But the agency apparently felt otherwise. In this, as with other areas I thought important, they showed little interest.
They were far more concerned about what I had told the Russians regarding some of their other clandestine operations, and greatly surprised to discover that quite often I knew little or nothing about them.
There were many questions I felt should have been asked—but weren’t. Yet when I attempted to volunteer information, often as not it wasn’t appreciated. For example, while being questioned about the KGB officials with whom I had come into contact, I was shown a photograph of Shelepin, head of the KGB, and asked if I could identify him. But when I volunteered that it was Rudenko, not Shelepin, who appeared to be the “big wheel” in the interrogations, the man to whom the others deferred, they quickly passed on to something else. Maybe this wasn’t important. Yet, for a comparable example, if in the interrogations of a Soviet spy FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover played a superior role to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, I suspect the KGB would have been greatly interested in that fact.
One of the reasons I had kept the journal was to record things I felt might later be of use to the agency. When I told them about the journal, however, they expressed no desire to see it. I had assumed they would be interested in the fate of their former agent Evgeni Brick. From their reactions I got the distinct impression that they couldn’t have cared less. I had presumed they would communicate my information regarding Zigurd Kruminsh to the British, since he had been a British agent. If they did, there was no follow-up.
From the start, it was obvious they believed my story. The “Collins” message had gotten through. As had the repeated references to my altitude. And, from the simple fact that certain things hadn’t happened which would have happened had I told the Russians about the “special” missions, they realized I hadn’t told everything. I was pleased that they believed me. Yet I remained disappointed in the debriefings. It may be that the information I possessed was worthless. The only way to determine that, however, was to find out what I did know, then evaluate its importance or lack of it. Instead they seemed to have decided in advance what they were interested in, which—to me, at least—seemed a rather faulty intelligence practice. And considering the questions, I couldn’t help discerning an obvious pattern behind them: that the agency was not really interested in what I had to tell them; their primary concern was to get the CIA off the hook.
Two
If true, this was not the first attempt to pass the buck, to pin the blame elsewhere. Shortly after my return, on coming into contact with several former participants in Operation Overflight, I heard a most disturbing story.
When I had failed to appear at Bodö, Norway, the ramifications had hit Washington like a burst of flack. I had gone down somewhere in Russia: there could be no other explanation. Yet, because number 360 had a fuel-tank problem, this didn’t necessarily mean I had been shot down, and, since Russia was a very large country, it could be that the plane wouldn’t be found. In any event, it was unlikely the pilot was still alive.
A contingency plan was hastily drawn up, for use in the event the Russians should have the wreckage of the plane and decide to make an issue of it.
The plan was quite simple. One of the higher-ranking agency representatives at Adana, a man whom we’ll call Rick Newman, would confess to overzealously taking it upon himself to order me to make the flight, with no authorization whatsoever. Thus, by blaming a “gung-ho” underling, the President and the CIA could evade admission of responsibility.
The reason for their settling on Newman and not Colonel Shelton was obvious: they needed a civilian, so the Russians couldn’t term it a military operation.
As preparation for putting the plan into effect, Newman was secretly flown from Turkey to Germany and hidden in the basement of the house of our agency liaison there, to make sure he couldn’t be reached by reporters.
The plan, however, had one basic flaw: it presumed that I was dead. Alive, with no prior knowledge of the cover story, anything I said would in all likelihood contradict their version.
With Khrushchev’s announcement on May 7 that the pilot was “alive and kicking,” it should have been obvious the plan would have to be scrapped. Yet at six P.M. on the seventh, some dozen hours afterword reached the United States of Khrushchev’s speech, the State Department released the cover story, approved by the President, that although a U-2 had probably made an intelligencegathering flight over the Soviet Union, no authorization for such a flight had been given by authorities in Washington.
The first three paragraphs of James Reston’s lead story on the front page of The New York Times, May 8, 1960, give the details:
WASHINGTON, May 7—The United States admitted tonight that one of the country’s planes equipped for intelligence purposes had “probably” flown over Soviet territory.
An official statement stressed, however, that “there was no authorization for any such flight” from authorities in Washington.
As to who might have authorized the flight, officials refused to comment. If this particular flight of the U-2 was not authorized here, it could only be assumed that someone in the chain of command in the Middle East or Europe had given the order.
Eventually, of course, the plan was abandoned, with President Eisenhower’s unprecedented admission that he had personally authorized the overflights, but not before several alternate plans had been considered, including Central Intelligence Agency Director Allen Dulles’ offer to resign and assume the blame.
I heard the story from several people in the agency. One was Newman himself, who laughed as he recounted how he had hidden in that basement for several days.
Newman had a wife and three children. Although presumably there would have been some financial compensation—perhaps his retirement with a better pension than otherwise—they would have had to live the rest of their lives under the stigma that he had recklessly precipitated an action which wrecked the Summit Conference and conceivably could have launched a nuclear war.
It was not an easy laugh.
Nor did I laugh in return. For, in a sense, the plan called for two scapegoats, as the flight could not have taken place without my concurrence.
On hearing the story, I was glad, for the sake of everyone concerned, that the plan had been abandoned.
What I didn’t realize, until much later, was that this was only half-true.
According to the newspapers, retired Federal Appeals Court Judge E. Barrett Prettyman had been chosen to conduct the board of inquiry. The hearing would be held “in-house,” closed to the press and public, in CIA headquarters in Washington.
A few days earlier, I was taken to 2430 E Street to meet Allen Dulles. By this time Dulles had been replaced as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) by Kennedy appointee John A. McCone. He was still in the process of moving out of his office, however.
It was an odd meeting. Dulles greeted me with a bemused look. We shook hands. He commented wryly that he had heard quite a bit about me. I told him how pleased I was to be back in the United States. He replied that he had read the debriefing reports: “We are proud of what you have done.”