In April, 1965, I was asked to come back to Washington to be awarded the Intelligence Star.
My first reaction, quite frankly and quite bluntly, was to suggest they shove it.
We made the trip, however, for several reasons. It was less than two months before the birth of Gary, and would be the last opportunity to visit our families for some time. Following the ceremony, there was to be a dinner at Normandie Farms, Maryland, with a number of friends from the early days of the U-2 program in attendance, many of whom, including Bissell, I hadn’t seen in years.
I’m not sure why, having once declined the opportunity, it was decided to make the presentation in 1965. By this time McCone had submitted his resignation, and a Johnson appointee, retired Vice Admiral William F. Raborn Jr., was scheduled to be sworn in as DCI in little more than a week. Perhaps it was felt that this was a bit of leftover business to be gotten out of the way before the new DCI took over. At any rate, although the ceremony was impressive, it was cheapened for me not only by what had preceded it, but by the realization that the presentation was worded in such a way as to commend me for my “courageous action” and “valor” prior to 1960. Apparently it was felt the Virginia hillbilly wouldn’t catch such a subtlety, or notice, when I examined the scroll accompanying the medal, that the date on it was that of the earlier ceremony, April 20, 1963.
Word of the secret ceremony leaked to the press. The accounts were wrong in one particular, however. Instead of the actual April date, they said it occurred on May 1, 1965, the fifth anniversary of my flight.
That was, I’m quite sure, the last thing the agency wished to commemorate.
As is probably obvious from my account, I’m patient, unusually so, and always have been. While some might consider this a virtue, I think of it as a fault. But it’s the way I am, and try as I might, I haven’t been able to change it.
For a time I put thoughts of the book aside. My work, my family, our friends, were more than enough to fill my time. Too, more than a few of my recollections were not pleasant. I was not anxious to relive them.
And no man, even in the privacy of his innermost thoughts, likes to admit he has been used.
Meanwhile, other books dealing with the U-2 incident continued to appear, among them Allen Dulles’ The Craft of Intelligence, Harper & Row, 1963, which related the story of the exposure of the Russian bomber hoax; and Ronald Seth’s The Anatomy of Espionage, E. P. Dutton, 1963, which considered the U-2 flights in relation to the whole broad spectrum of intelligence-gathering.
In his chapter on the U-2 story, Seth did something a great number of others hadn’t. He studied the trial testimony, concluding: “Indeed, throughout the whole of his trial, [Powers] comported himself with a dignity and spirit which might have been found lacking in many another. All the way down the line, Powers was badly served—by his President and others who ought to have known better, by faulty intelligence which led him to believe that he was invulnerable, and by attempts just before the trial to accuse the Russians of having brainwashed or drugged him.”
One book of special interest was Lyman B. Kirkpatrick’s The Real CIA, Macmillan, 1968, for its glimpse of what happened in the inner chambers of the agency when realization dawned that I hadn’t made it to Bodo. It caused, according to Kirkpatrick, former executive director of the Central Intelligence Agency, “one of the most momentous flaps that I witnessed during my time in the federal government.”
Kirkpatrick’s account is not wholly uncritical of the handling of the affair. With remarkable understatement, he notes: “It was fairly obvious that the unit of the CIA that was responsible for the cover story had not thought the matter through very carefully.” He continues: “To my knowledge nobody has ever yet devised a method for quickly destroying a tightly rolled package of hundreds of feet of film. Even if Francis Powers had succeeded in pressing the ‘destruction button,’ which would have blown the plane and the camera apart, the odds would still have been quite good that careful Soviet search would have found the rolls of film.”
Yet this mistaken assumption—that the plane would have been totally obliterated, all evidence of espionage destroyed—apparently was believed at the highest level, by the President himself.
Kirkpatrick was in California at the time of Khrushchev’s shattering announcement. Cornered by reporters, his single comment was, “No comment.” He notes: “Later I was pleased to learn that one of the newscasters, in commenting upon the episode, characterized my statement as the only intelligent one made by the government during the event.” With that I am inclined to agree. From a strictly selfish viewpoint, my interrogations would have gone easier had there been a little less talk.
Kirkpatrick concludes: “The development and use of the U-2 was a remarkable accomplishment, and the fact that it came to the end of its starring role over Russia on May 1, 1960, should not dim the achievements of the men who made it possible…. Francis Powers, and the others who flew the plane, also deserve full credit for their courage and ability. Powers conducted himself with dignity during his interrogation and trial and revealed nothing to the Russians that they did not already know. Upon his return to the United States in 1962, after he was exchanged for Rudolf Abel, a review board headed by Federal Judge E. B. Prettyman went into the minute details of his conduct while a prisoner and found that he had conducted himself in accordance with instructions. He was decorated by the CIA.”
You could write a whole book between some of the sentences of that paragraph.
The most surprising account, however, appeared in 1965: Waging Peace: The White House Years 1956-1961, Doubleday, its author former President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
In the chapter entitled “The Summit That Never Was,” Eisenhower describes how he received the news on May 1. By way of preface to this astonishing paragraph, Brigadier General Andrew J. Goodpaster was White House staff secretary, and served as liaison between the President and the CIA:
“On the afternoon of May 1, 1960, General Goodpaster telephoned me: ‘One of our reconnaissance planes,’ he said, ‘on a scheduled flight from its base in Adana, Turkey, is overdue and possibly lost.’ I knew instantly that this was one of our U-2 planes, probably over Russia. Early the next morning he came into my office, his face an etching of bad news. He plunged to the point at once. ‘Mr. President, I have received word from the CIA that the U-2 reconnaissance plane I mentioned yesterday is still missing. The pilot reported an engine flameout at a position about three hundred miles inside Russia and has not been heard from since. With the amount of fuel he had on board, there is not a chance of his still being aloft.’”
I had never an engine flameout nor did I radio back to the base. And the CIA certainly knew this.
It was now obvious why this particular story had received such widespread acceptance. Apparently even the President believed it.
There remains the possibility that the account is in error. One problem with memoirs of heads of state is that they are often the work of a number of people. Recollections differ, time clouds detail. I was told, in this particular instance, however, that a man from the agency was given a leave of absence to help prepare material for the chapter on the U-2 incident. That this slipped past him, if it did, is all the more astonishing.
It may be that General Goodpaster misunderstood the message; it is also possible that someone in the agency, not wanting to accept hard realities, speculated that this might have been what happened. If so, it should have been presented to the President that way, as pure speculation. Conveyed as straight intelligence, with the addition “the pilot reported” for authenticity, it constitutes a serious breach of trust.