Francis Powers - Operation Overflight

While we overrated the Russians in many ways, we also underrated them in the one area in which they are undisputed masters: propaganda.

In Waging Peace, President Eisenhower wrote: “Of those concerned, I was the only principal who consistently expressed a conviction that if ever one of the planes fell in Soviet territory a wave of excitement amounting almost to panic would sweep the world, inspired by the standard Soviet claim of injustice, unfairness, aggression, and ruthlessness. The others, except for my own immediate staff and Mr. Bissell, disagreed. Secretary Dulles, for instance, would say laughingly, ‘If the Soviets ever capture one of these planes, I’m sure they will never admit it. To do so would make it necessary for them to admit also that for years we had been carrying on flights over their territory while they, the Soviets, had been helpless to do anything about the matter.’”

Secretary Dulles made a bad guess. But he could have been right. The worst mistake is not that he guessed wrongly, but that we were unprepared for any other possibility. Not only that, but even after the receipt of contrary evidence, we ignored it because it did not fit our preconceptions. Instead, we engaged in wishful thinking, as if wishing would make it so.

There were, I’m quite sure, many in Washington who hoped that the pilot was dead. That is, I realize, a strong assertion, but after ten years it seems foolish any longer to deny the obvious. The cover story, and our whole official attitude in the week of May 1 through May 7, was predicated upon this assumption. Yet, from the beginning, the possibility that I was alive existed and was ignored.

I was amazed to discover, on my return to the United States, that on May 5— two days before Khrushchev’s announcement of my capture—the State Department received a telegram from Ambassador Thompson in Moscow warning of a rumor that the pilot was alive and a captive of the Russians. It was an unconfirmed report, the drunken bragging of a Soviet official at a diplomatic reception. But surely someone in our intelligence apparatus should have been alerted. Instead we continued to embellish the cover story, walking blindly into Khrushchev’s trap.

It was a decidedly one-sided chess game, Khrushchev calling the moves, the U.S. ignoring the pieces on the board.

I now believe that the story that I had descended to a lower altitude was a controlled leak. I also believe that some person or persons within the agency, desperate to justify the decision to make the flight, helped perpetuate it. If the aircraft had descended to a lower altitude and then was shot down, it would have been bad luck, therefore, no one in the agency could be blamed.

The tenacity with which human beings, and governments, can stick to a fixed notion, even in the face of overwhelming proof to the contrary, is quite incredible. It is especially so when manifesting itself in an organization whose task includes the collection and evaluation of intelligence.

Even after I was brought to trial there were those in the agency who continued to hope that it wasn’t Powers but someone else who had stood in that prisoner’s dock.

Looking back, I now suspect that the decision to make me a scapegoat was due, at least in part, to someone’s pique that, by being alive, I had proven them wrong.

There were other reasons, and although I am admittedly less than an impartial spectator, I think those reasons should be examined for whatever insight they may give into the U-2 episode.

Though the phrase was not coined until a much later date and under a different set of circumstances, in a very real sense the “credibility gap” was born of the contradictory official statements which appeared after the downing of the U-2.

The gap between what the government knew and what it told the American public had, of course, existed for a long time. But for the first time the American people realized they had been lied to, had been intentionally deceived by their own government. Even worse, the government had been caught in those lies, and made to seem a fool in the eyes of the world. One lingering after-effect was a distrust of government pronouncements, as evidenced by the public’s refusal to accept the Warren Commission Report, statements on the Vietnam war, the official version of the Green Berets’ case.

The most immediate result, however, was anger; and that anger needed an outlet, someone to blame.

Many criticized President Eisenhower for making the unprecedented admission that he had authorized espionage. Boxed into a corner by Khrushchev, given a choice between this and the admission he was not in charge of his own government, he really had little opportunity to do otherwise. Yet I personally feel it says much for the President that he chose this alternative to one of the “easy outs,” such as making Allen Dulles or “Newman” and Powers the scapegoats.

Others found another target. Following the lead of the Russians, they made the pilot the symbol. It was far easier to fix the blame on a single individual, as did Representative Cannon when he suggested the fault might lie in “some psychological defect” in the pilot, than to accept the unpleasant fact that the blame would have to be shared by a great many people.

The impression that I had “told everything,” the belief that I had gone against orders by refusing to kill myself, my statement during the trial that I was “sorry,” added weight to the censure.

There were good and valid reasons why the CIA did nothing to clear up these impressions during my imprisonment.

It was otherwise when I returned home.

A scapegoat, by dictionary definition, is one made to bear the blame for others or to suffer in their place.

The making of scapegoats is also an excuse to avoid facing the truth.

These, to my mind, were some of the mistakes made during the U-2 incident. I state them here neither to justify my own conduct nor to engage in Monday-morning quarterbacking (it is rather late for that, thanks to the eight-year suppression of this story). Nor is it my intention to join those who would make the Central Intelligence Agency a repository of all our national ills. This simplistic attitude is only another manifestation of scapegoatism. I believe in the value of accurate, properly evaluated intelligence. Its lack, I feel strongly, is one of the greatest dangers our system of government faces in this thermonuclear age. The CIA is a major part of our intelligence apparatus. I have no desire to subvert it.

But this does not mean I wouldn’t like to see it function better. Although these are strong criticisms, I feel they are both constructive and fair. They should come as no surprise to the CIA; they are much the same complaints I made in the debriefings upon my return, in my work with the training section. Perhaps unrealistically, I had hoped that by now some of these lessons would have been learned.

Having stated this, I also wish to make it clear that I do not approve of everything the CIA has done. While the lack of accurate intelligence may be one of the greatest threats to our national survival, it is not the only one. Sometimes in our rush to achieve an objective we overlook our reason for pursuing it. It would be tragic if, in the process of trying to protect our government, we forgot that it was founded upon the concept of the worth of the individual.

These are some of the negative aspects of the U-2 incident. There is, I believe, a more positive side to the whole affair.

There are many turning points in history; the U-2 incident was one. Never again would we look at the world in quite the same way. Never again would we be quite so innocent.

When my U-2 was shot down, a number of our most cherished illusions went crashing down with it: that the United States was too honorable to use the deplorable enemy tactics of espionage; that we were incapable of acting in our own defense, until after being attacked.