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

Escorted into a small room with the assembled members of his family, where a spread of food and wine was laid out on a table, Frank broke down into tears while embracing his wife and mother, father, and sister. A well-armed six-man security team guarded the door. Frank told them he was relieved he did not receive the death penalty but wondered aloud if he had done the right thing by displaying such remorse. It did not take him long to become aware of the friction between Barbara and the rest of the family. This bothered him, and he asked them to try to get along.

Still stinging from Grinyov’s harsh words about his country, Powers told his wife he wanted her to make a statement to the press on his behalf. The next day, the two lawyers appointed by the Virginia Bar Association, Andrew W. Parker and Frank W. Rogers, relayed the message to reporters, repudiating much of what Grinyov said.

“I’m an American and I don’t want any part of it,” Powers told his wife. 123

The Soviet lawyer had quoted Powers as saying he believed he would be prosecuted if he ever returned to the United States, but not long after word of the verdict reached Washington, President Eisenhower said the government had no intention of prosecuting the pilot, “because it sees nothing in his conduct to warrant such prosecution.” 124

While extending his “sincere sympathy” to members of the pilot’s family and pledging to “provide for his wife” while he was confined to a Soviet prison, Eisenhower expressed his disappointment at the way Powers had been used to further Soviet propaganda.

Four days after the trial, as the family prepared to return to the United States, Frank visited with his mother and father one last time, wondering if it would be the last time he would ever see them. Ten years was a long time.

The Soviets allowed Barbara to visit with him alone in a secluded room at the prison, where the husband and wife had intercourse. Afterward, Barbara told her family and other members of the travel party about their intimacy. In case she became pregnant, she wanted people to know. 125

On the evening of February 7, 1962, two inmates inside Vladimir Prison started their evening walk from the community toilet back to their tiny, 12´×8´ cell. 1They were in no hurry. Every moment they were allowed to linger beyond the confining gray-and-white walls was precious, like a little whiff of freedom.

Inside the ancient penitentiary built during the reign of Catherine the Great, located about 150 miles east of Moscow, Francis Gary Powers, the world’s most famous spy, was just another lost soul who had to piss in a bucket and squat over a big open hole in the floor.

Transferred to Vladimir twenty-one days after his conviction, Powers was introduced to Zigurd Kruminsh shortly after he arrived from Moscow. The American pilot and the Latvian dissident, who said he had been betrayed while hiding out with members of the anti-Soviet underground and given a fifteen-year sentence after a sham trial, quickly became friends. Powers wondered if he was a KGB plant. It all seemed too convenient, especially since the man spoke five languages, including English, and espoused a virulent hatred of the Soviets. No matter. Powers realized his biggest enemy was loneliness and despair. Zigurd gave him someone to talk to. They made each other laugh and took turns looking through the little crack in the cabinet blocking the window, which offered a glimpse into the outside world. Little things. They shared the little things that kept them from going crazy inside. The Latvian taught Frank how to weave small burlap and wool rugs. They also passed the time playing chess. 2

On the way back from the bathroom, Frank and Zigurd noticed the KGB colonel, who was the most powerful man at the prison, and his interpreter standing outside their cell, number 31, on the second floor of building two.

Stepping into the cell after the two inmates, he approached Powers and said, “How would you like to go to Moscow tomorrow morning?” 3

Moscow?

He had been confined at Vladimir for seventeen months, so long that he was starting to forget how trees looked.

“Fine,” he said, unsure of what was happening.

Then the colonel added one bit of information.

“Without guards.”

This could only mean one thing, but he was almost afraid to think it. Several times during those seventeen months, he had gotten his hopes up about an early release, only to be disappointed. Just days earlier, the pilot’s wife told reporters in Milledgeville that Soviet officials had told him he had no chance of clemency because of the “seriousness and gravity of his crime.” 4

Unlike any other man in Vladimir, he was truly a political prisoner.

The U-2 Incident was like a grenade tossed into the bitterly contested 1960 presidential election.

Khrushchev believed that releasing Powers before the election would boost the chances of Vice President Nixon against Democrat John F. Kennedy. 5

Kennedy, who pushed the “missile gap” theme as a way of attacking Eisenhower from the right—relying on estimates that the Soviets would have as many as 500 first-strike-capable ICBMs by 1961, several times the US arsenal—benefited from the U-2 Incident as a potent symbol of the outgoing administration’s negligence in the face of a growing Soviet threat. Nixon would always blame Allen Dulles for failing to explain the truth gained by the four-year U-2 program, disproving the gap, although such revelations would have pushed the CIA director into the forbidden realm of domestic politics.

After the Powers shoot-down sent US-Soviet relations careening to a new low, Kennedy told a high-school student, during a rally in Oregon, that he might be willing to apologize to Khrushchev for the overflight. The resulting firestorm made him seem weak and naïve. 6Ultimately, this gaffe motivated him to become more overtly hawkish.

While Kennedy was an unknown quantity at the Kremlin, Khrushchev was inclined to oppose any continuation of the current American policy. He disliked Nixon, who wore his anti-communism like a beauty-pageant sash.

“Several top Soviets have indicated to me their opposition to you,” Ambassador Thompson wrote to the vice president. “I have always taken the line with them that you are a staunch and effective anti-communist just as they are staunch anti-capitalists, but that they made a mistake in assuming that you were opposed to negotiations or agreements with the Soviet Union.” 7

Even with the bad blood stirred up by Powers and by the Kremlin’s cozying up to Fidel Castro, the Eisenhower administration quietly pressed for the release of Powers and the RB-47 crew.

But Khrushchev insisted the time was not right, believing any movement on the issue would reflect a tacit endorsement of Eisenhower’s handpicked successor. “We would never give Nixon such a present,” Khrushchev told his colleagues. 8

After Kennedy captured the White House with one of the narrowest margins in American history, the Soviet Union released the two surviving members of the RB-47 crew as a goodwill gesture to the new administration. (“You can’t sit in a cell for 211 days without it affecting you,” Colonel Bruce Olmstead said. “You forgive, and you live with it.” 9)

Powers thought for sure he was next. But the news never came.

In June 1961, the two leaders met in Vienna. “You know, Mr. Kennedy,” Khrushchev said, “we voted for you.” 10This was apparently meant as a joke, but it was impossible to deny that the U-2 Incident, the scuttling of the summit, and Powers’s continued imprisonment inured to Kennedy’s benefit. JFK declined to bring up Powers’s fate at the summit.

In another instance, Khrushchev said, “Relations deteriorated due to the U-2 and I consider that the American people’s vote for Mr. Kennedy was against Nixon, the U-2 and the Cold War policy.” 11