Operation Overflight (27 page)

I had no idea what they were. But he obviously did not wish to elaborate, with my jailers present.

He was extremely angry with Grinev. McAfee had sent him, weeks ago, a detailed brief with suggestions for my defense. He had given no indication of having read it.

I said that I was not exactly happy with his “defense” myself, that Grinev had made it through the trial with a perfect score—not a single objection, not one statement which contradicted the prosecution.

As my father had already told the press, he was convinced that the Russians wouldn't make me serve my full sentence. If for no other reason, they wouldn't want the expense of feeding me.

I hoped he was right, but was afraid it wouldn't be quite that simple.

It was a difficult parting: my parents leaving their only son in this hostile land; I was not sure, considering their age and health, whether I would see either of them again.

After they left, Barbara and her mother came in. They brought along a United States Embassy “News Bulletin,” with quotations from President Eisenhower's last press conference. The President regretted “the severity of the sentence,” noted that the State Department was still following the case closely and “they do not intend to drop it,” and added that there was no question of my being tried on my return to the United States. As far as the government was concerned, I had acted in accordance with the instructions given me and would receive my full salary while imprisoned.

The Moscow embassy personnel had been very helpful, Barbara said. Although they had failed in all their attempts to see me, they had collected over fifty paperback books for me from their private libraries. And they would handle arrangements for my monthly package.

Under Soviet law, each prisoner could receive one seventeenpound package from home each month. On receiving the money and being informed what I needed, the Embassy would purchase the items and see that I received them. Although not sure what was and wasn't permitted, we made up a list of items I most wanted: American cigarettes, shaving gear, instant coffee, sugar, canned milk (to go over the boiled oats sometimes served for breakfast), news magazines, books, and more books. Asking the interpreter what I would need in the way of clothes—he suggested heavy shoes, work clothes, a warm topcoat, winter underwear, a fur cap with earflaps—Barbara promised to obtain them before leaving Moscow. She intended to stay until Friday, hoping to see Khrushchev on his return.

Thoughtfully, Barbara's mother then left, so we could be alone. As alone as you can be with an interpreter and two guards.

Through the use of guarded phrases, I was able to piece together a number of things. Arrangements had been made by the “U.S. government,” by which I assumed she meant the agency, for her to receive five hundred dollars from my pay each month, the balance to be banked pending my return. My “employers” had also paid
her way to Russia and arranged for two lawyers, members of the Virginia Bar Association, to accompany her. Their major task, I gathered from her remarks, was to interview me for the agency, but they had been refused permission to see me.

My father has arranged with
Life
to pay his and mother's expenses. And this, apparently, was what had caused the schism between my wife and my parents. The agency had offered to pay their fares also, but my father had refused, wanting to remain a free agent. Barbara, quite bitterly, declared that she wasn't. She couldn't speak to the press without permission. Everywhere she went, she was followed.

Time was up, the interpreter said.

After Barbara had been escorted out, the interpreter returned and said, “There's an American here who would like to see you.”

Though I had dreamed for months of just such words, actually hearing them startled me.

“An American? Who?”

I thought perhaps it was someone from the embassy.

“An American tourist who has been given permission to visit you. Do you wish to see him?”

“Of course.”

While I was waiting, another thought occurred to me. Maybe the agency had managed to get someone in.

Although his clothing obviously marked him as an American, the man wasn't familiar. Middle-aged, florid faced, he seemed very nervous. Pumping my hand, he told me his name and said, “Perhaps you've heard of me?”

I had to admit I hadn't.

This seemed to deflate him somewhat; reaching inside his wallet, he extracted a sheaf of clippings. “These are all about me,” he said, “when I was a candidate for the Presidency of the United States, in 1956.”

Looking at the clippings, I saw that he had run as the candidate of the Progressive party. But the name, Vincent Hallinan, still meant nothing to me.

He was an attorney, he explained, and had attended the trial as a guest of the Soviet government. The trial, in his opinion, was absolutely fair—

I was more than tempted to interject a dissenting opinion, but he gave me no chance.

—and my sentence very lenient. Now, as for ways of spending my time, I should start by learning the language.

I agreed with that. In fact, this had been one of my intentions, although I was put off a bit by having a stranger tell me what to do.

Then I should spend my time studying the Communist form of government. It was a remarkable system. If I approached it with an open mind, realizing that the American system had grave flaws, I would learn a great deal.

Pausing only to light one cigarette after another, he gave me no time to reply, but after listening to him for a few minutes I had no inclination to do so.

If the Soviet Union had a Chamber of Commerce, I decided, Mr. Hallinan could easily win its presidency.

When he finished his spiel, he pumped my hand again and asked if there were any messages he could take to the United States for me.

There were a number of things I was anxious to tell the CIA. But I didn't think Mr. Hallinan was the man to serve as courier. Thanking him, I declined his offer.

It was only after he left that the full irony of it hit me.

During all the time I had been in the Soviet Union only one person had tried to indoctrinate me in the Communist form of government.

And he was an American.

I had thought my visits were over. On Wednesday, August 24, I had a surprise.

My parents and sister were leaving for the US today; Barbara would be leaving Friday. I was on the roof, having my afternoon walk, thinking about their going, when the interpreter arrived with two guards.

This was the first time I had seen the interpreter here, and it surprised me.

“Would you like to see your wife again?” He paused, waited a moment, and added, “Without guards?”

“You know the answer to that!”

“Come with us.”

I was driven across town to another prison and taken to a cell. Although there were bars on the windows, it was arranged like a sitting room, with an easy chair, a table with fruit and soda on it, and a couch. On the end of the couch, neatly folded, were blankets and sheets.

Left alone, I inspected the room, looking for hidden microphones or peepholes, but could find none.

Barbara was ushered in a few minutes later. She hadn't expected the meeting either. Two Soviet officials had arrived at her hotel only a few minutes before and brought her here.

Seeing her up close, I was shocked at how much she had changed. Somehow I had missed it in our earlier meetings. She was drinking heavily, I was sure. Her speech was slurred, the strong smell of alcohol on her breath. I was extremely worried about her, but this was neither the time nor the place for a lecture or an argument.

We were left alone three hours.

The last time I saw her, she was walking down a long hall with the interpreter and a major. She didn't look back.

I didn't realize it then, but, in her own way, she was walking out of my life.

Diary, August 26, I960: “I was told that Barbara and her mother left this morning. Feel all alone once more.”

Letter to Barbara, September 5, I960:

“So far my life has not changed much. I am still in the same cell, but I have more time on my hands, since there is no interrogation and no preparation for a trial. I am glad all that is over. I hope I never have anything like that to go through again.

“I am very despondent today. I don't know why so today more than any other day, but that is the way it is. Just the thought of spending ten years in prison is getting to me. … The way I feel now, I would much rather have stayed with the airplane and died there than spend any time in a prison.

“I can't help wondering if there will be a pardon of some kind or an exchange of prisoners, or maybe something will happen through diplomatic channels to set me free. I realize that any of these things could happen, but I cannot count on them. There is only one thing that is sure, and that is—my sentence is for ten years.

“I doubt if I will ever be able to go to a zoo again—that is, if I ever get out of here—without having the desire to set all the animals free. I have never, before this, thought very much on the subject, but I think all men and animals were born to be free. To take away one's freedom is worse than to take one's life.”

Unexpectedly, the following day I was taken back to one of the
interrogation rooms. Several KGB officials and an interpreter were present. Their faces were stern.

“On his return to the United States, your father told the American press that you did not believe you had been shot down at sixtyeight thousand feet.”

Oh, God! All through the trial I had wanted to get one message across: that I had been flying at my assigned altitude when knocked down, that if other pilots were sent over it would be at the risk of their lives. And I had, I felt, succeeded in conveying this.

Suddenly it was as if it had all been in vain.

Ten

Father of Powers Says Pilot Doubts U-2 Was Shot Down

T
he story, which appeared on the front page of
The New York Times,
quoted my father as telling the Overseas Press Club: “He (Francis) said ‘if I were shot down, there would have been an explosion behind me and an orange flash around me.' He didn't believe he was shot down.”

Had I told my father this?

No. Obviously he had been confused by the testimony in court: the orange flash and the acceleration from behind were what convinced me there had been an explosion.

Would I be willing to write a letter to
The New York Times
clarifying the matter?

I hesitated just long enough not to appear too anxious.

It was the first letter I had been allowed to write anyone other than my family. I spent some time on the draft, relating details of the crash; reemphasizing “I was at maximum altitude, as stated in the trial, at the time of the explosion. This altitude was sixty-eight thousand feet”; and observing that while my father apparently misunderstood me on this matter, he “did not misunderstand me when he stated that when this was all over that I was coming home. I do intend to come home, and I pray that I will not have to stay in prison for ten years.”

For reasons known only to the Russians, the letter, written September 6, was redated September 18, I960, and mailed with a Moscow return address. By this time I was no longer in Moscow.

The reference to “maximum altitude” was not overlooked. On
the contrary, it got too much attention, almost giving the show away. As I learned later,
The New York Times,
in printing the letter, observed: “Military experts here said that sixty-eight thousand feet—the altitude at which Soviet reports have consistently said the plane was downed—was substantially under the maximum altitude of the plane, a fact that should have been known to Mr. Powers.”

I couldn't blame my father for being confused. Apparently a great many others were also.

By now it was obvious that I had become the pawn in some sort of top-level power play, that there were some highly placed people in the United States unwilling to admit that Russia now had an effective defensive surface-to-air missile.

If what the Russians had told me was true—and I could see no reason for them to deceive me on this—many newspapers and magazines in the United States, including aviation journals, had accepted the fiction that I had experienced oxygen and/or engine trouble, radioed my base, then descended to thirty thousand feet, at which point I was shot down.

One of the most influential in spreading this nonsense, I later learned, was Representative Clarence Cannon, Democrat, Missouri, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Cannon had told the press on May 11 that Khrushchev had lied when he said the U-2 was shot down, that its capture had resulted from either a mechanical defect of the plane or some “psychological defect of the pilot.”

I could only conclude the lower-altitude story was a “controlled leak,” something someone in a high position, either in the military or the government, wanted disseminated and believed.

Why?

There were a number of possible explanations. The information I had conveyed was important intelligence. And perhaps that was the trouble. It was too important: it wreaked havoc with preconceptions, its implications extending far beyond the U-2 program itself.

Accepting the hard fact that Russia's defenses were much better than we had supposed meant reevaluating our own offensive capabilities, and, inevitably, spending more money for missiles, less for bombers. The United States was currently committed to the B-52 bomber. If the Soviets could down a high-flying U-2, the low-flying B-52 was a sitting duck.

Too, it was impossible to discount the human factor. Someone in our intelligence apparatus had goofed, maintaining that Russia did not have missile capability, while Russia obviously did; quite
possibly, face-saving was involved. Or it could be plain stubbornness, the refusal to accept any information contrary to one's fixed preconceptions.