Operation Overflight

by Francis Gary Powers

While working at Langley I had met a very attractive and intelligent agency employee named Claudia Edwards Downey. Sue, as she was known to her friends, had been one of the agency people with initial doubts about Francis Gary Powers. She managed to overcome them. One of my earliest impressions of her wasn’t exactly favorable: she had spilled a cup of hot coffee on me. Our romance blossomed over the wires of the Bell System. My monthly telephone bill had grown so large, in fact, that we decided there was only one way to reduce it. On October 21, 1963, Sue resigned from the agency and we were married October 26, in Catlett, Virginia. It was the beginning, without qualification, of the happiest part of my life.

  After spending about six months in an apartment, we purchased a home in the Verdugo Mountains, its panoramic view including Burbank airport’s north-south runway. This meant that I was only five minutes from work and Sue could watch my takeoffs and landings. The same day we made the down payment, I was informed that Lockheed was moving its testing facilities to Van Nuys airport.

  But we liked the house—and have been especially fortunate in having neighbors who have become good friends.

  On August 17, I960, the Russians had given me a trial for my thirty-first birthday present. On my thirty-fifth birthday, in 1964, the California courts granted me permission to adopt Claudia Dee, Sue’s seven-year-old daughter by a previous marriage. I’ve never had a nicer birthday present.

  And on June 5, 1965, we celebrated the birth of a son, Francis Gary Powers, II.

  Fame—fortunately, as far as I’m concerned—is a fleeting thing. People forget the face first, then the name. There were still occasional requests for interviews; but thanks to the public-relations department at Lockheed, I was able to fend them off. While it was never possible to forget completely all that had happened, Sue and I were able to build a new life independent of the past.

  But there were occasional reminders.

  Two worth noting occurred in 1964, one very disappointing, the other not.

  I had a great deal of respect for James B. Donovan, the New York attorney who had arranged my exchange for Abel. Not only was I indebted to him for my release, I was tremendously impressed when shortly afterward he successfully negotiated the release of 9,700—yes, 9, 700—Cubans and Americans from Castro’s Cuba. Since my return we had had little contact. I had sent him a sugarcured Virginia ham; over cocktails on the plane taking me home after my release, we had, in jest, agreed that a Virginia ham would be the “fee” for his services. We had also exchanged Christmas cards. Beyond that, however, I’d heard nothing until publication of his book on the Abel case in 1964.

  In describing our conversation on that plane ride, Donovan observed: “Powers was a special type, I thought. People at home had been critical of his performance when downed and later when tried in Moscow. Yet, in charity, suppose you wished to recruit an American to sail a shaky espionage glider over the heart of hostile Russia at 75,000 feet [incorrect] from Turkey to Norway. Powers was a man who, for adequate pay, would do it, and as he passed over Minsk would calmly reach for a salami sandwich. We are all different, and it is a little unfair to expect every virtue in any one of us.”

  I might not like that—and of course didn’t—but if that happened to be Donovan’s impression of me, I couldn’t fault him for saying it. I could, however, for the sizable number of errors in his story. Two of these bothered me very much, both concerning that same return flight.

  “I went up to the cockpit,” Donovan writes, met the colonel piloting the plane, and heard American news broadcasts about the exchange on Glienicker Bridge.. . . The colonel and his crew shook my hand and were more than friendly. I noticed they avoided Powers.”

  Inviting me up to the cockpit and asking whether I wanted to fly the plane wasn’t exactly avoiding me. In fairness to Donovan, he had gone to bed before this happened, and possibly wasn’t aware of what occurred, but he must have been aware that we exchanged friendly remarks at various other times during the flight.

  I didn’t appreciate the picture he was painting. And there was more.

  In relating portions of our conversation, he quoted me as saying: “I thought more about politics and international things than I ever did before. For example, it just doesn’t make sense to me that we don’t recognize Red China and let her into the United Nations.” To which Donovan adds the comment, “It did not seem a proper occasion on which to discuss the point.”

  The implication was obvious. Powers came back spouting Communist propaganda.

  My recollections of the conversation differ somewhat, and I think that Murphy and others present will bear me out on this.

  Donovan had been entertaining us with details of his negotiations with a KGB official. At one point the official had told Donovan, “You should study Russian.” Donovan replied, “In my country only the optimists study Russian. The pessimists study Chinese.” The KGB official, he said, didn’t perceive the humor.

  We did, however, and laughed appreciatively. Donovan then asked me whether the Russians had ever discussed the Red Chinese with me. I replied that they had never brought up the subject in conversation; in reading the Daily Worker, however, and on listening to radio news as translated by my cellmate, I had heard them occasionally bemoan the unfairness of excluding China from the UN. However, I added, both my cellmate and I agreed that that was probably the last thing in the world the Russians wanted.

  In the same spirit of charity extended to me by Donovan, I will only say that his recollections of our conversation are hazy.

  Later there was a letter. Negotiating to sell his book to Hollywood, he was willing to offer me twenty-five hundred dollars for use of my name and story. Permission wasn’t necessary, he said, but he had personally arranged this for me. As an extra added incentive, he might also be able to arrange for me to play myself in the movie, should I so desire.

  I was tempted to reply that since the mercenary Powers had passed up sixty times that amount by deciding not to write his book, he was placing a rather high price on my vanity.

  But I didn’t.

  I was, and remain, grateful to him for the part he played in my release. But I also want to keep the record straight.

  My first meeting with former CIA Director Allen Dulles seemed preordained, one of those meetings decreed by fate. The second meeting, while not a surprise, did catch me off guard.

  In March, 1964, the Lockheed Management Club hosted a dinner at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Chief speaker was Dulles. Sue and I were there, to hear our former boss. We entered the room just behind Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, who were escorting Mr. and Mrs. Dulles. Spotting me, Mrs. Johnson said, “Oh, Mr. Dulles, I believe you know Francis Gary Powers.”

  It was not a name he was likely to forget.

  His greeting was most cordial, as was mine. I had never considered Dulles responsible for the role into which I had been placed; that decision, I believe, had occurred during the reign of his successor.

  After acknowledging his introduction, Dulles departed from his prepared speech: “I want to say, too, as I start, that I am gratified that I can be here for another reason, because I would like to say to all of you, as I have said from time to time when the opportunity presented, that I think one of your number—Francis Gary Powers— who has been criticized from time to time, I believe unjustly, deserves well of his country. He performed his duty in a very dangerous mission and he performed it well, and I think I know more about that than some of his detractors and critics know, and I am glad to say that to him tonight.”

  Dulles’ talk was taped. Later “Kelly” Johnson had his remarks transcribed and a copy sent to me.

  In April, 1965, I was asked to come back to Washington to be awarded the Intelligence Star.

  My first reaction, quite frankly and quite bluntly, was to suggest they shove it.

  We made the trip, however, for several reasons. It was less than two months before the birth of Gary, and would be the last opportunity to visit our families for some time. Following the ce
remony, there was to be a dinner at Normandie Farms, Maryland, with a number of friends from the early days of the U-2 program in attendance, many of whom, including Bissell, I hadn’t seen in years.

  I’m not sure why, having once declined the opportunity, it was decided to make the presentation in 1965. By this time McCone had submitted his resignation, and a Johnson appointee, retired Vice Admiral William F. Raborn Jr., was scheduled to be sworn in as DCI in little more than a week. Perhaps it was felt that this was a bit of leftover business to be gotten out of the way before the new DCI took over. At any rate, although the ceremony was impressive, it was cheapened for me not only by what had preceded it, but by the realization that the presentation was worded in such a way as to commend me for my “courageous action” and “valor” prior to I960. Apparently it was felt the Virginia hillbilly wouldn’t catch such a subtlety, or notice, when I examined the scroll accompanying the medal, that the date on it was that of the earlier ceremony, April 20, 1963.

  Word of the secret ceremony leaked to the press. The accounts were wrong in one particular, however. Instead of the actual April date, they said it occurred on May 1, 1965, the fifth anniversary of my flight.

  That was, I’m quite sure, the last thing the agency wished to commemorate.

  As is probably obvious from my account, I’m patient, unusually so, and always have been. While some might consider this a virtue, I think of it as a fault. But it’s the way I am, and try as I might, I haven’t been able to change it.

  For a time I put thoughts of the book aside. My work, my family, our friends, were more than enough to fill my time. Too, more than a few of my recollections were not pleasant. I was not anxious to relive them.

  And no man, even in the privacy of his innermost thoughts, likes to admit he has been used.

  Meanwhile, other books dealing with the U-2 incident continued to appear, among them Allen Dulles’ The Craft of Intelligence, Harper & Row, 1963, which related the story of the exposure of the Russian bomber hoax; and Ronald Seth’s The Anatomy of Espionage, E. P. Dutton, 1963, which considered the U-2 flights in relation to the whole broad spectrum of intelligence-gathering.

  In his chapter on the U-2 story, Seth did something a great number of others hadn’t. He studied the trial testimony, concluding: “Indeed, throughout the whole of his trial, [Powers] comported himself with a dignity and spirit which might have been found lacking in many another. All the way down the line, Powers was badly served—by his President and others who ought to have known better, by faulty intelligence which led him to believe that he was invulnerable, and by attempts just before the trial to accuse the Russians of having brainwashed or drugged him.”

  One book of special interest was Lyman B. Kirkpatrick’s The Real CIA, Macmillan, 1968, for its glimpse of what happened in the inner chambers of the agency when realization dawned that I hadn’t made it to Bodo. It caused, according to Kirkpatrick, former executive director of the Central Intelligence Agency, “one of the most momentous flaps that I witnessed during my time in the federal government.”

  Kirkpatrick’s account is not wholly uncritical of the handling of the affair. With remarkable understatement, he notes: “It was fairly obvious that the unit of the CIA that was responsible for the cover story had not thought the matter through very carefully.” He continues: “To my knowledge nobody has ever yet devised a method for quickly destroying a tightly rolled package of hundreds of feet of film. Even if Francis Powers had succeeded in pressing the ’destruction button,’ which would have blown the plane and the camera apart, the odds would still have been quite good that careful Soviet search would have found the rolls of film.”

  Yet this mistaken assumption—that the plane would have been totally obliterated, all evidence of espionage destroyed—apparently was believed at the highest level, by the President himself.

  Kirkpatrick was in California at the time of Khrushchev’s shattering announcement. Cornered by reporters, his single comment was, “No comment.” He notes: “Later I was pleased to learn that one of the newscasters, in commenting upon the episode, characterized my statement as the only intelligent one made by the government during the event.” With that I am inclined to agree. From a strictly selfish viewpoint, my interrogations would have gone easier had there been a little less talk.

  Kirkpatrick concludes: “The development and use of the U-2 was a remarkable accomplishment, and the fact that it came to the end of its starring role over Russia on May 1, I960, should not dim the achievements of the men who made it possible. . . . Francis Powers, and the others who flew the plane, also deserve full credit for their courage and ability. Powers conducted himself with dignity during his interrogation and trial and revealed nothing to the Russians that they did not already know. Upon his return to the United States in 1962, after he was exchanged for Rudolf Abel, a review board headed by Federal Judge E. B. Prettyman went into the minute details of his conduct while a prisoner and found that he had conducted himself in accordance with instructions. He was decorated by the CIA.”

  You could write a whole book between some of the sentences of that paragraph.

  The most surprising account, however, appeared in 1965: Waging Peace: The White House Years 1956-1961, Doubleday, its author former President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

  In the chapter entitled “The Summit That Never Was,” Eisenhower describes how he received the news on May 1. By way of preface to this astonishing paragraph, Brigadier General Andrew J. Goodpaster was White House staff secretary, and served as liaison between the President and the CIA:

  “On the afternoon of May 1, I960, General Goodpaster telephoned me: ’One of our reconnaissance planes,’ he said, ’on a scheduled flight from its base in Adana, Turkey, is overdue and possibly lost.’ I knew instantly that this was one of our U-2 planes, probably over Russia. Early the next morning he came into my office, his face an etching of bad news. He plunged to the point at once. ’Mr. President, I have received word from the CIA that the U-2 reconnaissance plane I mentioned yesterday is still missing. The pilot reported an engine flameout at a position about three hundred miles inside Russia and has not been heard from since. With the amount of fuel he had on board, there is not a chance of his still being aloft.’”

  I had never an engine flameout nor did I radio back to the base. And the CIA certainly knew this.

  It was now obvious why this particular story had received such widespread acceptance. Apparently even the President believed it.

  There remains the possibility that the account is in error. One problem with memoirs of heads of state is that they are often the work of a number of people. Recollections differ, time clouds detail. I was told, in this particular instance, however, that a man from the agency was given a leave of absence to help prepare material for the chapter on the U-2 incident. That this slipped past him, if it did, is all the more astonishing.

  It may be that General Goodpaster misunderstood the message; it is also possible that someone in the agency, not wanting to accept hard realities, speculated that this migbthave been what happened. If so, it should have been presented to the President that way, as pure speculation. Conveyed as straight intelligence, with the addition “the pilot reported” for authenticity, it constitutes a serious breach of trust.

  There are indications throughout the Eisenhower account that he was not informed on all developments in Operation Overflight.

  “A final important characteristic of the plane was its fragile construction,” Eisenhower writes. “This led to the assumption (insisted upon by the CIA and the Joint Chiefs) that in the event of mishap the plane would virtually disintegrate. It would be impossible, if things should go wrong, they said, for the Soviets to come in possession of the equipment intact—or, unfortunately, of a live pilot. This was a cruel assumption, but I was assured that the young pilots undertaking these missions were doing so with their eyes wide open and motivated by a high degree of patriotism, a swashbuckling bravado, and certain material inducement
s.”

  Our feeling that the plane was too fragile to last was, as noted, strong at the start of the program. By 1957, however, with the stepping up of the flights, we knew better. Nor did we by that time believe that in the event of accident at high altitudes the plane would disintegrate. The tragic death of Lockheed test pilot Robert L. Sieker in April, 1957, had dispelled this notion. The crash which killed Sieker had left his plane virtually intact. It was so mangled as to be beyond repair, but all the parts were there.

  Later Eisenhower stated: “There was, to be sure, reason for deep concern and sadness over the probable loss of the pilot, but not for immediate alarm about the equipment. I had been assured that if a plane were to go down it would be destroyed either in the air or on impact, so that proof of espionage would be lacking. Self-destroying mechanisms were built in.”

  If Eisenhower was told this, he was deceived. Had we been carrying ten times the two-and-a-half-pound explosive charge, there would have been no guarantee that the entire plane and all its contents would have been destroyed. Nor was the single mechanism “self-destroying.” It had to be activated by the pilot.

  Eisenhower’s astonishment following Khrushchev’s announcement was undoubtedly genuine: “On that afternoon, Friday, May 6 [Saturday, May 7], Mr. Khrushchev, appearing before the Supreme Soviet once more, announced what to me was unbelievable. The uninjured pilot of our reconnaissance plane, along with much of his equipment intact, was in Soviet hands.”

  The evidence strongly suggests that although the President was consulted for authorization of the flight packages, no effort was made to brief him on the many changes in the situation. For example, nowhere in his account is there any mention that we were worried about Soviet SAMs and had been for a long time, or that we realized it was only a matter of time before the Russians would solve their missile-guidance problem.

  Again, this is only a personal opinion—possibly erroneous, as I do not know all the facts—but I am inclined to feel that since permission for the flights was so difficult to obtain, the President simply was not informed of the many dangers involved, lest he consider the advisability of discontinuing the overflight program entirely.