Francis Powers - Operation Overflight

Did they think we were going to try to cook it and eat it, or use it to send a message?

Actually, I’d hoped to have it for a pet for a little while. Yet I knew that even if we could manage to hide its presence from the guard—a nearly impossible feat—I wouldn’t have been able to keep it long. I could never have made it a prisoner too.

We were never sure whether our cell was bugged. Occasionally, out of boredom and curiosity, we would voice the most fantastic lies, or denounce the Soviet authorities in the vilest possible terms, hoping for someone to come in and reprimand us. Then we’d know. No one ever did. Somehow this was in itself depressing, knowing that no one really cared that much.

When starting my journal I had been careful to include only things which would not irritate my captors, hoping in this way to ensure their letting me take the journal with me upon release. Now I no longer bothered to censor myself. Many pages were devoted to the lack of freedom of expression in the Soviet Union; the prevalence of one viewpoint and one viewpoint only, the “correct” one; the use of lies which, through constant reiteration, became credible truth. Listening to Radio Moscow one day, I heard an American Communist denounce the United States as a place where there is no freedom. “Of course the Russian people believe this,” I wrote. “They do not stop to think that this man is going to return to the country where he knows no freedom, and that once there he won’t be sent to prison for what he has said. While here he would be tried and convicted of uttering anti-Soviet propaganda.” Yet the Russian people believed this, just as they believed their leaders alone were for peace, that only the United States stood in the way of disarmament.

In my opinion, I noted, the controlled press, as found in the Soviet Union, is as insidious a form of brainwashing as exists.

This one-sided interpretation of the news bothered me greatly, not only because of its obvious effect on the thinking of the Russians but also because I realized a man subjected to it for a long period, denied comparisons, other sources, would almost inevitably emerge thinking like a Communist.

How long would it take? I wasn’t sure. But I suspected that by the end of ten years the process would be fairly complete.

July 4 was a particularly bad day. But all holidays were, as I’m sure is true with prisoners everywhere, whatever their sentences or crimes. When you lock up a man, you lock up his memories too.

There were few periods of excitement or elation now. Only mail affected my mood.

With one exception, my outgoing letters from Vladimir were not censored in the sense of words being crossed out or letters returned for rewriting, though every letter was read, which in itself imposes a subtle form of censorship on the writer. The exception was a letter in which I mentioned my cellmate’s name and sentence. This was not permitted, and I had to rewrite the letter, deleting this information. Also, as far as I could determine, I had received every letter written by my wife or parents, and none of these had been censored.

Therefore I was surprised when, in early July, I received a letter from my father, dated June 14, in which a number of words were inked out. Reading to the end, however, I discovered a P.S. in my father’s handwriting: “I blocked out a few names that I didn’t want to mention in this letter. We are still doing our best to help you. Will continue. Your Pop.”

My father wouldn’t have made a good spy. Holding the letter up to the light, I was able to guess at a few of the deletions. The edited portion read: “I could not find out what was discussed at the K.K. meeting June 3, but I did have a call from _____________ [Abel’s?] lawyer in N.Y. He is in touch with _____________ [Abel’s wife in?] East Germany and ____________ is working for a ____________ release from that end and Mr. Donovan ___________ this end. Just how much good it will do is yet to be seen. I was told I would receive a letter from ____________ in E. Germany. I have not received it yet but will soon, I know.”

What was this all about? As far as I could determine, my father was attempting to arrange something with Abel’s wife and this Mr. Donovan, who I assumed was Abel’s attorney. As far as I was concerned, he was wasting his time, and I wrote him to that effect.

In early August I received a letter from Barbara in which she mentioned that the New York Herald Tribune had recently published an article speculating on an Abel-Powers swap, the two men to be released to live in a neutral country.

I wouldn’t agree to that, I wrote her. To accomplish this, I would have to ask for political asylum and, as far as I was concerned, this was tantamount to renouncing my country. I was an American, and I wanted to come home, very badly. “I know nothing will come of the negotiations, because as far as I know Abel is not a Soviet citizen, and why should the Soviet Union agree to exchange for a noncitizen? It is just that my father is grasping at straws.”

A day or two later I received a letter from my father which dumbfounded me. I read it over and over, in disbelief.

According to my father, he and his attorney, Carl McAfee, had attempted to see President Kennedy shortly before he left for Vienna, but had been told that Kennedy wanted two hundred dollars for an interview. My father, not being able to afford it, had been forced to drop the interview plans.

I couldn’t believe it! I knew little of Presidential protocol, but that a President of the United States could charge a citizen for his time was incredible. Kennedy certainly didn’t need the money. Although to my father two hundred dollars was a great deal of money, to Kennedy it was nothing.

It seemed far more likely that one of Kennedy’s aides was using his privileged position to line his own pockets, even if it meant profit at the suffering of a grieving parent. I decided upon my return to the United States to determine whether there was any truth to the story and, if so, to do everything in my power to make it public. I was sure that the American people wouldn’t stand for such a thing.

This callous heartlessness greatly shocked me. I tried to convince myself it simply couldn’t happen. Yet, in my isolation, anything seemed conceivable.

I had stopped writing in the journal in March. In September, when I started again, more than a little of my bitterness remained, spilling over onto the pages: “I am afraid I will never be a Kennedy supporter in the future…. It seems to me that Kennedy would have tried to get me released. I don’t expect him to go out of his way to help me, but I feel that I would have been released long before now if he had made the slightest effort when he met with Khrushchev…. I don’t mean to complain or bemoan my fate. I did as good a job as I could for them, and in return they should try to aid me….

“Before I was captured I had a great tendency to accept things as they were, not questioning the policies of the United States, since I knew we had intelligent people in our government whose job it was to make decisions for the benefit of the country as a whole. I realized that they were more intelligent than I, and if they did something I thought strange, it was only because I did not know all the reasons for the action, and I accepted it as right and proper.

“But now I realize there is more to it all than I saw at first….”

The Mossman article, Hutchins’ remarks as reported in Time , the neutral-country story, my father’s letter—all continued to bother me, as did the thought that upon my return to the United States I might not again be trusted with a responsible position. Even if people didn’t believe the lies about my defection, they could always say I had been “brainwashed” or “exposed to Communism.” As I wrote in one letter, “I try to tell myself that things will be all right in the future, sometime, but I can’t eliminate the present. I am even afraid of what the future will bring. I have had strong feelings it may not turn out as I would like. In fact, it scares me sometimes to think about it.”