Francis Powers - Operation Overflight

It was my first day off after twenty-one days of questioning. Despite the cold, I thoroughly enjoyed the respite.

I was treated with the sun lamp and given extra time on the roof. My weed garden was thriving. All day I was able to rest and read. On Sunday the head guard was off; the other guard and the old woman who brought the meals came into my cell and tried to converse with me. We managed only a few words, but that they even ventured such a thing was encouraging.

Small pleasures all, but greatly appreciated.

The next morning the interrogations resumed.

Now, with a trial in the offing, there was a greater effort to shape my answers.

They were determined to make me say I had been hit on the first shot—so insistent that I seriously doubted it was true.

The granger also became a matter of dispute. Hadn’t my detachment commander assured me that it would break the radar lock on both air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles?

No, only those fired by aircraft. Nothing had been said about SAMs.

I could see what they were getting at. Here the Americans used their foremost scientific know-how to create an electronic device to thwart all our rockets—and their best still wasn’t good enough.

I was not about to give them that satisfaction.

Two other pieces of “equipment” also received an undue amount of attention.

One was the destruct device. Why hadn’t I activated the switches? Why had I climbed out, rather than using the ejection seat? Had I been afraid the CIA had linked the destruct device to the ejectionseat mechanism to make it explode if I tried to use it?

They returned to this so often it seemed less to get a positive answer than to plant the seed of doubt.

And there was the pin. They had tested the poison on a dog. It had died in ninety seconds. Had I used it, the same thing would have happened to me. But it would have been a horrible minute and a half. Because, according to expert analysis, the poison caused paralysis of the respiratory system. Unable to breathe, the dog had suffocated. Since such a death would resemble death from lack of oxygen, had it occurred to me that this might have been the reason for the U.S. releasing the story of my having trouble with the oxygen equipment?

It hadn’t occurred to me until they mentioned it. Then it made a certain amount of sense. But I wasn’t about to admit anything of the sort.

One day they brought in the device, now devoid of poison. Had I noticed how poorly it was constructed? The sheath covering the needle, supposedly to make it look like an ordinary straight pin, didn’t even fit tightly against the head.

Examining it, I had to agree. It was badly made. Given time and tools, I probably could have done a better job of it myself. Obviously it had been designed to be used, not closely examined. But these thoughts I kept to myself.

Why had I disobeyed orders and failed to use the pin?

I had never been given any such orders. On the contrary, I didn’t even have to carry it. The decision was mine alone. And, since carrying it was optional, use was optional too.

They returned to this subject many, many times.

“The story is now circulating in Washington, D.C., your capital, that you were not shot down at the altitude you mentioned to us, but that after either engine trouble or a flameout you descended to thirty thousand feet, where the rocket reached you.”

That bothered me. If U.S. authorities really believed that, there would be no reason not to continue the overflights.

“They also say they knew this because you radioed such information to your base.”

Now that the news of my capture had been released, there was no need to withhold information as to whether I had or hadn’t used the radio. I told them I hadn’t, that it would not have transmitted that distance, that this was simply conjecture on someone’s part. I had encountered neither engine trouble nor flameout. During training I had experienced the latter, on several occasions, and there was no comparison. Nor had I descended to thirty thousand feet. Whatever happened to my plane had occurred at my assigned altitude.

I had already convinced the Russians of this. Now, ironically, I was faced with the problem of convincing my own government.

Unbeknownst to me, I had become a pawn in the missile-gap controversy then raging in the United States.

“You will be permitted to write two letters, one to your wife, the other to your parents.” With this they gave me a fountain pen and several sheets of paper.

The letters were extremely difficult to write. Not wanting my family to worry any more than they already had, I tried to be as cheerful as possible—emphasizing that I had been well treated, that I was taking walks, even sunbaths, that I had been given cigarettes and books to read—but found it impossible to eliminate the hopelessness I really felt.

“Barbara, I don’t know what is going to happen to me. The investigation and interrogation is still going on. When that is over, there will be a trial. I will be tried in accordance with Article 2 of their criminal code for espionage. The article states that the punishment is seven to fifteen years’ imprisonment and death in some cases. Where I fit in, I don’t know. I don’t know when the trial will be, or anything. I only know that I don’t like the situation I am in or the situation I have placed you in….

“I was told today that I could write letters to you and my parents. That was good news. I was also told that there appeared in one of the U.S. papers a statement that my father had made that he would like to come here and see me. I was told that if the U.S. government would let any of you come that you would be allowed to see me. I would rather you waited until the trial or after so that I could tell you what the results were. But I will leave the decision of when to come up to you….”

The following day both letters were returned to me. Certain remarks were unacceptable and had been crossed out. Words had been changed, sentences and paragraphs transposed. I was to recopy both letters, as indicated, also wording them in such a way that it appeared I was alone in my cell while writing them.

Since there was no pattern in the content of the deletions, this meant only one thing: they were watching for a code, and were using this method to frustrate it.

Also, rewritten, the letters gave no indication of censorship.

There was no need for such niceties when it came to the letters I received, toward mid-June. They were butchered. Not just single lines or paragraphs, but half-pages cut out. A code, as the Russians well realized, can work both ways.

There was little in the way of encouraging news, except that both my wife and my parents wanted to come to Moscow, if they could get visas. My father had written to both Premier Khrushchev and President Eisenhower, asking them to help me. My mother urged me to be a good boy and read my Testament.

A photo of her was enclosed. She was in bed, obviously ill.

I could have done without that.

From the moment I had been told I would be allowed to receive mail, I had anxiously awaited its arrival, asking each and every day if any letters had come.

Now that they had, the loneliness became even more acute.

Earlier, the evening interrogations had been discontinued. Now, as June passed and spring turned to summer, there were no more Sunday interrogations; then I was given Saturdays off too; and occasionally, without warning, there would be no questions for a whole morning or afternoon.

I learned a new way to tell time. From the gap at the top of my cell window I could see two office windows across the courtyard. They were opened each weekday morning at nine, then closed each evening at six. On Saturdays they were opened at nine, closed at two. Sundays they remained closed all day. But on Sunday the streets outside the prison were quiet, and I could hear each hour as the Kremlin clock tolled the time.