Francis Powers - Operation Overflight

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, 1960, 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.