Operation Overflight (26 page)

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.”

Grinev was done. There remained only my final statement and the verdict.

P
RESIDING
J
UDGE:
Defendant Powers, you have the word for the last plea.

I stood, facing the judges. The lights of the television cameras were so bright that I had trouble reading the statement. But we had gone over it so often that I knew the words. Some went against the grain; some were deeply felt. I could only hope that in reading them the American people could distinguish among them.

“You have heard all the evidence of the case, and you must decide what my punishment is to be.

“I realize that I have committed a grave crime, and I realize that I must be punished for it.

“I ask the court to weigh all the evidence and take into consideration not only the fact that I committed the crime but also the circumstances which led me to do so.

“I also ask the court to take into consideration the fact that no secret information reached its destination.

“It all fell into the hands of the Soviet authorities.

“I realize the Russian people think of me as an enemy. I can understand that, but I would like to stress the fact that I do not feel nor have I ever felt any enmity whatsoever for the Russian people.

“I plead the court to judge me not as an enemy but as a human being who is not a personal enemy of the Russian people, who has never had any charges brought against him in any court, and who is deeply repentant and profoundly sorry for what he has done.

“Thank you.”

P
RESIDING
J
UDGE:
The court retires to determine the verdict.

It was 12:50
P.M.
I was taken directly to lunch, but couldn't eat. Learning that I would see my family directly after the verdict gave me something to look forward to. But my anger with Grinev remained, overwhelming any sense of relief I otherwise would have felt about knowing I wasn't going to die.

Grinev had gone out of his way to “make” the state's case. What Rudenko couldn't prove, Grinev had freely conceded.

Several times he had negated my own testimony. With great care I had thwarted each attempt to extract a so-called “admission” I had been ordered to kill myself. Ignoring this, Grinev had stated that I had been so ordered as if it were an established fact.

He had gone further, implying in closing that the CIA knew I would be shot down, thus setting the stage for the Summit's collapse.

He had introduced into evidence statements never made. One—“I was deceived by my bosses; I never expected to find such a good treatment here”—wasn't even the way I talked. Bothering me even more, however, was one statement I
had
made which, taken out of context of the interrogations, gave an entirely false impression. At one point I had indicated that if I returned to the United States I would probably be tried there also, for revealing the details of my CIA contract. I didn't really believe this, but had said it to make my answers and my hesitations about answering appear more believable. However, I had gone on to add, “But this worries me little, because I am not likely to return home.”

By this I had meant I was sure of being executed.

Grinev made it sound as if I intended to remain in the Soviet Union.

But worst of all, speaking as my representative, he had given the impression that I authorized and agreed with his attack against the United States.

But I was not without a voice now. I would be seeing my family. And they could convey to the press my entire repudiation of my “defense counsel” and his charges.

Should I go beyond that, try to give them a verbal message for the agency?

Though hopeful we would be left alone, I doubted that we would be. I had managed to get across, in my trial testimony, most of the things I wanted the agency to know. And, no matter how carefully worded, such a message could place my family in jeopardy. That was the last thing I wanted. I decided against it.

My anger with Grinev had at least one positive effect. It helped
pass the time. At 5:30
P.M.
, four hours and forty minutes after the judges went out, I was summoned back into the courtroom.

While I stood, my hands gripping the wooden railings on either side of the prisoner's dock, the presiding judge read the verdict. It was a lengthy document, so long in fact that I suspected it had been written well in advance and not during the few hours the judges were out. That it was available to reporters, in printed form, immediately upon conclusion of the trial, would appear to confirm this. Again there was a recitation of the charges, during which it became obvious that the judges had not only accepted the prosecution's case in its entirety, including the testimony of the “expert witnesses,” but that they had, in some instances, even gone beyond Rudenko, as when they stated that “subsequent events confirmed that the aggressive intrusion of the U-2 intelligence plane into the airspace of the Soviet Union on May 1 was deliberately prepared by the reactionary quarters of the United States of America in order to torpedo the Paris Summit meeting, to prevent the easing of international tension, to breathe new life into the senile cold-war policy….”

I was guilty not only of espionage but all this too.

As, in absentia, was my co-defendant, the United States of America.

The judge was now nearing the end. It came across in his tone, and was communicated to the whole auditorium, which became very still.

Having heard all the testimony, and having examined all material evidence, the judge said, “the military division of the USSR Supreme Court holds established that Defendant Powers was for a long time an active secret agent of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, directly fulfilling spy missions of this agency against the Soviet Union, and on May 1, I960, with the knowledge of the government of the United States of America, in a specially equipped U-2 intelligence plane, intruded into Soviet airspace and with the help of special radio and photographic equipment collected information of strategical importance, which constitutes a state and military secret of the Soviet state, thereby committing a grave crime covered by Article 2 of the Soviet Union's law ‘On Criminal Responsibility for State Crimes.'”

The photographers moved into place. I was determined to show
no emotion, whatever the sentence. But my fingers gripped the railing even tighter.

“At the same time,” the judge continued, “weighing all the circumstances of the given case in the deep conviction that they are interrelated, taking into account Powers' sincere confession of his guilt and his sincere repentance, proceeding from the principles of socialist humaneness, and guided by Articles 319 and 320 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Soviet Federated Soviet Republic, the military division of the USSR Supreme Court
sentences:

“Francis Gary Powers, on the strength of Article 2 of the USSR Law ‘On Criminal Responsibility for State Crimes,' to
ten years of confinement
….”

I didn't hear the rest. I looked for my family, but in the confusion couldn't see them. All over the hall people had stood and were applauding. Whether because they felt the sentence suitably harsh or humanely lenient I did not know.

From the moment Rudenko had said he would not ask for the death sentence, I had expected the full fifteen years.

Only as I was being led from the courtroom did the full impact of the sentence hit me.

Ten long years!

My mother, father, sister Jessica, Barbara, and her mother were already in the room when I was ushered in. I couldn't help it. Seeing them, I broke down and cried. They were all crying too.

My hopes for a private meeting were overly optimistic. Besides four guards, two interpreters, and a doctor, there were also, for the first few minutes, a half-dozen Russian photographers.

A table had been set up in the center of the room, with sandwiches, caviar, fresh fruit, soda, tea. None of us touched it. We just looked at each other. For three and a half months we had been awaiting this moment, fearful that it might not occur, but still saving up things to say. Now that it was here, they were all forgotten. There would be long silences; then everyone would try to talk at once. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed hearing a Southern accent, until hearing five of them.

It was mostly small talk, but I'd had very little of that. Family news. Messages from sisters, nephews, nieces. A report on how our dog, Eck, was adjusting to Milledgeville. Decisions—whether to sell the car, rent or buy a house, ship the furniture from Turkey.

I now learned the rest of my sentence, which I had not heard in the courtroom. “Ten years of confinement, with the first three years to be served in prison.” This meant, one of the interpreters
explained, that after three years in prison I might be assigned to a labor camp in some obscure part of Russia. With permission, my wife could live nearby and make “conjugal visits.” There was also the possibility, one of the American attorneys had told my father, that I could apply for the work camp when half my prison time was served, in other words in a year and a half. And my sentence started from the moment of my capture, which meant I had served over three and a half months of it already. Of course, there were still other possibilities. They were appealing to both President Brezhnev and Premier Khrushchev. They had tried to see the premier, but he was vacationing at the Black Sea, although his daughter, Elena, had attended the trial.

We grasped and held tightly like precious things the little bits of hope in the sentence. But the words “ten years” hung over the room.

We tried to make plans, but too much remained unknown. Barbara wanted to stay in Moscow, possibly get a job at the American Embassy. I was against that. There was no assurance they would let her visit me, and I would soon be transferred to a permanent prison outside Moscow; I hadn't been told where or when.

I learned another bit of news. The Russians had shot down an RB-47 on July 1, somewhere in the Barents Sea. The Soviets said it had violated their territory; the United States declared it hadn't. The pilot had been killed; the two surviving crew members—Captains Freeman B. Olmstead and John R. McKone—were being held by the Russians. There was no word yet as to whether they would be brought to trial.

I knew neither man. But I knew how they felt.

My mother had brought me a New Testament. One of the guards took it; it would have to be examined, the interpreter explained. Barbara brought a diary, which I'd asked for in one of my letters. That was taken too. I wondered whether my captors were worried about hidden messages or whether they thought my own family was trying to smuggle poison to me.

Noticing I was without a watch, my father offered me his. No, I told him, they probably wouldn't let me keep it, and if they did, I'd only be watching the time.

My mother was concerned about my loss of weight. I was concerned about their health. All showed the tremendous strain they had been under, Barbara especially. Her face was very puffy, as if she had been crying or—I hated to think it—drinking heavily.

The friction between Barbara and my parents was obvious,
though the cause remained a puzzle. I was determined that if allowed to see them again—the interpreter had said this might be possible—I would try to arrange separate visits.

The interpreter warned us that our hour was nearly up.

I had a message for the press, I told them. Grinev's denunciation of the United States had come as a shock to me. I had not known what arguments he would use, until hearing them in court. I repudiated them, and him, entirely. As for his statement that I might remain in the Soviet Union, I would leave Russia, and gladly, the minute they let me do so. I was an American, and proud to be one.

The hour was up. The guards led me away.

That evening the guards brought me the New Testament and the diary. The latter was a five-year diary. I would need two of these, I realized, before my sentence was completed.

My first entry was brief, purposely. I was afraid that once starting to write, I would release a well-spring of pent-up emotions.

August 19, I960: “Last day of trial. 10 yr. sentence. Saw my wife and parents for one hour.”

The nineteenth was a Friday. Saturday and Sunday were very hard. Everything went on as usual in the prison, yet, knowing I had ten years to look forward to, everything was subtly, immutably changed.

Looking back, I could see I had brainwashed myself into anticipating the death sentence. Perhaps it was a trick of the mind, an escape device. Perhaps unconsciously I had realized all along that for me the worst possible punishment would be a long imprisonment.

On Monday, August 22,1 was taken to the Supreme Court Building in central Moscow for my last meeting with my mother, father, and sister, during which my father several times referred cryptically to “other efforts” being made to secure my release.