Operation Overflight (48 page)

I will, therefore, accept your feeling on this subject, and although I am not persuaded by the logic thereof, I will abide by your desires not to publish a book on my experiences at this time. I would be less than candid if I left the impression that I am taking these steps willingly. I am not, however, unmindful of the great effort which was made by the government to obtain my release from imprisonment, and am most
grateful for this interest in my behalf. Accordingly, I am advising those publishers with whom I have been negotiating and who have shown an active interest in publishing my experiences that I will not entertain any further consideration of their offers.

Very truly yours,

Francis Gary Powers

I had been muzzled. It was only then that I began to have doubts whether the story would ever be told.

Four

M
y decision to leave the Central Intelligence Agency was motivated by three factors:

1. Suppression of the book, to which I had reluctantly acquiesced. Already one book, the first of several on the U-2 incident, had appeared, its authors, so far as I knew, having made no attempt to contact me.

2. The obvious fact that I was just killing time. Though I had my own office, with the implication that I could stay on at the agency as long as I wished, I had run out of meaningful work.

3. I was itching to fly.

With nearly twelve years of service, and only a little more than eight to go until retirement, I couldn't afford not to go back into the Air Force. Yet I still wasn't ready to lead a regimented life: I wanted to be able to go where I pleased, do what I wanted to do. On checking with the Air Force, I was told there was no hurry as to a decision; I could take my time.

One of my friends at the agency knew “Kelly” Johnson and offered to call him to see if the job at Lockheed was still open. Johnson suggested I fly out to California and talk to him. In September, 1962, I did so.

I was about ready to say I was interested only in a flying job when he asked: Would you like to be a test pilot?

I suspect that at one time or another this has been almost every pilot's ambition: I knew it was mine. I said I would.

Flying U-2s?

The answer was written across my face in a big grin.

On returning to Washington, I submitted my resignation to the CIA, and reported to work at Lockheed on October 15, 1962.

By this time the U-2 had proven itself again. While at the agency, I had kept abreast of developments in the program, and was aware that Air Force pilots, under the command of SAC, were making overflights of Cuba. I also knew that late in August a U-2 had spotted a number of Soviets SAMs, probably similar to the one that brought me down. What no one knew for certain, however, until a U-2 returned from its overflight along the western edge of Cuba on October 14 and its photographs had been processed and studied, was that sites were being built for medium-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching targets in the United States.

We were to pay a high price for our intelligence on the Cuban missile crisis. While overflying Cuba, USAF Major Rudolph Anderson was shot down by a Soviet SAM.

With his death, no one could any longer doubt that Russian missiles were capable of reaching the U-2's altitude.

My work at Lockheed was as an engineering test pilot. This consisted of test-flying the planes whenever there was a modification, a new piece of equipment installed, or the return of an aircraft for maintenance.

Getting back into the tight pressure suit was an odd sensation— uncomfortable as ever. But there was one improvement. It had been found that an hour of prebreathing prior to flight would suffice. Again I was back in the high altitudes. Perhaps needless to say, my insurance premiums rose even more astronomically.

Except for a few close calls, I thoroughly enjoyed the work. Two times hatch covers blew out. One knocked a hole in the wing and in the tail. The other jammed the canopy so I couldn't get out. But each time I managed to make it back. And, while I was working at high altitudes, where the aircraft was most temperamental, there were, I'll frankly admit, occasions when I was scared. But my confidence in the U-2 remains unshaken. It was and still is a remarkable aircraft, one of a kind.

I only wish there were more of them around.

In 1963 I received the first of what was to be a number of rude awakenings.

You're going to have to make up your mind, Powers, the general said. If you want to go back into the Air Force, you'll have to do it soon.

With nearly twelve years toward retirement—

Five and a half, he corrected me. Your time in the CIA won't count.

On joining the U-2 program in 1956 I had signed a document, cosigned by Secretary of the Air Force Donald A. Quarles, promising me that upon completion of service with the agency I could return to the Air Force with no loss of time in grade or toward retirement, my rank to correspond with that of my contemporaries. This had been a major factor in my accepting employment with the CIA. The same was true of the other pilots, all of whom had signed the same document. A number of them had already returned to the Air Force under those conditions.

The general knew this. But there had been too much publicity about my case. Although they would let me reenlist at comparable rank—an old captain, or a new major—they would have to renege on their promise regarding my CIA service counting as time toward retirement.

I was being penalized for doing my duty, for having spent twenty-one months in a Russian prison!

He was sorry, but that was the way things were.

I could have fought it, I suppose. However, as with my agency contract and numerous other documents I had signed, the CIA retained the only copy. To contest this, I would have to use other pilots as witnesses. Some of them, I was quite sure, wouldn't lie. But it would be damn rough on them. My attempt to obtain what I had been “guaranteed in writing” might mean the Air Force would penalize them, too.

The agency knew me well, perhaps too well. They were gambling on my not causing a fuss, for just this reason. And, in this instance, they read me right.

The general also informed me that for the same reason I wouldn't be allowed to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross, awarded to me in 1957.

The second disillusionment came in April. Compared to the broken promise regarding my Air Force service, it was decidedly minor. (Many of my contemporaries in the program have retired or will become eligible for retirement in 1970 as lieutenant-colonels or better, at six to seven hundred dollars a month for life.) Yet, indicative of a pattern, it was in its own way decidedly important.

On April 20, 1963, at a secret ceremony which took place in the Los Angeles area, a number of the pilots who had participated in
the U-2 program were awarded the Intelligence Star, one of the Central Intelligence Agency's highest decorations.

There was one exception. Francis Gary Powers hadn't been invited.

“Kelly” Johnson and a couple other people who worked with me attended. They were very secretive about it, however, because they had been instructed not to let me know what was going on. I knew all the time, from pilot friends with whom I had kept in contact.

It was more than a slight, more than the failure to receive an award. It was confirmation of what I had half-suspected for some time, but didn't really want to admit. I was, to borrow from John LeCarré, the spy who was to stay out in the cold. Things began fitting into place: the agency's failure to clear up the misconceptions regarding my orders, and by so doing lending credence to the criticism; the canceled White House visit; the smudged clearance.

It wasn't too difficult to deduce the reasoning behind it. I could almost hear the discussion:

The public is already down on Powers because they think he told more than he should. We can't divulge what he withheld. Since he's already been made the scapegoat, why not leave it at that? Otherwise there will be questions. The agency has been under enough fire already. This will divert the criticism.

Conjecture, of course, but I suspect it's fairly close to what happened.

As to who made the decision, I have only suspicions. As to when it occurred, it must have been sometime prior to the issuance of the clearance. That the Senate hearing went as favorably as it did was, I believe, a surprise to almost everyone concerned.

I was to be the scapegoat.

And there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

Ironically, not all of the pilots who received the award had made an overflight of Russia.

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.