After that I refused all interview requests. I felt—with some justification, I believe—no small amount of resentment toward at least some members of the fourth estate, particularly those who had presumed to try me in absentia before all the facts were in and when there was no way I could defend myself.
While in The Pound I saw McAfee, my father’s attorney, and asked him about the two-hundred-dollar fee demanded for an interview with Kennedy. McAfee refused to identify the person, however. He would say only that it was someone in the White House. I had no choice but to leave it at that.
From The Pound I went to Milledgeville, Georgia, to pick up Barbara. By this time I had decided to accept the CIA’s offer, at least until such time as I could make up my mind as to what I wanted to do.
I had been in Milledgeville only a short time before I sensed a strong hostility toward Barbara there. She explained it was because she was a “celebrity”; people resented her fame. But I felt something else on coming into contact with residents: pity, not for Barbara but for me. It was as if everyone knew something I didn’t and felt sorry for me. I didn’t like that a bit. Fortunately, our stay was brief. On returning to Washington, we found an apartment in Alexandria and I went back to work for the CIA, grounded in the first nine to five job I’ve ever had in my life.
Since my return I had received a great deal of mail, some sent in care of my parents, but much of it directed to me at the CIA. Of several hundred letters, only a few were critical. Most were warmly congratulatory. I heard from friends not seen since boyhood, pilots I’d last seen in the service. The majority, however, were from people I had never met, many from mothers who had prayed for my release. And there were some surprises, among them a letter from Cardinal Spellman, thanking me for coming to his defense during my trial.
As surprising were the large number of offers to buy the rights to my story. On reporting to work at the agency there was a whole sheaf of telegrams and urgent telephone messages. One book publisher, wasting no time on preliminaries, offered a flat $150,000 advance.
Thus far my side of the story hadn’t been told. Because of national security, I realized it might be years before some aspects could be made public. However, there was much that could—no, should— be known, if for no other reason than to avoid repeating the same mistakes in the future. For mistakes had been made, bad ones. The U-2 incident was an almost classic textbook case of unpreparedness. Too, the story told the American people was heavy with lies and distortions. This seemed a good way to set the record straight. I made inquiries within the agency as to whether there would be any objection to my writing a book about my experiences. I realized it would take some time for the request to travel up the chain of command, but was prepared to wait.
At the same time, I also asked if I could write to my former cellmate. The answer came back quite promptly. Negative. It would look bad if anyone found out you were writing someone inside Russia.
Though I abided by the decision, it was less for this reason than another. I didn’t want to cause Zigurd any trouble. And there was just a chance that by writing to him I might do so.
Admittedly, my previous experience with the agency had spoiled me. I had been part of a select, smoothly functioning team of experts who had a job to do and did it, with a minimum of fuss. As such, I had seen only glimpses of the actual organizational structure of the CIA. They were enough, however, to convince me that things had now changed.
By this time both Dulles and Bissell had left, the latter offering his resignation as deputy director of plans just seven days after my release. Bissell had survived the U-2 episode, but not the Bay of Pigs, becoming just one of the scapegoats for that tragic fiasco. Controversy over it was still raging within the agency. The plan had been good but poorly executed. It never would have worked. Kennedy was responsible for its failure by withdrawing air support. Kennedy had never authorized air support in the first place, therefore couldn’t have withdrawn it. So the arguments went.
Although a year had passed, everyone still seemed to be searching for someone else on whom to pin the blame.
Maybe I was naïve. Maybe it had always existed without my noticing it. But politics now seemed to dominate the agency, almost to the exclusion of its primary function, collecting intelligence. Everything had to be justified, especially in the light of how it might appear in the press. Decisions were avoided because of possible backlash if they proved wrong (though this was not new to me with my military background). Concern appeared to be less with what the facts were than with how such information would be accepted. And it takes little insight to realize that when intelligence is shaped to be what its recipients want to hear, it ceases to be intelligence.
In part, I was witnessing a vast organizational shake-up, due to President Kennedy’s vow to restructure the agency following the failure of the Cuban invasion. In a world of secrets, the least kept was that John McCone, although an astute businessman—according to the General Accounting office, his California shipbuilding company had turned a hundred-thousand-dollar investment into forty-four million dollars during World War II—knew little about intelligence. He was a political appointee, and, I now learned, Robert Kennedy’s personal choice as successor to Dulles. According to rumor, he was not the first choice. Although I found it difficult to believe—it has since been brought out in other accounts—Robert Kennedy had apparently wanted to take over as director of Central Intelligence, in addition to being attorney general, the idea being scotched because it would have lent fuel to the argument that the Kennedys were attempting to create a dynasty.
If true, it would provide another possible explanation for the story that he had wanted to try me. Powers could be made a symbol of the failure of the old order.
Maybe the shake-up was long overdue. Maybe the CIA had acquired too much independent power and needed to be brought under closer control of the President. I only knew what I saw— bureaucratic chaos. Divided loyalties. Jockeying for favor. A half-dozen people doing jobs previously done by one. Paperwork increasing at such a rate that one suspected the task of collecting intelligence could be dropped, with the paperwork alone sufficient to keep everyone occupied.
Undoubtedly only a portion of this was due to McCone. Perhaps what I was witnessing was simply that the CIA, having outgrown its youthful exuberance, was suffering the middle-age spread that seems to be the lot of most government agencies.
Admittedly I saw only part of the whole picture. But it bothered me.
Another thing also bothered me. Even within the agency many people were unsure of my exact status: had Powers been cleared, or hadn’t he? The people at the top knew, but hadn’t let the word filter down. I encountered no animosity, but I did find a great deal of puzzlement. The CIA clearance, with its evasive wording, had raised almost as many doubts as it had laid to rest.
My attitude toward this remains today much as it was then. I knew what I had and hadn’t done. I did not feel I had to clear my name. Nor did I feel I had to justify my conduct to anyone. People would have to accept me as is. Those who couldn’t, I wasn’t interested in having for friends. Fortunately, over the years the former have predominated.
Yet this did not mean that I was happy at having been placed in this position.
I enjoyed my work with the training section because I felt it was important. The tricks the Russians used in their interrogations, the difficulty of improvising a workable cover story, the decision of how much to tell and how much to withhold, how to avoid being trapped in a lie, how best to cope with incarceration—these were only a few of the problems we explored. I also read the accounts of other prisoners, pointing out where my experiences differed or were the same. And I consulted with the people in psychological testing to give them clues as to what to look for in screening certain covert personnel.