Four
My decision to leave the Central Intelligence Agency was motivated by three factors:
1. Suppression of the book, to which I had reluctantly acquiesced. Already one book, the first of several on the U-2 incident, had appeared, its authors, so far as I knew, having made no attempt to contact me.
2. The obvious fact that I was just killing time. Though I had my own office, with the implication that I could stay on at the agency as long as I wished, I had run out of meaningful work.
3. I was itching to fly.
With nearly twelve years of service, and only a little more than eight to go until retirement, I couldn’t afford not to go back into the Air Force. Yet I still wasn’t ready to lead a regimented life: I wanted to be able to go where I pleased, do what I wanted to do. On checking with the Air Force, I was told there was no hurry as to a decision; I could take my time.
One of my friends at the agency knew “Kelly” Johnson and offered to call him to see if the job at Lockheed was still open. Johnson suggested I fly out to California and talk to him. In September, 1962, I did so.
I was about ready to say I was interested only in a flying job when he asked: Would you like to be a test pilot?
I suspect that at one time or another this has been almost every pilot’s ambition: I knew it was mine. I said I would.
Flying U-2s?
The answer was written across my face in a big grin.
On returning to Washington, I submitted my resignation to the CIA, and reported to work at Lockheed on October 15, 1962.
By this time the U-2 had proven itself again. While at the agency, I had kept abreast of developments in the program, and was aware that Air Force pilots, under the command of SAC, were making overflights of Cuba. I also knew that late in August a U-2 had spotted a number of Soviets SAMs, probably similar to the one that brought me down. What no one knew for certain, however, until a U-2 returned from its overflight along the western edge of Cuba on October 14 and its photographs had been processed and studied, was that sites were being built for medium-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching targets in the United States.
We were to pay a high price for our intelligence on the Cuban missile crisis. While overflying Cuba, USAF Major Rudolph Anderson was shot down by a Soviet SAM.
With his death, no one could any longer doubt that Russian missiles were capable of reaching the U-2’s altitude.
My work at Lockheed was as an engineering test pilot. This consisted of test-flying the planes whenever there was a modification, a new piece of equipment installed, or the return of an aircraft for maintenance.
Getting back into the tight pressure suit was an odd sensation— uncomfortable as ever. But there was one improvement. It had been found that an hour of prebreathing prior to flight would suffice. Again I was back in the high altitudes. Perhaps needless to say, my insurance premiums rose even more astronomically.
Except for a few close calls, I thoroughly enjoyed the work. Two times hatch covers blew out. One knocked a hole in the wing and in the tail. The other jammed the canopy so I couldn’t get out. But each time I managed to make it back. And, while I was working at high altitudes, where the aircraft was most temperamental, there were, I’ll frankly admit, occasions when I was scared. But my confidence in the U-2 remains unshaken. It was and still is a remarkable aircraft, one of a kind.
I only wish there were more of them around.
In 1963 I received the first of what was to be a number of rude awakenings.
You’re going to have to make up your mind, Powers, the general said. If you want to go back into the Air Force, you’ll have to do it soon.
With nearly twelve years toward retirement—
Five and a half, he corrected me. Your time in the CIA won’t count.
On joining the U-2 program in 1956 I had signed a document, cosigned by Secretary of the Air Force Donald A. Quarles, promising me that upon completion of service with the agency I could return to the Air Force with no loss of time in grade or toward retirement, my rank to correspond with that of my contemporaries. This had been a major factor in my accepting employment with the CIA. The same was true of the other pilots, all of whom had signed the same document. A number of them had already returned to the Air Force under those conditions.
The general knew this. But there had been too much publicity about my case. Although they would let me reenlist at comparable rank—an old captain, or a new major—they would have to renege on their promise regarding my CIA service counting as time toward retirement.
I was being penalized for doing my duty, for having spent twenty-one months in a Russian prison!
He was sorry, but that was the way things were.
I could have fought it, I suppose. However, as with my agency contract and numerous other documents I had signed, the CIA retained the only copy. To contest this, I would have to use other pilots as witnesses. Some of them, I was quite sure, wouldn’t lie. But it would be damn rough on them. My attempt to obtain what I had been “guaranteed in writing” might mean the Air Force would penalize them, too.
The agency knew me well, perhaps too well. They were gambling on my not causing a fuss, for just this reason. And, in this instance, they read me right.
The general also informed me that for the same reason I wouldn’t be allowed to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross, awarded to me in 1957.
The second disillusionment came in April. Compared to the broken promise regarding my Air Force service, it was decidedly minor. (Many of my contemporaries in the program have retired or will become eligible for retirement in 1970 as lieutenant-colonels or better, at six to seven hundred dollars a month for life.) Yet, indicative of a pattern, it was in its own way decidedly important.
On April 20, 1963, at a secret ceremony which took place in the Los Angeles area, a number of the pilots who had participated in the U-2 program were awarded the Intelligence Star, one of the Central Intelligence Agency’s highest decorations.
There was one exception. Francis Gary Powers hadn’t been invited.
“Kelly” Johnson and a couple other people who worked with me attended. They were very secretive about it, however, because they had been instructed not to let me know what was going on. I knew all the time, from pilot friends with whom I had kept in contact.
It was more than a slight, more than the failure to receive an award. It was confirmation of what I had half-suspected for some time, but didn’t really want to admit. I was, to borrow from John LeCarré, the spy who was to stay out in the cold. Things began fitting into place: the agency’s failure to clear up the misconceptions regarding my orders, and by so doing lending credence to the criticism; the canceled White House visit; the smudged clearance.
It wasn’t too difficult to deduce the reasoning behind it. I could almost hear the discussion:
The public is already down on Powers because they think he told more than he should. We can’t divulge what he withheld. Since he’s already been made the scapegoat, why not leave it at that? Otherwise there will be questions. The agency has been under enough fire already. This will divert the criticism.
Conjecture, of course, but I suspect it’s fairly close to what happened.
As to who made the decision, I have only suspicions. As to when it occurred, it must have been sometime prior to the issuance of the clearance. That the Senate hearing went as favorably as it did was, I believe, a surprise to almost everyone concerned.
I was to be the scapegoat.
And there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
Ironically, not all of the pilots who received the award had made an overflight of Russia.