Too, although Abel had once been an important Soviet agent, of what intelligence value was he now, either to us or the Russians? If he hadn’t betrayed his espionage apparatus after nearly five years of imprisonment, it seemed unlikely he would do so in the future. And should he still possess secrets he had not yet communicated to his government, they would be equally dated. Apparently Tompkins wanted him to serve his full thirty-year sentence, as fit punishment for his crime. A perfect example of a prosecutor’s mentality, of which I’d had more than enough in Russia.
I was pleased to discover that Tompkins’ attitude wasn’t quite universal. Asked about the swap, former President Harry Truman had said, “I guess that’s a fair trade.”
Several of the TV news programs reviewed the U-2 incident, from May 1, 1960, through the exchange. Watching them, I learned for the first time many details of what had happened following my capture.
From talking to an agency friend I had known in Turkey, I learned something else I had wondered about: what had happened in Adana when word was received I hadn’t arrived in Bödo.
The party for the communications chief who was returning to the States had gone on as scheduled.
I had figured as much. Once one of those parties got started, only an act of God could stop it. This one, I now learned, had lasted three days.
What I couldn’t have guessed, however, was that the 10-10 detachment hadn’t pulled out until August. As inconceivable as it seemed, despite Khrushchev’s charges, my letters, the statements from my interrogations, the photographs the Soviets had released, the agency was apparently not totally convinced that I had actually been captured and was still alive—until the Russians brought me to trial!
Aside from a brief statement that I was in the United States, appeared to be in good physical condition, had seen my family, and was undergoing questioning at an undisclosed location, the White House remained silent about the exchange. That day, however, there was a report in The New York Times which said that following my interrogation a board of inquiry would be convened by the Central Intelligence Agency “to investigate the circumstances of the capture of Francis Gary Powers by the Soviet Union and the crash of his U-2 reconnaissance plane in the Ural Mountains.”
I asked one of the agency men what that meant. Don’t worry, he told me. That’s just to get the press off our backs.
When will the debriefing start? I was anxious to get it done. It would begin the following day, he said, and would take place at Ashford Farms.
Despite reassurances from Murphy and others, I couldn’t shake the feeling that all at once I was on trial again.
The debriefing didn’t take place at Ashford Farms. Late that night, Monday, February 12, one of the agents received a telephone call. Hanging up the phone, he said: “Some reporter’s on to our location. We’re going to have to move. Better get packed.”
Although there was a blizzard outside, we climbed into several cars and, with more speed than caution, drove off the estate. Later I learned that reporters had succeeded in following us for a few miles but lost us in the snow. There were, in the papers, two different accounts of how Ashford Farms had been compromised. One was that an astute Associated Press stringer, suspicious, since its recent sale, of the estate’s new tenants, had put it under surveillance. Another had it that the draperies in the background of the photos released by the CIA were identified by someone who had visited Ashford Farms on a previous occasion.
Our destination was another of the agency’s “safe” houses, this one near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It wasn’t an easy trip. Barbara was desperate for a drink. I’d tried to get her to talk to the doctor at Ashford Farms, but she had refused to do so. I’d then tried to keep her from drinking, but she had begged so pathetically that I’d let her have beer. It tore me apart to see her suffer. It was obvious that she was sick and needed help. This she vehemently denied. Contrary to what I might have heard from the rumormongers, she said, she did not have a drinking problem. It was nerves, she went on, that was all. Given a couple of days, she would pull herself together and be fine.
Debriefings started the next afternoon. Present in addition to agency representatives was Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson, designer of the U-2. I had seen Johnson on one previous occasion, at Lockheed early in the program, but had never met him.
“Before we start,” Johnson said, “I want to tell Mr. Powers something. No matter what happens as a result of this investigation, I want you to know that if you ever need a job, you have one at Lockheed.”
That vote of confidence meant more to me than I could ever say.
With that the debriefings began. Johnson had the first question:
“What happened to my plane?”
I told him, describing the orange flash, the slight acceleration, and the erratic manner in which the aircraft behaved after that. He asked a number of technical questions. After I had answered, he stated his satisfaction with my explanation.
From Johnson I learned of another Khrushchev trap. Following his announcement that he had the pilot and the plane, the Soviet premier had released a photograph of “the captured U-2,” a mass of twisted wreckage. To the casual viewer, it seemed inconceivable that the pilot could have survived the crash. But Johnson was not a casual viewer. He knew every rivet in the U-2, and after studying the photograph, announced that the plane just wasn’t made right, a judgment confirmed when the real wreckage was put on display in Gorky Park.
What had Khrushchev intended with the fake photo? The most likely possibility was that he hoped to convince Eisenhower the pilot was dead, meaning there could be little actual proof of espionage, and thereby baiting him into yet another public lie.
The Russians had set still another trap, I later learned from people in the agency. Immediately after my disappearance, there was a report of a strange plane with an incredibly long wingspan being seen parked off the runway at Svedlovsk, undamaged and intact. Still later, there were reports that a man resembling me had been seen drinking, carousing with assorted females, and otherwise living it up in various Communist cities. The purpose, apparently, was to make the United States think I had landed my plane and defected.
When Johnson had finished his questions, the agency men began asking theirs. The first session lasted several hours.
At night, after the debriefings, I’d read the papers and watch TV. I didn’t want to. Yet I had to know what was going on.
“Powers served his country badly,” Martin B. McKneally, national commander of the American Legion, told the press. “We are left with the impression that there was more of the mercenary in him than the patriot.”
John Wickers, another American Legion official, said: “I view the exchange with astonishment and disgust. Powers was a cowardly American who evidently valued his own skin far more than the welfare of the nation that was paying him so handsomely.”
It was easy to dismiss such statements as the product of ignorance, which they were, for none of these people was aware of what my orders were, or that I had, on my own initiative, gone far beyond them. But it didn’t make such remarks sting any the less.