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

On this matter, the Prettyman inquiry interviewed at least one senior official who worked with my father.

[NAME REDACTED]: We followed a practice—at least I did—of telling the pilots that if they were captured that they were of course to attempt not to reveal any information at all, if possible—and this usually degenerated into a fairly general discussion of ways and means. We would discuss Air Force experience with PW’s [prisoners of war], and the fact that eventually almost anyone could be broken down and compelled to talk—and that the tactics should be to delay—not an out-and-out lie if you’re going to get caught in it, but delay your interrogators as much as possible—give him a limited amount of information and specifics… [especially with regard to] altitude and performance of the aircraft…. 19

The CIA debriefers eventually moved on to finding out what the Soviets learned about his mission.

US Interrogator: Did they ask you questions concerning what you were after in the remaining portion of the flight?

Powers: See, there were a few notations [at this point, he was gesturing to a map similar to one captured by the Soviets]. I think, up here, we had a few airfields annotated. The main thing they wanted to know was how I knew or how I got the information that there would be an airfield there. See, it wasn’t on the map, we had put it there ourselves, and I just told them that someone gave it to me to put it on. Where he got it I don’t know. They wanted to know what I was looking for, and I told them, “I don’t know.” And actually I don’t know.

US Interrogator: Did they try to pump you with any suggestions?

Powers: Well, I don’t know whether they mentioned rocket-launching sites or if that’s the thing that came into my mind when they asked this question, but I know it was in my mind anyway—these rocket-launching sites.

US Interrogator: Did they at any time at all threaten you with any physical harm during your interrogations?

Powers: No, but they did just the opposite, told me that I would not be tortured. Of course, I didn’t believe them. They at no time—well, at Sverdlovsk, one time, I had some ear trouble, I guess from past descent, and I reached up two or three times to—well, I don’t know, habit, I guess—to try to clear the ear and one time, I guess, a man grabbed my hand and threw it down, and that is the roughest treatment I got. They never hand-cuffed me. Those people at that first place looked fairly angry and mean, but the only thing was this throwing my hand down.

US Interrogator: Did they, on the other hand, try to coerce you by bribery of any kind? Did they promise you something?

Powers: Now, this is something I don’t know. I tried to find out, now this was where [Roman Andreyevich] Rudenko was attorney general, or whatever he is, came in at one of the meetings with him. I was feeling fairly despondent and I said, “I’ll never get out of here.” And he said, “Oh, there are ways.” And I said, “What kind of ways?” He said, “Oh, there are just ways.” “Well, what kind of ways?” “Well, I think you should think about it.” And I went to the cell and thought about it, and I kept waiting for him to bring it up again because I was interested in what they were talking about, and they never did bring it up. So I mentioned it to the interpreter. I asked what kind of ways did he mean, and he said, “What do you think?” And I said, “Well, I have no idea.” And that is all that was mentioned. And it seemed at one time they might have had some sort of plan to maybe try to talk me into doing something and giving me my release as pay for something, I don’t know. That was just my impression of this little incident. I never did know what was meant by what he said. 20

The KGB pushed him hard on the question of previous overflights. “They harped on it so much… every day,” he said on his tapes. “When I got angry, I said, ‘If I’d taken a thousand flights, do you think I’d tell you? They stopped [asking] shortly after that.” 21

The CIA wanted to know about the condition of his wreckage.

US Interrogator: Frank, could you describe your visit to the Gorky Park to see the remains of the aircraft—the circumstances of that?

Powers: I think it was around the middle of May. I don’t remember whether they told me the night before or not. I think they did at the last interrogation on the day before that at a certain time—I think it was about nine o’clock in the morning that they were going to take me to review the remains of the aircraft. I don’t know that it was Gorky Park, but it seems like I’ve heard it mentioned here and that’s why I called it Gorky Park, but it was definitely a park. Took me out in an automobile and there was another automobile or two following. Got there. You know, they had ropes around, had all this roped off. There was one or two places they let me get in behind the rope to see something close, but most of the time I had to stay out in front of the ropes. Could get close to the stuff that was there. And they took me around, asking me about each of these individual pieces of equipment and so forth.

US Interrogator: What specifically did they ask you to identify, certain—?

Powers: Yes, it seemed to me they wanted me to identify some of this stuff, and some of it I couldn’t identify. I told them I didn’t know what it was. I couldn’t have identified it if I’d known what it was before, most of it. Some of it was in bad shape—you could see some of it, instruments banged up, but you could tell what they were.

US Interrogator: Were they interested in parts of it more so than others?

Powers: Well, they wanted to get some photographs of me standing in this area where they had the cameras and special equipment. They seemed to ask more questions about the special equipment than about the regular flight instruments and so forth.

US Interrogator: Was this a closed section of the park or were there others there?

Powers: There were a bunch of people there but they were all associated with KGB and guards and so forth.

US Interrogator: Not the general public?

Powers: No, not the general public. In fact we remained there a little longer, I guess, than they anticipated because when we came outside there was a group of people apparently waiting to get in blocked off out of the way. And they whisked me right into the car and out. I suppose they opened it up to the public then—I don’t remember how long it took or what time this was—I know it was in the morning—I think nine o’clock.

US Interrogator: Frank, was the aircraft, as you evaluated it, in condition generally consistent with what you might expect knowing you didn’t see it go down? Was there anything inconsistent or illogical in what you saw there?

Powers: Well, I don’t know. I know from some of the fighter planes that go down there’s very little left, but they probably go down much faster. It seemed to me to be in a little better shape than—well, it was in much better shape that I had hoped it would be, but I thought there would be a little more damage than it appeared. I was very glad that [much] of this stuff was mashed up so it couldn’t, I don’t believe it could be taken apart—looked like to me, but I guess they could. I was surprised that the—Oh, they showed me a photograph this morning that the tail section—it was from the side that I didn’t see—I only saw the other side—and this photograph looked much more damaged than the one that I remembered seeing of the tail section. In fact, I thought the horizontal stabilizers were on, but in this photograph one was missing. But since I only saw one side—I’m sure one side was on—it must have been.

US Interrogator: All of the stuff you saw at Gorky Park was—the best you could tell—was part of the U-2? Didn’t look like there was anything added?