The implication was obvious. If I was shot down and succeeded in escaping, I was to act as an agent, either assassinating people or engaging in sabotage, using these “incendiary vials” to burn down important buildings, and similar acts.
I couldn’t let this pass.
DEFENDANT POWERS: Would it be possible for me to see one of those things referred to as a vial?
After being handed one, I asked if the interpreter could read aloud the instructions on the cover.
INTERPRETER: “Ignition vial M-2, combustible. To ignite, break open red lid with pin, pull wire from inside. Do not handle red section. Use thin piece of dry wood as shown in drawing.” And there is the illustration of a campfire. Defendant Powers claims that this substance is used to light campfires, and in particular, with damp wood.
DEFENDANT POWERS: AS regards the pistol, it was given only for hunting, and I took it for this purpose. Unfortunately, nobody but myself knows that I cannot kill a person even to save my own life.
PRESIDING JUDGE: Defendant Powers, you are aware that at an altitude of sixty-eight thousand feet it is difficult to hunt game.
DEFENDANT POWERS: Yes, I know. This was to be used only in case I had a forced landing.
Other experts had examined the destruct mechanism. Again there were implications. “The elements of the remote-control circuit were not found…. The safety catch may be connected mechanically with any part of the aircraft that separates when the plane is abandoned by the pilot, for example with the cockpit ejector system.”
In short, they were implying that had I tried to use the ejection seat, I would have been destroyed with the plane.
Since the elements of the remote-control circuit were missing (or rather, I suspected, simply hadn’t been introduced into evidence), there was no way for me to prove otherwise.
On coming to the poison pin, they stated that it had been “found at the place where the plane, piloted by Powers, fell.” Obviously they didn’t want to admit the truth: that it had been missed in three separate searches, being discovered only after I had been taken to Sverdlovsk.
Well aware of its effect on the audience, they got maximum propaganda value out of the pin. An expert testified: “An experimental dog was given a hypodermic prick with the needle extracted from the pin, in the upper third part of the left hind leg. Within one minute after the prick the dog fell on his side, and a sharp slackening of the respiratory movements of the chest was observed, a cyanosis of the tongue and visible mucous membranes was noted. Within ninety seconds after the prick, breathing ceased entirely. Three minutes after the prick, the heart stopped functioning and death set in.”
As if this weren’t gory enough, he went on to describe similar experiments with a white mouse, finally concluding: “In view of the extremely high toxicity and the nature of the effect of the poison on animals and also the relatively large amount of it on the needle, it can be considered that if a person is pricked with this needle, poisoning and death sets in just as quickly as in animals.”
With this they had their headlines for the second day. Shortly afterward, the court adjourned until the next morning.
Nine
The first sentences of Rudenko’s speech were typical of his whole oration: “Comrade Judges! I begin my speech for the prosecution in the present case fully conscious of its tremendous importance. The present trial of the American spy-pilot Powers exposes the crimes committed not only by Defendant Powers himself, but it completely unmasks the criminal aggressive actions of United States ruling circles, the actual inspirers and organizers of monstrous crimes directed against the peace and security of the peoples!”
And on it went. “The Soviet people, the builders of a communist society, are engaged in peaceful creative labor and abhor war.“ The ruling circles in the United States ”are stubbornly opposing measures for universal disarmament and the destruction of rockets and nuclear weapons….”
Peace v. War. The USSR v. the USA and Francis Gary Powers.
“Powers became a staff pilot, ready to commit any crime to further the interests of the American military who are in service of the monopoly capital…. Here we have the bestial, misanthropic morality of Mr. Dulles and company which for the sake of that yellow devil, the dollar, disregards human life…. If the assignments received by Powers had not been of a criminal nature, his masters would not have supplied him with a lethal pin….”
There were only two surprises in the early portions of Rudenko’s speech. One was that in May President Eisenhower had given assurances “that spy flights by American planes in the Soviet airspace would be stopped.”
But Rudenko immediately damned Eisenhower for going back on his word.
Had the overflights stopped or hadn’t they?
There was another brief and tantalizing reference. After tracing the history of the U-2 incident, Rudenko stated: “A great wave of indignation swept the world when it became known that new perfidious acts had been committed by the rulers of the United States who sent an RB-47 military reconnaissance bomber on a criminal provocative flight into the Soviet Union on July 1, 1960.”
This explained why shortly after July 11 had been quizzed again on the RB-47 flights. Obviously there had been another “incident,” but how serious? Rudenko gave no details.
“Defendant Powers, whose crimes the American intelligence service paid for so generously, is not an ordinary spy, but a specially and carefully trained criminal…. Such is the true face of Defendant Powers. And had his masters tried to unleash a new world war, it is precisely these Powerses, reared and bred by them in the conditions of the so-called free world, who would have been ready to be the first to drop atom and hydrogen bombs on the peaceful earth, as similar Powerses did when they threw the first atom bombs on the peaceful citizens of the defenseless cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki….”
So I was to be blamed even for that.
Listening to him, I felt sick at heart, knowing I was at least in part responsible for giving him the opportunity to mount his harangue. Yet, as he continued—he had passed the two-hour mark by now—not only stating his case but overstating, magnifying, distorting, and exaggerating, raving rabidly about the “American aggressors” being “newly baked imitators of Hitler,” I began to wonder if maybe he wasn’t going too far, carrying Soviet propaganda to such extremes it might backfire, precipitating a reverse reaction.
Suddenly the hall grew quiet. Rudenko was reaching the end.
“The hour when the criminal is to hear the sentence of the court is near.
“Let your sentence serve as a strict warning to all those who pursue an aggressive policy, criminally trample underfoot the generally recognized standards of international law and the sovereignty of states, who declare their state policy to be one of cold war and espionage. Let this sentence also be a strict warning to all other Powerses who, by orders of their masters, might try to undermine the cause of peace, to encroach upon the honor, dignity, and the inviolability of the great Soviet Union.
“Comrade Judges, in full support of the state indictment against Powers, in accordance with Article 2 of the Law of the USSR ‘On Criminal Responsibility for State Crimes,’ I have all grounds to ask the court to pass an exceptional sentence on the defendant….”
I had been right. They were going to make an example of me.