Francy Powers Jr. - Spy Pilot - Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 Incident, and a Controversial Cold War Legacy

The authorities eventually loaded him into a military vehicle featuring two mounted machine guns, and then transported him to the nearby city of Sverdlovsk, where they escorted him into a large government building, where he first encountered men he assumed were agents of the KGB, the Soviet secret police. He took a seat in a nondescript office. The solitary window contained no bars, but from the time he walked into the room, someone was always positioned between him and the window. One would leave; another would take his place. At no time was he ever left with a clear path to the window.

When the new team searched him, they discovered the poison pin, which one of the men carefully placed in his briefcase.

“Are you an American?”

He was shocked to hear English for the first time since leaving Pakistan.

“Yes,” he said, realizing it was pointless to deny his nationality. 39

Despite the lack of any formal training procedures for such a possibility, Powers had broached the subject with an intelligence officer several weeks earlier:

“Let’s say the worst happens and I get captured. What do we do? What can we tell these people?”

“You might as well tell them everything, because they’re going to get it out of you anyway,” the agency man advised. 40

He was unnerved by this answer, especially considering his knowledge of the way the communists tortured and brainwashed American prisoners during the Korean War.

Suddenly facing the fear of the unknown, but determined not to give up any classified information, he started telling an elaborate lie about flying near the border and somehow getting lost.

The KGB man knew better, but Powers kept spinning as they appeared determined to have him admit that he was a member of the American military.

Eventually, Powers learned that authorities had recovered a cache of personal items, including his wallet, which contained a card identifying him as a civilian employee of the Department of Defense, as well as a Social Security card and a significant amount of currency from several countries. Because he was not returning to base that night, he thought he would need a form of ID, cash, and a change of clothes in Norway. This was the act of a prepared pilot, not a clever spy.

“Someone should have stopped me from taking that,” Powers said. “I should have known better myself.” 41

A couple of hours after he parachuted from the sky, he was on a commercial airliner bound for Moscow. He assumed it was only a matter of time before they killed him.

When Powers failed to show up in Bodo at the appointed time, Stan Beerli feared the worst. He relayed an alternate message, launching a chain reaction that eventually reached the Matomic Building in Washington, where the operation was based, at approximately 3:30 a.m. Sunday. Electronic intelligence indicated that Soviet radar tracking of Mission 4154 had ended about two hours earlier. 42Carmine Vito, the former U-2 pilot who now manned a desk, began trying to find Bissell, placing a call to the home of Bob King, one of his special assistants. “Bill Bailey didn’t come home,” Vito said. “You better find the man quick.” 43

Aware that his boss was visiting former student Walt Rostow, King struggled to obtain his number during the wee hours of the morning, encountering an uncooperative operator. He was not going to take no for an answer. “It’s a goddamned national emergency!” he thundered. 44By the time King reached Rostow, Bissell had already left to catch a flight back to Washington, unaware of the unfolding situation. After arriving at the headquarters about 3:30 p.m., he began consulting with a small group including Colonel Leo Geary, the US Air Force project officer, and CIA official Richard Helms. They started discussing a cover story, as Bissell felt “a sense of disaster.” 45

General Andrew Goodpaster, the staff secretary to the president, who would one day rise to supreme commander of NATO, broke the news to Eisenhower, who was still at Camp David. “One of our reconnaissance planes on a scheduled flight from its base in Adana, Turkey, is overdue and possibly lost,” he said. 46

The news of the missing aircraft reached Adana early Monday morning, where the housing and administrative officer was dispatched to the Powers trailer. The knocking eventually rousted Barbara from her bed. 47After hobbling to the door, she said, “This had better be good.” 48Powers’s wife was so upset, she required sedation. (The CIA cable concerning the notification said her broken leg had resulted from a “skiing accident.” 49) The CIA arranged for her immediate return to the United States via a commercial airline, along with their German shepherd, Eck.

While Barbara hoped her husband had somehow survived and would eventually come back to her, key members of the Eisenhower administration hoped he was dead. It would be much more convenient for the American government if he were dead.

When Monday morning dawned at the White House without any word, Eisenhower was given every assurance that the plane was likely destroyed and the pilot had perished. Time after time, Dulles and Bissell and several others had insisted he would never have to worry about a live pilot leaving a trail of bread crumbs all the way back to Washington. This belief factored heavily into his decision to undertake such risky provocations, especially with the summit fast approaching. Eisenhower decided to say nothing just yet, waiting for Khrushchev to play his card.

In Islamabad, General Ayub Khan, the strongman leader who had granted broad approval of American aviation activity but had been shielded from direct knowledge of the overflights, received a visit from a CIA operative, who assured him that the United States would make “every effort to minimize any Soviet pressure growing out of the incident.” 50Khan played it cool, asking that a confidential message be passed along to Director Dulles, in which he pledged to “stand by our friends and not let them down on this.” Proving he understood Western-style political leverage, he asked for help acquiring an F-104 and upgrading his radar network, to thwart Soviet aggression.

After two days of discussion and fine-tuning, NASA released a cover story approved at the highest level:

A NASA U-2 research airplane being flown in Turkey on a joint NASA-U.S. Air Force Weather Service mission apparently went down in the Lake Van, Turkey area at about 9 a.m. (3 a.m. EDT) Sunday, May 1. During the flight in eastern Turkey, the pilot reported over the emergency frequency that he was experiencing oxygen difficulties. The flight originated in Adana with a mission to obtain data on clear air turbulence. A search is now underway in the Lake Van area. The pilot is an employee of Lockheed Aircraft under contract to NASA. The U-2 program was initiated by NASA in 1956 as a method of making high-altitude weather studies…. 51

A stranger wearing a dark suit walked into Oliver Powers’s shoe shop in Norton, Virginia. He asked to speak with the father alone, and the two of them stepped out the back door and into the alley, where the man from Washington broke the news. Francis was missing. Walton Meade, Oliver’s son-in-law, happened to be in the shop, and he overheard part of the conversation, which included reference to the cover story. Weather plane. Off course. Walton wasn’t buying it, which was a bad sign for the whole plan.

“So just how far over Russia was Francis when he was shot down?” he demanded with a sneer.

The Company man glared at him and walked out the door.

Around this time, Joe Murphy, now stationed in New York City and assigned to another covert project, was driving to Philadelphia for an appointment. He heard the news about a U-2 going down on his car radio and immediately wondered which pilot had been at the controls, thinking whoever it was, he was likely dead. One of the few people in the world who knew the weather-reconnaissance business was a lie, he was “really skeptical about the cover story holding up.”