My father claimed he didn’t believe the story. Yet the message on the envelope seemed to indicate otherwise. And if my own father gave it credence, what about others?
“I am a citizen of the United States and am proud to be one,” I wrote him. “Don’t worry about my doing anything or giving any cause for my country to doubt me. It looks as if this British correspondent is trying, for reasons I can’t guess, to make people believe I have renounced my country. I would never do this. Even if I were offered an immediate release on condition that I remain in the Soviet Union. I would refuse. Not because I don’t think I could live here, but because I am an American and will always be an American.
“I cannot imagine where this Mossman got his information unless he invented it himself. You may rest assured that I will return home, where I belong and where I want to be, as soon as I am released. Remaining here has never entered my mind.
“If I were free, I would demand that his sources be revealed, and if it was his own fabrication, then I would sue him (the only way to make him realize that there are other people who may be hurt by his lies). I am sure that he has not even considered how his lies will affect my reputation in the future.
“One thing that bothers me very much is that many people who read it will believe the article. To some of them I will appear a traitor even though there is no truth to the article whatsoever.”
In reference to my father’s remark about Patrick Henry, I observed, “He is remembered, much to his credit, for what he said. It looks as if I will be remembered, much to my discredit, for what some correspondent writes, even though there is not a word of truth in what he wrote.
“I was born an American and intend to die an American. In the States, I hope.”
As for the reliability of another portion of Mossman’s story, I noted that it was now May 3, two days after my promised release, and I was “still occupying the same cell in the same prison.”
I wrote a similar letter to Barbara, also asking what she had been doing in New York City, “or is that a lie also?”
It was a lie, according to a letter from her on the eighth. Enclosing a clipping of the Mossman story, she explained that he had not talked to her—nor had she been in New York. The article, however, had been given wide circulation by the news services, as a result of which her phone had been ringing constantly with interview requests.
Barbara’s affinity for publicity bothered me. Earlier she had released several of my letters to a magazine, not even bothering to inform me she had done so. She had explained that interviews were the only way to keep the case in public consciousness, and while I couldn’t disagree with that, I did wish she would devote just a portion of the time thus expended to letter writing.
When Zigurd and I went to the office to receive my monthly embassy package, there was a new man on duty. Unfamiliar with the rules, he let me have the magazines, including four copies of Time. This was the first time since being in Russia that I had been allowed an American news magazine, and I read each issue avidly, trying to form a picture of the world outside.
There was one mention of my case. And it puzzled me.
“Should we be alarmed by the difference between the behavior of Airman Powers and of Nathan Hale?” asked Fund-for-the-Republic President Robert Maynard Hutchins. He did not wait for an answer. He has already seen dark “signs that the moral character of America is changing,” and has ordered the fund’s Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions to take a two-year look at the problem. With an assist from such men as Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, University of California President Clark Kerr, and Jesuit Philosopher John Courtney Murray, Hutchins hopes to turn up “various viewpoints on what the Good Life shall be in America,” to reach “dependable conclusions about our national strength and weakness.”
“I wonder what in the world he is talking about?” I wrote Barbara, “I hope I am not being accused of changing the moral character of America.”
Though I treated it flippantly in my letter, the item disturbed me. Was this due to the Mossman lie? Or, for some reason unknown to me, was I being criticized in the United States, and my family keeping it from me?
It was the first time that possibility had occurred to me.
By mid-May I had heard that Kennedy and Khrushchev would be meeting in early June for disarmament talks. I tried to remain pessimistic. Journaclass="underline" “It is very hard to conceive that the two countries will agree on doing away with nuclear weapons when they cannot even agree officially to do away with nuclear tests. I am afraid that if my being released depends on disarmament talks, then there is no hope at all. I like to think it doesn’t depend on politics, but I’m afraid it does.”
By the twenty-sixth I was still trying to maintain my skepticism. Writing Barbara about the meeting, I said, “It will probably be over by the time you receive this letter. I suppose it could result in my being released, but I don’t think I had better make any plans…. Even if the meeting does not affect me at all, I certainly hope they settle some important problems and try to make this world a better place to live in.”
But by now the pattern was set. Periods of despondency, followed by resignation, in turn followed by rapidly mounting hope, then back to the first.
Although I knew better, I couldn’t help anticipating.
The talks were held June 3 and 4, in Vienna. Diary, June 5: “It looks as if the meeting between K. and K. ended pretty well. There has been no official announcement of what transpired and probably will not be, but it looks good from my position. It could be that sometime this month I might be released…
“If I am lucky enough to get out this month, I will be very happy, though I will feel bad about leaving my cellmate in prison…. He is one of the finest people I have ever known…. I sincerely hope he does not have to serve his full sentence. He has about nine more years to go.
“I just finished a book of short stories by Pushkin, The Tales of Ivan Belken. I liked it very much. It is the first I have read by him, and I would like to read more, especially Evgeni Onegin.”
The last was a coded reminder, for my return to the United States, about a story Zigurd had told me regarding a former cellmate, Evgeni Brick.
During World War II great numbers of people had fled from Russia and its satellites. When the war ended the Soviet Union had declared an amnesty, promising them freedom if they returned. Zigurd had distrusted the offer. One who hadn’t was a man named Evgeni Brick. Approached by American intelligence in West Germany, Brick had agreed to return to the USSR and spy for the United States. The moment he walked down the ramp from the airplane, the Russians had taken him into custody.
I had made a note of the name “Evgeni,” as I was sure the CIA would be interested in the fate of their former agent, just as I was sure British intelligence would be interested in learning what had happened to Zigurd.
The June 5, 1961, entry was the last in my diary.
Letter to Barbara, June 15: “I am sorry I wrote that I might be released after the meeting between K. and K. I cannot help reaching for each little ray of hope and trying to turn it into a beacon of optimism…. One thing that makes me pretty sad is—if nothing happens as a result of the meeting, then I have very little chance of being released at all. If a meeting between K. and K. will not do it, then what will?”
By this time I had heard the news. Asked by the press what Khrushchev had said regarding the Powers case, Kennedy had replied, “The matter wasn’t even discussed.”