Operation Overflight

by Francis Gary Powers

  I didn’t want to mention any names. If I had to do so, to make my story seem truthful, I wanted them to be as few as possible.

  As for the number of U-2s at Incirlik, I couldn’t be sure whether they had the base under surveillance. The number I chose was the number they were likely to see should this be the case. It was not exact. Nor was the number of pilots in the detachment.

  Toward the end of the evening interrogation session on May 3, the interpreter asked me why I wasn’t eating. I told him I simply had no appetite. Could they get some other food? he asked. They would order anything I wanted, if I would just eat it.

  Although not interested in food, I told him I would like something to read.

  Noting that there were a number of English books available in Moscow University library, he asked what I wanted.

  A Bible, I answered, curious as to whether they would supply it.

  He promised to try to obtain one. In the meantime, he had some paperback mysteries, his own personal collection, also a copy of Gone with the Wind. He could lend me these if I was interested.

  I was, definitely.

  Deciding to tempt my luck, I also asked if I could have some paper and a pencil. After consulting with the majors, he gave them to me, without asking why I wanted them.

  That night I made a calendar. I don’t know why—I was not serving out a sentence; on the contrary, each day I checked off might well be my last—but it seemed important to know what day it was. It was a small link with the outside world. One of the only ones I had.

  “Yesterday you refused to tell us whether you had radioed your base, reporting you were bailing out. We didn’t press you for an answer then, wanting to give you time to consider the benefits of complete cooperation. But you must tell us now.”

  “I still refuse to do so.”

  My reasoning was thus: If the Russians thought the United States already knew I had bailed out and was probably alive, they would be much more likely to release the news of my capture than if they were positive my fate was unknown.

  On the other hand, I was unsure whether the radio had survived the crash. If it had, by examining it their experts could determine that its maximum range was three to four hundred miles.

  It seemed definitely to my advantage to refuse to answer either way.

  I wanted my presence here known. I presumed that when I failed to reach Bodö my wife and parents would be notified that I was missing on a flight. I was desperately afraid that, worrying about me, my mother would have a heart attack. Knowing that I was alive and well, even though in a Russian prison, would be easier on her, I felt, than not knowing. The same would be true of Barbara.

  Neither way would be easy, but I was powerless to do anything about that.

  Just as I had loaded Colonel Shelton with more chores than he could possibly have handled, so did I do the same with “Collins,” who became my only CIA contact, something the Russians were inclined to believe, since in their own espionage apparatuses, rarely did an agent know more than one immediate superior.

  Actually, in four years I had met a great many agency people, including some of the top planners of the U-2 program, such as Richard M. Bissell, deputy director of the CIA for plans, one of the unmentioned visitors to Detachment 10-10.

  By citing Collins, however, I had another, far more important purpose.

  “Collins” was a pseudonym. I also knew Collins’ real name. And Collins knew I knew it, as did others in the agency.

  If the Russians released a story linking me to the CIA, I could be fairly sure the name of my contact would be mentioned. That I referred to him as “Collins,” and not by his actual name, should alert him, and the agency, to the fact that I wasn’t telling everything.

  It had to. It was, as far as I could see, the only way I had of getting the message through.

  Asked the time of my takeoff from Peshawar, I told them, 0626 local time. It was on my flight log.

  Asked the air speed of the U-2, I told them that, also. On this particular flight it averaged about four hundred miles per hour.

  Knowing the time and place of my takeoff, the time and place my flight terminated, and the exact number of miles in between the two points, a child could have computed it.

  On all such easily traceable details, I was exact.

  Asked questions I felt I could safely answer truthfully, I did so. But I didn’t volunteer information. There were some things about the aircraft they could learn neither from the wreckage nor from the records of this particular flight. I had no intention of supplying them. Though they knew from the notation on my flight log that takeoff had been delayed one-half hour, I didn’t volunteer the reason: that we were awaiting White House approval. One of the last things I wanted to do was give the impression the President himself knew and approved of the overflights. Nor when they were laboring under a misapprehension did I go out of my way to correct it. For example, realizing they had jumped to the conclusion that all our flights out of Pakistan had been made from Peshawar, I saw no reason to recall Lahore.

  I told them everything they wanted to know about my childhood and schooling.

  I told them when I enlisted in the Air Force, where I was stationed, what planes I flew. But I skipped quickly over my photo-school training and my work as a photo-lab technician, not wanting them to wonder why, with this background, I showed so little interest in the cameras I was carrying. Nor did I find it necessary to mention some other things, such as the secret training at Sandia, where I learned about the construction of atomic weapons, how to load and check them out, different methods of delivery. Nor the target assigned to me behind the Iron Curtain.

  As for SAC’s operational plans and preparedness in the event of war, I was sure these things had been changed greatly in the past six years. At the same time, though what I knew was probably outdated, I had no desire to fill any possible gaps in their knowledge.

  As for when I joined the CIA, I told them, truthfully, in May, 1956—not mentioning the four months of secret meetings in Washington hotel rooms which preceded the actual signing of the contract, or several of the trips which followed.

  As for Watertown, though I was quite truthful in describing my flight training, some of the things that would have interested them far more went undiscussed. Such as the number of classes that went through the base and the number of pilots in each, the Greek washouts, the “safe” house on the East Coast and the training given there.

  And I said nothing about the “special” flights. This, above everything else, I was determined to keep from them at all costs.

  Each night, on return to my cell, I would go over the questions again in my mind, trying to fit together, bit by bit, a composite picture of what they actually knew.

  I’m quite sure they were doing the same thing.

  It was like a poker game. Each side with its hole cards, hopefully unknown to the other.

  Could they tell when I was bluffing? And, equally important, could I tell when they were?

  Only it wasn’t a game. No poker session ever had such high stakes.

  Asked if I had made the overflight on April 9, which they had apparently radar-tracked, I replied that I hadn’t. Which was true.

  Asked if I knew what its intelligence objectives were, I replied that I didn’t. Which was not true. I’d been backup pilot on the April 9 mission.

  Asked about the RB-47 flights, I told them I knew only about the U-2s. The RB-47s had, on occasion, flown out of Incirlik.

  Asked what I knew about U.S. missiles in Turkey, I told them I had never seen one. Which was not true.

  Asked when the first U-2s were shipped to Europe, I replied I had no idea.

  Asked when the first U-2 overflight took place, I gave the same, and equally erroneous, reply.

  All these were safe bets. They might doubt my answers, but there was no way they could disprove them. So long as I kept my stories straight.

  When had I first been told by the CIA that I would not only be fly
ing along the borders but also over Russia? Some months after signing my contract.

  When had I been told I would be making the May 1 flight? The night before.

  How had I felt about it? Scared.

  As much as possible, I wanted to eliminate the element of premeditation.

  Had I ever been stationed at Atsugi, Japan?

  No, only at Adana, Turkey.

  Was I aware that U-2s were stationed at Atsugi?

  I had heard that, but didn’t know it from personal knowledge.

  They showed me articles, in Japanese, on the U-2 that had crashlanded on the glider-club strip. Had I heard about this?

  Yes, I admitted, I had, but I didn’t know any of the details. I didn’t find it necessary to tell them that they were now the proud possessors of that same aircraft. Or what was left of it.

  Did I know of any U-2 bases in West Germany?

  Yes.

  Which bases?

  Wiesbaden and Giebelstadt.

  Had I ever flown out of either?

  I had flown a T-33 trainer to Wiesbaden once. And in 1959 I had ferried a U-2 nonstop across the Atlantic, to a base in New York State, from Giebelstadt.

  From the limousine incident, we knew that Giebelstadt had been compromised. From the articles in Soviet Aviation, that they also knew of Wiesbaden. Neither base was still in use; it seemed safe to mention both.

  Bodö, Norway, was marked on my maps as the destination of my May 1 flight. Who would have met me there?

  A ground crew.

  Were they from Incirlik?

  I didn’t know. All I was told was that a crew would be waiting.

  Had I ever been to Bodö before?

  Yes, in 1958.

  Possibly telling them this was a mistake, an unnecessary admission. However, it had been a regular trip, with passports, and clearance through customs, and if their intelligence had the resources we had been told they had, I felt sure they could probably find out.

  How long was I at Bodö?

  About two or three weeks.

  Had I made any flights from there?

  No, I replied. I was about to explain that this was due to bad weather but—as would happen far more often than I would have imagined—they interrupted, jumping to their own conclusions.

  If I hadn’t made any flights, then I must have been there for another reason. And the only possible reason was that I had been sent there to study the landing field in preparation for my May 1, I960, landing!

  It was a ridiculous assumption. How long do you need to study a landing field? If you have a radio, and the operator tells you the field is clear, you land. And even if it were of some benefit to study it in advance—two years? Everything about it could change.

  This was really establishing premeditation. I tried to set them straight, but didn’t try too hard, not wanting them to examine too closely the related and quite basic fallacy in my own claim that this was my first overflight.

  I had stuck to this, through repeated questioning, although, to me at least, its weakness was all too apparent.

  If I had arrived in Incirlik in 1956, and hadn’t made my first overflight until I960, it certainly appeared someone was wasting the taxpayers’ money.

  At least this was the way I was afraid the Russians would look at it. The irony of this was that there were some pilots on the program—in the group which transferred from Japan late in 1957—who had never made a single flight over Russia. Why, I never knew, but some were never assigned overflights.

  To make the story more believable, I had stressed the “eavesdropping”missions along the border. Though vague as to exactly when these occurred, or how many there had been—as best I could remember, I told them, I had made one or two in 1956, maybe six to eight in 1957, ten to fifteen each in 1958 and 1959, and several in I960—I had tried to indicate that they were my primary job. It would have helped make my one overflight story more convincing had I been able to mention the atomic-sampling missions, but, unsure as to whether the Russians knew of these, and not expert enough myself to gauge their importance, I didn’t dare risk it.

  Their tendency to jump to conclusions also caused them to fall into still another error regarding Bodö, one I made no effort to correct.

  In going through the wreckage of the plane, they had discovered, in the cockpit, a large black cloth.

  Explain this, they said.

  I told them, truthfully, that Colonel Shelton had handed it to me just before I took off and had said to give it to the ground crew at Bodö.

  Then this flag was to be used as a sort of password, they interrupted, a way to prove your identity!

  Tired from the long questioning, I noted, somewhat sarcastically, that under the circumstances, having a U-2 strapped to my back, it hardly seemed necessary to prove my identity.

  But they had already made up their minds. And, in a moment of whimsy, I decided that if they wanted to go on believing it, I’d let them do so, although it was their own conclusion, not mine.

  Actually the “mysterious black flag” did have a specific purpose. There was a series of camera windows on the underside of the aircraft. When a U-2 was outside the hangar, where someone might see it, we put metal covers over them. Colonel Shelton hadn’t been sure the crew which had been sent to Bodö (every member of which I knew quite well) had remembered to take the covers along and so had given me the cloth and a roll of tape to give them.

  It was a tiny little deception. But for some reason, every time it was brought up it gave me a special inner satisfaction, knowing how wrong they could be.

  The deceptions were by no means one-sided. I fell into more than a few traps myself. In one of the early interrogations I had noticed one of the majors examining a sheaf of papers. One, which was sticking out, was obviously my flight log.

  “Tell me what all these symbols mean on your flight log,” he said.

  Thinking he was trying to test my truthfulness, since all the symbols were standard flying abbreviations—ETA, ATA, etc.—I tried to recall, item by item, what had been on the log.

  Only some days later did I chance to see the flight log again, out of the sheaf, and discover that the bottom half was missing, apparently destroyed in the crash.

  There was nothing on it they couldn’t have surmised from my maps.

  But knowing I had been tricked made me much less complacent.

  Ironically, the times they seemed most convinced I was lying, I was telling the truth.

  They refused to believe the CIA hadn’t provided me with a list of names, addresses, and letter drops to be used to contact the underground in Russia.

  They were convinced I must have made short practice flights over the Soviet Union prior to May 1, although my reply—if we were going to take the risks, then why not do the real thing?—seemed self-evident.

  They refused to believe this had been my first parachute jump.

  Their own pilots made actual jumps in training; we must do likewise.

  And there were some surprises.

  “Are you a good boxer?”

  Puzzled, I replied that I wasn’t a boxer.

  “Then how did you get a black eye?”

  Up to this time I hadn’t known I had one. Apparently I had blacked it in the crash. Not having seen a mirror, I hadn’t realized.

  The absence of mirrors was, of course, intentional. You get into the habit of seeing your face each morning. Whether you look well or ill, young or maybe just a trifle older, helps shape your day.

  Without that reflection, you begin to lose a little of your sense of identity.

  It’s amazing how much you miss a simple thing like a mirror.

  There were other psychological tricks. The unbarred window in the interrogation room was one. It was always there, offering the tantalizing possibility of escape, even if only a seven-story plunge to the courtyard. Yet, no sooner would the man in front of it step away than another man would replace him, as if to say, much more effectively than in words: For you there
is no escape.

  Little things. No mirrors. An unbarred window. But they got to you.

  “Were you nervous about your earlier flights over Russia?”

  “I told you, this was my first such flight. And, yes, I was nervous.”

  “Even if this was your first flight, surely the pilots talked among themselves, discussed their experiences, mentioned what they had seen?”

  “No, we had been ordered never to discuss our flights. And we obeyed orders.”

  Again and again they returned to the question, as if hammering on a locked door, knowing that if they could succeed in opening it a treasure trove awaited them on the other side.

  They wouldn’t give up. Neither would I.

  In law, ignorance is no excuse.

  In interrogation, it can be a godsend.

  Time after time my safest refuge was the simple phrase “I don’t know.”

  Using it, I could deny knowing who in Washington authorized the U-2 overflights; in what manner the flight orders were transmitted to Incirlik; what happened to the intelligence data once a flight returned; how many U-2s there were and where based.

  And—of prime importance—I could deny knowing how many flights there had been before May 1, the dates on which they had taken place, and what their target objectives were.

  Some of the most valuable information I possessed concerned these earlier flights. If the Russians learned it, a great deal of what we had accomplished through the U-2 program could be negated. For the value of intelligence lies not only in knowing what the enemy is doing; often of equal—and sometimes even greater*—importance is their not knowing that you know.