Operation Overflight

by Francis Gary Powers

  Gradually, with a great deal of help from Zigurd, I began to emerge from my long depression. The world’s chess championship was being held in Moscow, and as the radio broadcast the moves we would copy them down and reconstruct the games on our board. The new carpet progressed well; I again took up my Russian studies. There were also other developments.

  Diary, March 31: “Have received two very nice letters from Barbara. She still does not say a word about why she did not write for such a long time. It is surprising how much her letters ease my mind and make me feel better.”

  This was true even though the news they contained was not hopeful. Kennedy, appearing on Meet the Press, had been asked why I hadn’t been released with the RB-47 pilots. He had replied, “That is a different situation.” Asked what was being done to negotiate my release, he said, “The time has not come yet.”

  Now all my thoughts were on May 1. If the Russians were to release me, this seemed the most logical time. A national holiday—the traditional time for amnesties. The anniversary of my capture. Again hope began to build. But this time world events dashed it before it got out of hand.

  On April 18 Premier Khrushchev announced over Radio Moscow that on the previous day, troops, “trained, equipped, and armed in the United States of America,” had launched an unsuccessful attempt to invade Cuba.

  With the Bay of Pigs disaster, I gave up any hopes for clemency.

  Thirteen

  It snowed a little on May 1, the uncelebrated anniversary of my first year in Russia, but spring was very much on my mind. I remembered how one year ago, flying over the Urals, I’d looked down and noticed first signs of the changing season. Even more poignant were thoughts of home. “Everything is getting green now around the place,” my mother had written. “The apple tree isn’t in bloom yet, but you can begin to see a little of the green leaves around the bloom buds. The peach blossoms have about gone.”

  “I certainly do miss grass and trees,” I wrote in one letter. “I haven’t seen a tree since last September, when I came here from Moscow. Sometimes, when the wind is blowing right, it seems we can smell the forests, but it may be only imagination. I have no idea how far it is to the nearest woods.”

  Zigurd felt the change as much as I. Often now he talked of Latvia.

  During the long dark period of receiving no mail from Barbara, I had been obsessed with my problems to the point that I never considered the possibility of Zigurd having his own. But he did. Only now did he bring out some of the things bothering him.

  His parents were old, at an age when he felt he should be supporting them. Instead they were helping him. This worried him a great deal. Each package was a reminder of his obligation. To do what he could to make up for their sacrifices, he had vowed that following his release he would return home and take care of them as long as they lived.

  He was the most unselfish person I had ever met, a trait that came across in a thousand big and little ways. At Christmas my parents had sent me a box of homemade candy. I offered it to him. After taking one or two pieces, he refused more, implying he really didn’t like it. But I could tell he did. He simply wanted me to have it. Only by threatening to throw the candy away, and then by dividing it into equal portions, could I persuade him to eat more.

  When he had moved to our cell a few days before my arrival, he had taken the bed on the right. On moving in, I presumed he had done so because the bed was more comfortable. Only after a time did it occur to me he had chosen the least pleasant side, that near the bucket.

  Realizing that I would be facing a difficult time, not only as a prisoner but as a foreigner, he had done this—just as he did many other things, without comment or fuss—to make the adjustment easier.

  That was the kind of person he was.

  Though his parents were elderly, they had to carry all their water into the house from a well in the yard. This was something Zigurd hoped someday to remedy, although he was not sure how.

  We set to work solving the problem. Our cell was littered with drawings of rejected ideas, some of which would have done Rube Goldberg proud. Finally, after many hours of debate, we came up with one which seemed workable: a thousand-gallon tank in the attic, to be filled from the well by a simple pump arrangement. We even planned to position it next to the chimney, in order that the water not freeze in winter.

  Across the back of the envelope my father had printed in large letters: REMEMBER WHAT PATRICK HENRY SAID!

  Inside was a clipping from the Washington Post, dated April 12, 1961:

  SOVIET TO FREE POWERS MAY 1, PAPER SAYS

  LONDON, April 12 [Wednesday]—The London Daily Mail said today U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers will be freed from a Soviet prison in the next few weeks and will choose to stay in Russia.

  The Mails Moscow correspondent, John Mossman, said Powers probably will be freed May 1—exactly a year after his reconnaissance plane was shot down.

  And the newspaper quoted Mrs. Powers as saying in New York:

  “I would love to go to Moscow to join my husband. I will go out to him if possible even if he decided to stay on after his release.”

  Mossman quoted no Russian source for his story, but reported:

  “He [Powers] is believed to be in Vladimir Prison, near Moscow. His release is planned as a demonstration of increased goodwill between the Soviet Union and America.”

  In Washington, a State Department spokesman said “We haven’t heard anything about it.”

  I read it several times, with increasing anger.

  Who was this Mossman, and why would he print such a lie? Had he made it up, just to have a story to write, or, if he had a source, who was it, and what did he and they hope to accomplish?

  My father claimed he didn’t believe the story. Yet the message on the envelope seemed to indicate otherwise. And if my own father gave it credence, what about others?

  “I am a citizen of the United States and am proud to be one,” I wrote him. “Don’t worry about my doing anything or giving any cause for my country to doubt me. It looks as if this British correspondent is trying, for reasons I can’t guess, to make people believe I have renounced my country. I would never do this. Even if I were offered an immediate release on condition that I remain in the Soviet Union. I would refuse. Not because I don’t think I could live here, but because I am an American and will always be an American.

  “I cannot imagine where this Mossman got his information unless he invented it himself. You may rest assured that I will return home, where I belong and where I want to be, as soon as I am released. Remaining here has never entered my mind.

  “If I were free, I would demand that his sources be revealed, and if it was his own fabrication, then I would sue him (the only way to make him realize that there are other people who may be hurt by his lies). I am sure that he has not even considered how his lies will affect my reputation in the future.

  “One thing that bothers me very much is that many people who read it will believe the article. To some of them I will appear a traitor even though there is no truth to the article whatsoever.”

  In reference to my father’s remark about Patrick Henry, I observed, “He is remembered, much to his credit, for what he said. It looks as if I will be remembered, much to my discredit, for what some correspondent writes, even though there is not a word of truth in what he wrote.

  “I was born an American and intend to die an American. In the States, I hope.”

  As for the reliability of another portion of Mossman’s story, I noted that it was now May 3, two days after my promised release, and I was “still occupying the same cell in the same prison.”

  I wrote a similar letter to Barbara, also asking what she had been doing in New York City, “or is that a lie also?”

  It was a lie, according to a letter from her on the eighth. Enclosing a clipping of the Mossman story, she explained that he had not talked to her—nor had she been in New York. The article, however, had been given wide circulation by the news ser
vices, as a result of which her phone had been ringing constantly with interview requests.

  Barbara’s affinity for publicity bothered me. Earlier she had released several of my letters to a magazine, not even bothering to inform me she had done so. She had explained that interviews were the only way to keep the case in public consciousness, and while I couldn’t disagree with that, I did wish she would devote just a portion of the time thus expended to letter writing.

  When Zigurd and I went to the office to receive my monthly embassy package, there was a new man on duty. Unfamiliar with the rules, he let me have the magazines, including four copies of Time. This was the first time since being in Russia that I had been allowed an American news magazine, and I read each issue avidly, trying to form a picture of the world outside.

  There was one mention of my case. And it puzzled me.

  “Should we be alarmed by the difference between the behavior of Airman Powers and of Nathan Hale?” asked Fund-for-the-Republic President Robert Maynard Hutchins. He did not wait for an answer. He has already seen dark “signs that the moral character of America is changing,” and has ordered the fund’s Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions to take a two-year look at the problem. With an assist from such men as Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, University of California President Clark Kerr, and Jesuit Philosopher John Courtney Murray, Hutchins hopes to turn up “various viewpoints on what the Good Life shall be in America,” to reach “dependable conclusions about our national strength and weakness.”

  “I wonder what in the world he is talking about?” I wrote Barbara, “I hope I am not being accused of changing the moral character of America.”

  Though I treated it flippantly in my letter, the item disturbed me. Was this due to the Mossman lie? Or, for some reason unknown to me, was I being criticized in the United States, and my family keeping it from me?

  It was the first time that possibility had occurred to me.

  By mid-May I had heard that Kennedy and Khrushchev would be meeting in early June for disarmament talks. I tried to remain pessimistic. Journal: “It is very hard to conceive that the two countries will agree on doing away with nuclear weapons when they cannot even agree officially to do away with nuclear tests. I am afraid that if my being released depends on disarmament talks, then there is no hope at all. I like to think it doesn’t depend on politics, but I’m afraid it does.”

  By the twenty-sixth I was still trying to maintain my skepticism. Writing Barbara about the meeting, I said, “It will probably be over by the time you receive this letter. I suppose it could result in my being released, but I don’t think I had better make any plans. … Even if the meeting does not affect me at all, I certainly hope they settle some important problems and try to make this world a better place to live in.”

  But by now the pattern was set. Periods of despondency, followed by resignation, in turn followed by rapidly mounting hope, then back to the first.

  Although I knew better, I couldn’t help anticipating.

  The talks were held June 3 and 4, in Vienna. Diary, June 5: “It looks as if the meeting between K. and K. ended pretty well. There has been no official announcement of what transpired and probably will not be, but it looks good from my position. It could be that sometime this month I might be released…

  “If I am lucky enough to get out this month, I will be very happy, though I will feel bad about leaving my cellmate in prison. … He is one of the finest people I have ever known. … I sincerely hope he does not have to serve his full sentence. He has about nine more years to go.

  “I just finished a book of short stories by Pushkin, The Tales of Ivan Belken. I liked it very much. It is the first I have read by him, and I would like to read more, especially Evgeni Onegin.”

  The last was a coded reminder, for my return to the United States, about a story Zigurd had told me regarding a former cellmate, Evgeni Brick.

  During World War II great numbers of people had fled from Russia and its satellites. When the war ended the Soviet Union had declared an amnesty, promising them freedom if they returned. Zigurd had distrusted the offer. One who hadn’t was a man named Evgeni Brick. Approached by American intelligence in West Germany, Brick had agreed to return to the USSR and spy for the United States. The moment he walked down the ramp from the airplane, the Russians had taken him into custody.

  I had made a note of the name “Evgeni,” as I was sure the CIA would be interested in the fate of their former agent, just as I was sure British intelligence would be interested in learning what had happened to Zigurd.

  The June 5, 1961, entry was the last in my diary.

  Letter to Barbara, June 15: “I am sorry I wrote that I might be released after the meeting between K. and K. I cannot help reaching for each little ray of hope and trying to turn it into a beacon of optimism. … One thing that makes me pretty sad is—if nothing happens as a result of the meeting, then I have very little chance of being released at all. If a meeting between K. and K. will not do it, then what will?”

  By this time I had heard the news. Asked by the press what Khrushchev had said regarding the Powers case, Kennedy had replied, “The matter wasn’t even discussed.”

  Winter had turned to summer with only a glimpse of spring in between: a row of flowers the work-camp prisoners had planted outside their barracks.

  “The weather is getting hot here,” I wrote home. “We haven’t had any rain for several weeks, and most of the days are clear and sunny. I have already got a good suntan by taking my shirt off during my walks. Not everyone can spend a couple of hours each day sunbathing.”

  There was very little else to write home about.

  I was again persisting in my study of Russian, but with minimal progress; by the time I’d finish translating an article in Pravda it was no longer news, but ancient history. Having run out of the right colors of wool, I’d had to leave the second carpet uncompleted, and was now well into a third, this one larger and more ambitious than the first, measuring 25½ by 31½. inches and with seven colors—gold, black, brown, yellow, and light, medium, and dark blue. Reading material was no longer quite so scarce. Barbara had sent thirty paperbacks, including Robert Lewis Taylor’s The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters and James Michener’s Hawaii. In addition, I systematically devoured the English books in Moscow University library: The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle and The Adventures of Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett; The Apple Cart by George Bernard Shaw; Arrowsmith, Babbitt, Main Street, Elmer Gantry, and Kingsblood Royalby Sinclair Lewis; Candide by Voltaire; Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Great Expectations, Heartbreak House, Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens; The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy; Henry Esmond by William Makepeace Thackeray; Tom Jones—A Foundling, The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and His Friend Mr. Abraham Adams by Henry Fielding; Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy; The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling; the complete works of William Shakespeare; the continuation of Mikhail Sholokhov’s Don novels, Seeds of Tomorrow and Harvest on the Don; War and Peace and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy; Octopus by Frank Norris; The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain; The Store by T. S. Stribling; The Titan by Theodore Dreiser; Typee by Herman Melville; and Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.

  Even visits to the dentist became memorable breaks from the routine. I lost a filling, which had to be replaced, not once but several times. It finally stayed, but became badly discolored. The dentist’s equipment was extremely primitive. Even here were those jars of leeches. By this time I had no doubt as to how they were used, having seen doctors applying them to people’s backs in the prison movies. But I never could understand why the dentist had them. Fortunately, I never found out.

  “Well you heat it and it bursts, and becomes a big, white, fluffy, soft—”

  Finally I gave up. How do you explain popcorn to a man who has never seen or tasted it?

  A pigeon flew through the top of the window and got caught between the panes of glass. I climbed on to the cabinet and
got it out, bringing it back into the cell with me. But I’d been spotted. Hearing a rush of feet up the stairs, I released it before the cell door opened.

  Did they think we were going to try to cook it and eat it, or use it to send a message?

  Actually, I’d hoped to have it for a pet for a little while. Yet I knew that even if we could manage to hide its presence from the guard—a nearly impossible feat—I wouldn’t have been able to keep it long. I could never have made it a prisoner too.

  We were never sure whether our cell was bugged. Occasionally, out of boredom and curiosity, we would voice the most fantastic lies, or denounce the Soviet authorities in the vilest possible terms, hoping for someone to come in and reprimand us. Then we’d know. No one ever did. Somehow this was in itself depressing, knowing that no one really cared that much.

  When starting my journal I had been careful to include only things which would not irritate my captors, hoping in this way to ensure their letting me take the journal with me upon release. Now I no longer bothered to censor myself. Many pages were devoted to the lack of freedom of expression in the Soviet Union; the prevalence of one viewpoint and one viewpoint only, the “correct” one; the use of lies which, through constant reiteration, became credible truth. Listening to Radio Moscow one day, I heard an American Communist denounce the United States as a place where there is no freedom. “Of course the Russian people believe this,” I wrote. “They do not stop to think that this man is going to return to the country where he knows no freedom, and that once there he won’t be sent to prison for what he has said. While here he would be tried and convicted of uttering anti-Soviet propaganda.” Yet the Russian people believed this, just as they believed their leaders alone were for peace, that only the United States stood in the way of disarmament.