Francis Powers - Operation Overflight

There was one mention of my case. And it puzzled me.

“Should we be alarmed by the difference between the behavior of Airman Powers and of Nathan Hale?” asked Fund-for-the-Republic President Robert Maynard Hutchins. He did not wait for an answer. He has already seen dark “signs that the moral character of America is changing,” and has ordered the fund’s Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions to take a two-year look at the problem. With an assist from such men as Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, University of California President Clark Kerr, and Jesuit Philosopher John Courtney Murray, Hutchins hopes to turn up “various viewpoints on what the Good Life shall be in America,” to reach “dependable conclusions about our national strength and weakness.”

“I wonder what in the world he is talking about?” I wrote Barbara, “I hope I am not being accused of changing the moral character of America.”

Though I treated it flippantly in my letter, the item disturbed me. Was this due to the Mossman lie? Or, for some reason unknown to me, was I being criticized in the United States, and my family keeping it from me?

It was the first time that possibility had occurred to me.

By mid-May I had heard that Kennedy and Khrushchev would be meeting in early June for disarmament talks. I tried to remain pessimistic. Journal: “It is very hard to conceive that the two countries will agree on doing away with nuclear weapons when they cannot even agree officially to do away with nuclear tests. I am afraid that if my being released depends on disarmament talks, then there is no hope at all. I like to think it doesn’t depend on politics, but I’m afraid it does.”

By the twenty-sixth I was still trying to maintain my skepticism. Writing Barbara about the meeting, I said, “It will probably be over by the time you receive this letter. I suppose it could result in my being released, but I don’t think I had better make any plans…. Even if the meeting does not affect me at all, I certainly hope they settle some important problems and try to make this world a better place to live in.”

But by now the pattern was set. Periods of despondency, followed by resignation, in turn followed by rapidly mounting hope, then back to the first.

Although I knew better, I couldn’t help anticipating.

The talks were held June 3 and 4, in Vienna. Diary, June 5: “It looks as if the meeting between K. and K. ended pretty well. There has been no official announcement of what transpired and probably will not be, but it looks good from my position. It could be that sometime this month I might be released…

“If I am lucky enough to get out this month, I will be very happy, though I will feel bad about leaving my cellmate in prison…. He is one of the finest people I have ever known…. I sincerely hope he does not have to serve his full sentence. He has about nine more years to go.

“I just finished a book of short stories by Pushkin, The Tales of Ivan Belken . I liked it very much. It is the first I have read by him, and I would like to read more, especially Evgeni Onegin .”

The last was a coded reminder, for my return to the United States, about a story Zigurd had told me regarding a former cellmate, Evgeni Brick.

During World War II great numbers of people had fled from Russia and its satellites. When the war ended the Soviet Union had declared an amnesty, promising them freedom if they returned. Zigurd had distrusted the offer. One who hadn’t was a man named Evgeni Brick. Approached by American intelligence in West Germany, Brick had agreed to return to the USSR and spy for the United States. The moment he walked down the ramp from the airplane, the Russians had taken him into custody.

I had made a note of the name “Evgeni,” as I was sure the CIA would be interested in the fate of their former agent, just as I was sure British intelligence would be interested in learning what had happened to Zigurd.

The June 5, 1961, entry was the last in my diary.

Letter to Barbara, June 15: “I am sorry I wrote that I might be released after the meeting between K. and K. I cannot help reaching for each little ray of hope and trying to turn it into a beacon of optimism…. One thing that makes me pretty sad is—if nothing happens as a result of the meeting, then I have very little chance of being released at all. If a meeting between K. and K. will not do it, then what will?”

By this time I had heard the news. Asked by the press what Khrushchev had said regarding the Powers case, Kennedy had replied, “The matter wasn’t even discussed.”

Winter had turned to summer with only a glimpse of spring in between: a row of flowers the work-camp prisoners had planted outside their barracks.

“The weather is getting hot here,” I wrote home. “We haven’t had any rain for several weeks, and most of the days are clear and sunny. I have already got a good suntan by taking my shirt off during my walks. Not everyone can spend a couple of hours each day sunbathing.”

There was very little else to write home about.

I was again persisting in my study of Russian, but with minimal progress; by the time I’d finish translating an article in Pravda it was no longer news, but ancient history. Having run out of the right colors of wool, I’d had to leave the second carpet uncompleted, and was now well into a third, this one larger and more ambitious than the first, measuring 25½ by 31½. inches and with seven colors—gold, black, brown, yellow, and light, medium, and dark blue. Reading material was no longer quite so scarce. Barbara had sent thirty paperbacks, including Robert Lewis Taylor’s The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters and James Michener’s Hawaii . In addition, I systematically devoured the English books in Moscow University library: The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle and The Adventures of Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett; The Apple Cart by George Bernard Shaw; Arrowsmith , Babbitt , Main Street , Elmer Gantry , and Kingsblood Royal by Sinclair Lewis; Candide by Voltaire; Bleak House , Little Dorrit , Great Expectations , Heartbreak House , Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens; The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy; Henry Esmond by William Makepeace Thackeray; Tom Jones — A Foundling, The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and His Friend Mr. Abraham Adams by Henry Fielding; Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy; The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling; the complete works of William Shakespeare; the continuation of Mikhail Sholokhov’s Don novels, Seeds of Tomorrow and Harvest on the Don ; War and Peace and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy; Octopus by Frank Norris; The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain; The Store by T. S. Stribling; The Titan by Theodore Dreiser; Typee by Herman Melville; and Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.

Even visits to the dentist became memorable breaks from the routine. I lost a filling, which had to be replaced, not once but several times. It finally stayed, but became badly discolored. The dentist’s equipment was extremely primitive. Even here were those jars of leeches. By this time I had no doubt as to how they were used, having seen doctors applying them to people’s backs in the prison movies. But I never could understand why the dentist had them. Fortunately, I never found out.

“Well you heat it and it bursts, and becomes a big, white, fluffy, soft—”

Finally I gave up. How do you explain popcorn to a man who has never seen or tasted it?

A pigeon flew through the top of the window and got caught between the panes of glass. I climbed on to the cabinet and got it out, bringing it back into the cell with me. But I’d been spotted. Hearing a rush of feet up the stairs, I released it before the cell door opened.