Operation Overflight (19 page)

Nothing like this had happened before. Once locked in my cell at night, I had been left alone. It bothered me. Had I dreamed it? No. There was the empty ashtray. Perhaps his excuse was true. But if so, why had he returned? Since, so far as I knew, neither guard spoke English, the idea that I was talking in my sleep and they were trying to listen seemed unlikely, as did the possibility that they feared I had obtained a weapon or some other contraband and were searching my cell. Still another explanation occurred to me. That I might have been drugged. For the first time, I seriously wondered.

The incident remained unexplained. But it made me more anxious than ever that they not doubt my story.

My interrogators now held most of the cards. They knew what had happened since my capture. I didn't. Each new question increased the possibilities of contradiction, exposure. In some way I'd have to further limit those possibilities.

Notification of the pending trial gave me the excuse I needed. Since I was to be tried for my May 1 activities, I now refused to answer any questions, of whatever kind, on anything happening prior to that date.

This would count against me in the trial, they warned. Reading the appropriate section of their criminal code, they pointed out, as they had on many previous occasions, that the only possible mitigating circumstances in my case were: (1) voluntary surrender; (2) complete cooperation; and (3) sincere repentance.

I had surrendered voluntarily. But as for the last, I had already repudiated that.

Earlier in the questioning, they had asked me if, having it to do over, I would have made the flight. Yes, I replied, were it necessary for the defense of my country.

Since I was unrepentant, the only things now in my favor were my voluntary surrender and complete cooperation.

I stuck to my resolve. I would discuss nothing that happened prior to May 1.

Perhaps it was in an attempt to change my mind that they now decided to make a radical departure.

For the first time since my capture more than two weeks before, they raised the Iron Curtain, giving me a glimpse at what had happened outside Russia.

It was much too good a story to keep to themselves. They had to brag about it. Thus I finally learned from my interrogators what the rest of the world had long known.

On May 2 the public information officer at Incirlik AFB, Adana, Turkey, had released the news that an unarmed weather reconnaissance aircraft, of the U-2 type, had vanished during a routine flight over the Lake Van area of Turkey and that a search for the missing plane was in progress. During his last radio communication, the pilot—a civilian employee of Lockheed on loan to NASA—had reported trouble with his oxygen equipment.

This was the cover story the CIA had prepared for such an eventuality.

Nobody had ever bothered to share it with the pilots.

The next several days brought further details from NASA, including information that all U-2s had been grounded to have their oxygen equipment checked.

On May 5, in a speech before the Supreme Soviet in Moscow, Premier Khrushchev had announced that on May Day an American plane, in “an aggressive provocation aimed at wrecking the Summit Conference,” had invaded Soviet territory and, on his personal orders, been shot down by a missile.

Just that. Nothing more.

The trap had been baited.

The same day NASA announced that the U-2 previously reported missing from Incirlik might have strayed across the border on automatic pilot while its pilot—now identified as thirty-year-old Francis
G. Powers, of Pound, Virginia—was unconscious from lack of oxygen.

On May 6 a U.S. State Department spokesman uncategorically stated to reporters that “There was no—N-O—deliberate attempt to violate Soviet air space, and there has never been.” The suggestion that the United States would try to fool the world about the real purpose of the flight was “monstrous.”

While a formal note of inquiry was sent to the Soviet government, requesting additional information as to the fate of the pilot, various U.S. senators and congressmen waxed indignant over the shooting down of the unarmed weather plane. That Khrushchev could order such action so close to the Summit was a clear indication of bad faith.

Apparently it was presumed by almost everyone, including the agency, that I had not survived the crash.

On May 7 Premier Khrushchev sprang his trap. “Comrades, I must tell you a secret,” he confided to the Supreme Soviet, and the world.”When I was making my report, I deliberately did not say that the pilot was alive and in good health and that we have got parts of the plane. We did so deliberately, because had we told everything at once, the Americans would have invented another version.”

The pilot was “quite alive and kicking,” he had confessed that he was an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, and, acting on orders of his detachment commander, a United States Air Force colonel, had flown on a spying mission over Russia, taking off from Peshawar, Pakistan, intending to land at Bodö, Norway. Only en route, when over Sverdlovsk, he had been brought down by a Soviet rocket. Flying at twenty thousand meters (65,000 feet), he had thought himself to be safe from rockets. But his capture had proven otherwise.

With great glee Khrushchev debunked “official” U.S. statements about the plane:

“If one believes the version that the pilot lost consciousness owing to oxygen trouble and that the aircraft was subsequently controlled by the automatic pilot, one must also believe that the aircraft controlled by the automatic pilot flew from Turkey to Pakistan, touched down at Peshawar Airport, stayed there three days, took off early in the morning of May 1, flew more than two thousand kilometers over our territory for a total of some four hours.”

Nor was Khrushchev finished setting traps. He noted it was possible President Eisenhower was unaware of the flight. But if so, that meant the militarists in his country were actually “bossing the show.”

Thus Eisenhower was left with two choices, neither pleasant: to admit he had authorized espionage, an unprecedented admission for a President to make, or to deny knowledge of the flights, with the clear implication that he wasn't in charge.

In reaction, the U.S. State Department then admitted that the U-2 had probably made an information-gathering flight over Soviet territory, but stressed that “there was no authorization for any such flight” from authorities in Washington.

What happened behind the scenes—the setting up of a scapegoat to be blamed for the whole incident; CIA head Allen Dulles' offer to resign and take responsibility for the flight; President Eisenhower's vacillation, finally culminating in his unprecedented decision—I was not to learn until much later.

What I was told, however, was that on May 11, two days after Secretary of State Christian Herter stated that specific U-2 missions were not subject to Presidential authorization, the President of the United States himself admitted he had personally approved the flights. Espionage was, he said, “a distasteful but vital necessity,” mandatory because of Soviet secrecy, the rejection of his Open Skies Plan of 1955, and to avert “another Pearl Harbor.”

The President of the United States had pleaded guilty for me.

Yet, because I had no doubt as to my ultimate fate, this concerned me far less than one other thing my interrogators told me.

Both Secretary of State Herter and Vice-President Nixon had stated publicly that the flights over Russia would continue.

To me this was the most incredible thing of all. They now knew I had been shot down, that Russia did indeed have missile capability, yet other pilots were to be sent on overflights anyway!

I was still reacting from the shock of this, when, on May 16, I received some news more current.

The Summit talks had collapsed. And I was responsible.

Lacking a meeting point on the Berlin question, no one had anticipated much from the Summit. But there had been a slim chance something would come of it, that the world might move just a little bit closer to peace.

That I was responsible for destroying this possibility shook me, hard. It still does.

With this revelation, the Iron Curtain again descended. Whatever was happening beyond the borders of my very small world, I wasn't told about.

But I had been left with more than enough to think of.

Although greatly depressed by the news, at least one portion of it was encouraging. I now knew that by May 7, the day on which Khrushchev announced my capture and details of my flight, my interrogators had bought my story, believed I was telling the truth, even to altitude, Khrushchev's use of twenty thousand meters being the closest approximation to the sixty-eight-thousand-feet figure I had used.

From this alone the CIA should know I hadn't told everything.

The problem, however, was that the Iron Curtain worked both ways. It not only denied me knowledge of what was happening in the rest of the world; it also kept the agency from knowing exactly how much I had told the Russians.

There were things I knew which, if revealed, would create a far greater incident than had taken place. That this hadn't happened should indicate to them I was still withholding the most important information. Yet, in consideration of Khrushchev's trap, they couldn't be sure. Maybe I had told everything, with Khrushchev only awaiting a more opportune time to reveal it.

There were at this moment, I was sure, some very nervous people in the United States government.

There was no way I could set their fears at rest.

On Sunday, May 22,1 awoke with a bad cold, so hoarse I could barely speak. Interrogation was canceled.

It was my first day off after twenty-one days of questioning. Despite the cold, I thoroughly enjoyed the respite.

I was treated with the sun lamp and given extra time on the roof. My weed garden was thriving. All day I was able to rest and read. On Sunday the head guard was off; the other guard and the old woman who brought the meals came into my cell and tried to converse with me. We managed only a few words, but that they even ventured such a thing was encouraging.

Small pleasures all, but greatly appreciated.

The next morning the interrogations resumed.

Now, with a trial in the offing, there was a greater effort to shape my answers.

They were determined to make me say I had been hit on the first shot—so insistent that I seriously doubted it was true.

The granger also became a matter of dispute. Hadn't my detachment commander assured me that it would break the radar lock on both air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles?

No, only those fired by aircraft. Nothing had been said about SAMs.

I could see what they were getting at. Here the Americans used their foremost scientific know-how to create an electronic device to thwart all our rockets—and their best still wasn't good enough.

I was not about to give them that satisfaction.

Two other pieces of “equipment” also received an undue amount of attention.

One was the destruct device. Why hadn't I activated the switches? Why had I climbed out, rather than using the ejection seat? Had I been afraid the CIA had linked the destruct device to the ejectionseat mechanism to make it explode if I tried to use it?

They returned to this so often it seemed less to get a positive answer than to plant the seed of doubt.

And there was the pin. They had tested the poison on a dog. It had died in ninety seconds. Had I used it, the same thing would have happened to me. But it would have been a horrible minute and a half. Because, according to expert analysis, the poison caused paralysis of the respiratory system. Unable to breathe, the dog had suffocated. Since such a death would resemble death from lack of oxygen, had it occurred to me that this might have been the reason for the U.S. releasing the story of my having trouble with the oxygen equipment?

It hadn't occurred to me until they mentioned it. Then it made a certain amount of sense. But I wasn't about to admit anything of the sort.

One day they brought in the device, now devoid of poison. Had I noticed how poorly it was constructed? The sheath covering the needle, supposedly to make it look like an ordinary straight pin, didn't even fit tightly against the head.

Examining it, I had to agree. It was badly made. Given time and tools, I probably could have done a better job of it myself. Obviously it had been designed to be used, not closely examined. But these thoughts I kept to myself.

Why had I disobeyed orders and failed to use the pin?

I had never been given any such orders. On the contrary, I didn't even have to carry it. The decision was mine alone. And, since carrying it was optional, use was optional too.

They returned to this subject many, many times.

“The story is now circulating in Washington, D.C., your capital, that you were not shot down at the altitude you mentioned to us,
but that after either engine trouble or a flameout you descended to thirty thousand feet, where the rocket reached you.”

That bothered me. If U.S. authorities really believed that, there would be no reason not to continue the overflights.

“They also say they knew this because you radioed such information to your base.”

Now that the news of my capture had been released, there was no need to withhold information as to whether I had or hadn't used the radio. I told them I hadn't, that it would not have transmitted that distance, that this was simply conjecture on someone's part. I had encountered neither engine trouble nor flameout. During training I had experienced the latter, on several occasions, and there was no comparison. Nor had I descended to thirty thousand feet. Whatever happened to my plane had occurred at my assigned altitude.

I had already convinced the Russians of this. Now, ironically, I was faced with the problem of convincing my own government.

Unbeknownst to me, I had become a pawn in the missile-gap controversy then raging in the United States.

“You will be permitted to write two letters, one to your wife, the other to your parents.” With this they gave me a fountain pen and several sheets of paper.