end.

  “The hour when the criminal is to hear the sentence of the court is near.

  “Let your sentence serve as a strict warning to all those who pursue an aggressive policy, criminally trample underfoot the generally recognized standards of international law and the sovereignty of states, who declare their state policy to be one of cold war and espionage. Let this sentence also be a strict warning to all other Powerses who, by orders of their masters, might try to undermine the cause of peace, to encroach upon the honor, dignity, and the inviolability of the great Soviet Union.

  “Comrade Judges, in full support of the state indictment against Powers, in accordance with Article 2 of the Law of the USSR ‘On Criminal Responsibility for State Crimes,’ I have all grounds to ask the court to pass an exceptional sentence on the defendant….”

  I had been right. They were going to make an example of me.

  “But, taking into account Defendant Powers’ sincere repentance, before the Soviet court, of the crime which he committed, I do not insist on the death sentence being passed on him, and ask the court to sentence the defendant to fifteen years’ imprisonment.”

  My immediate feeling was elation. It was as if I had been suffocating and was suddenly able to take a big, deep breath. I wasn’t going to be shot!

  I looked for my family. There was a disturbance in their box, but because of the popping flash bulbs and crowds of reporters, I couldn’t see what was going on. Upon hearing the sentence, my father had stood up and angrily shouted, “Give me fifteen years here, I’d rather get death!”

  The presiding judge declared a thirty-minute recess.

  During the adjournment, Grinev tried again to persuade me to amend my statement. I didn’t even bother to answer him.

  After the intermission Grinev began his summation for the defense.

  At first I couldn’t believe I was hearing him right.

  “I shall not conceal from you the exceptionally difficult, unusually complicated position in which the counsel for the defense finds himself in this case.

  “Indeed, Defendant Powers is accused of a grave crime—intrusion into the airspace of the Soviet Union for the purpose of collection espionage information and photographing from the air industrial and defense installations and also of collecting other intelligence data….

  “The Constitution of the Soviet Union, which, irrespective of the gravity of a crime, ensures every accused the right to defense, makes it our civil and professional duty to render help in exercising this right to those defendants who avail themselves of this right….”

  He was defending himself for having to defend me!

  But he didn’t stop there. He went on to observe that “the defense challenges neither facts of the charges preferred against Powers or the assessment of the crime given by the state prosecutor.”

  Powers was guilty as charged, he emphasized. And then it became clear, for the first time, what his defense was to be: “I shall be right if I say tha
t the Powers case is of international importance, inasmuch as besides Powers, one of the perpetrators of a perfidious and aggressive act against the Soviet Union, there should sit and invisibly be present here, in the prisoner’s dock, his masters, namely, the Central Intelligence Agency headed by Allen Dulles and the American military and with them all those sinister aggressive forces which strive to unleash another world war.”

  Powers was, he stated, “only a pawn”; though “the direct perpetrator, he is not the main culprit.”

  Since I had refused to denounce the United States, Grinev was doing it for me.

  I could barely contain my disgust. On one thing I was determined: when the trial was over, by some manner or means, to make it clear I had no part in this.

  There were extenuating circumstances, he asserted: the poverty of Powers’ family; “mass unemployment in the United States”; Powers, “as every other American, was taught to worship the almighty dollar”; “influenced by these ethics, Powers lived under the delusion that money does not stink….”

  Interspersed among justifications were more denunciations: “The ruling monopoly circles of the United States could not reconcile themselves to the existence of a socialist country in which the social system is based upon the principles of social justice, on love and respect for the dignity of man.”

  Grinev was trying his best to outdo Rudenko. It was as if each time he defended me he had to backtrack, to prove again he was only doing his job, that his feelings and sympathy were with the prosecution.

  To those mitigating circumstances we had discussed, he added others: Powers was still young, he had just turned thirty-one; when signing his contract with the Central Intelligence Agency, he did not know the real purpose of the task set before him; poisoned by the lies in the American press, he had been misinformed about the USSR.

  With these considerations in mind, Grinev asked the court “to mitigate his punishment” and “to apply to Powers a more lenient measure of punishment than that demanded by the state prosecutor.”

  “Your verdict,” he concluded, “will add one more example to the numerous instances of the humaneness of the Soviet court, and will offer a sharp contrast to the attitude to man on the part of the masters of Powers—the Central Intelligence Agency, the ruling reactionary forces of the United States who sent him to certain death and wanted his death.”