December 18, 2024 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, on May 1st, 1960, spy pilot Gary Powers was shot down over Soviet Russia resulting in massive controversy....and many questions. Did he defect? Did he have a flameout? Why didn't he kill himself? Did he spill his guts to the Soviets? When he returned from captivity to some, he was a hero—to others, he was a villain. But to Gary Powers, Jr....he was just dad.
Here's Gary Powers Jr. to tell the true story of his father. Be sure to check out Gary's phenomenal books (and Cold War tours) on his website!
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Up next, the
story about espionage spies. One of the most advanced planes
in the world and one of the most consequential events
of the Cold War. Let's get into the story.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
It's the Hall of Commums in Moscow, scene of many
a previous Russian trial and now Francis Gary Pyres, pilot
of the American YouTube spy plane shot down over Russia,
faced the judges with composure.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Now April and games for you two.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Pilot Gary Power. His life was possibly a stake.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
There's much we can say about Frank Powers. He was,
as Jim Brown indicated, an unlikely man who had to
deal with notoriety.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
He was a cia U two pilot flying reconnaissance missions
over the Soviet Union and other foreign hostile countries in
the nineteen fifties. In May of nineteen sixty May first
of nineteen sixty he gets shot down over the Soviet Union.
He's imprisoned by the KGB. He is ultimately exchanged for
a Soviet spy, Rudolph Abel in February of nineteen sixty two.
(01:15):
So he made the history books because he got caught
spine for our country against the Soviets. Well, how do
I know the man? I know the man is Dad.
(01:37):
So it was a normal life, middle class family, upper
middle class family in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles.
Mom was a housemaker, raising two kids. Dad was a
pilot working for radio stations at the time. I remember
hiking and biking and fishing and being disciplined and having
conversations with him. He taught me to shoot a twenty two,
(02:00):
but I also was able to fly with him. He
would pick me up after school about three o'clock ish,
then we'd go to the airport. We'd get in the
KGIL airplane. Then we'd fly around the San Fernando Valley
and Los Angeles. He would be doing his SkyWatch reports
for the afternoon rush hour traffic. Sometimes if it was
bad weather, he'd be in a car Ford Mustang and
(02:22):
it was all green and it was painted with the
KGIL letters on the side, and he'd run around the
streets in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles with
me in the car before school. But the other memories
I have of him is just as a normal dad.
I was very sheltered. I didn't understand why people wanted
to talk to me, including the press that would call
(02:45):
the house, or people at school would come up to
me and ask me questions. What it was like to
have a spy as a dad, Why did your dad
do these missions? What countries was he overflying? Why didn't
he kill himself when he was captured? Things like that,
and I didn't know the answers. In nineteen seventy six,
(03:07):
there was a movie made about him for NBC Television,
The Francis Gary Powers Story, starring Lee Majors. Lee Majors
was at the peak of his career as the six
million Dollar Man, and so I was more impressed with
meeting the six million Dollar Man than I was with
a movie being made about my dad, Just so you know,
I'm just a normal kid that could care less about
(03:29):
what dad did.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
But then there's much we can say about Frank Powers.
He was, as Jim Brown indicated, an unlikely man who
have had to deal with notoriety. He was quiet and
self effacing, but he dealt with his notoriety and a straightforward, straightforward,
thoroughly honest way.
Speaker 5 (03:45):
To some.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Francis Gary Powers was a hero, not to himself. To others,
he was less than a hero. It is small comfort
to us, even less for his family, his wife Sue,
his daughter d his son Gary, to know that Franciscary Powers.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
Died doing what he liked to do. On August first,
nineteen seventy seven, my dad dies in a helicopter crash
while working for NBC Television. Our lives are turned upside down.
And that's when the light bulb goes on over my head.
Oh not everybody's dad gets shot down, imprisoned, or exchanged.
(04:24):
In college, I came out of my shell. I was curious.
I started to do this research to find out more
about my father. More importantly, I wanted to find out
the truth because he was controversial. There were conspiracy theories
about him. There are armchair generals. He should have done this,
he should have done that. If I was there, I
would have done it this way. Oh he disobeyed orders.
(04:45):
Oh he should have killed himself. Oh he didn't follow
orders to kill himself. News in the newspapers said that
he had a flame out, said that he defected, said
that he spilled his guts and told the Soviets everything
he knew. I didn't know what the the truth was.
I didn't know how to answer questions being asked of
most he never really sat me down, per se. So
(05:17):
A dad is born in southwest Virginia in August of
nineteen twenty nine. His dad's a coal miner. It's the
height of the depression. There's not a lot of money
to spread around. He's running around barefoot, go into a
single room schoolhouse, growing up on the family farm, hunting, fishing,
And sometime in about nineteen forty, nineteen forty one, he's
(05:39):
ten eleven years old, the family goes to a country
fair in Princeton, West Virginia. There's a sign airplane rides
two dollars and fifty cents, and my dad begs his
father for two dollars and fifty cents to do this
plane ride. Well, two dollars and fifty cents in nineteen
forty is probably eighty dollars to day, and so when
(06:01):
you don't have a lot of money and you're a
coal mining family on a farm, that's a lot of
money to give your kid for an airplane ride. But
dad is able to sweep talk his dad into it.
He takes this plane ride. A female pilot in a
Piper Cub airplane keeps him up for about ten minutes
longer than she should have because he was so excited
and enthralled by this airplane ride. So he comes down.
(06:25):
He lands after twenty minutes. He rushes up to his
mom and dad. He grabs him basically says, I've left
my heart up there. He knows from that moment on
he wants to be a pilot, and he's going to
do everything he can going forward to pursue that dream.
He is the first of his family to go to college.
He graduates in nineteen fifty and immediately enlists in the
(06:46):
US Air Force. He's an F eighty four pilot, but
then things happen. He ends up with an appendicitis. It
lays him up in the hospital. He misses his deployment
over to the Korean Peninsula with his squadron. He's walking
around the air Force base. One day he sees his
name on a duty roster. The commanding officer wants certain
(07:06):
pilots to report to talk to some gentlemen of Washington,
d c. About career opportunities. And my father's a little
confused career opportunities. What possible opportunities are there. I'm an
Air Force fighter pilot. I've been in for six years.
I've got fourteen more years to go until I retire.
What possible opportunities could there be? So it goes to
this meeting two guys in suits from the CIA. They
(07:28):
are looking to recruit the best pilots out of the
Air Force to fly these reconnaissance missions as in a
civilian capacity. They tell the pilots just enough to get
them interested. It's dangerous, it's patriotic, it's vital for national security.
And oh, the pay will be doubled or tripled at
the Air Force salary because of overseas duty pay, hazard
(07:49):
duty pay, things like that. Just enough incentive to get
the best pilots to sign on the dotted line.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
And you've been listening to Gary Powers Junior tell the
story of his dad. By the way, we love it
when these family stories get preserved by family members. It's
a part of the mission of this show with the
American family, preserve our American stories. And my goodness, what
a stem winder. This is this man, this dad, this
(08:22):
father who raises his kids in the La suburbs San
Fernando Valley. He's a pilot for a radio station. He hustles,
he provides his kids with an ideal life, and ultimately
his son, well, he starts to learn about what his
dad did for a living, really, what he did for
living before this living he made for television, and learn
(08:45):
more about what his dad did for the country. When
his dad passed and it lit a fire under his son.
His son wanted to know the truth of what happened
to his dad. Who was he, what did he do
for the CIA, what happened when that plane was downed?
And my goodness, all the conflicting reports must have driven
him crazy. And what if those stories, some of them terrible,
(09:08):
were true about his dad? What if they weren't. In
the end, he was sort of an investigator trying to
find out the truth about his own family story. More
of the story of utube pilot Francis Gary Powers, who
was shot down over Russia, resulting in one of the
most heated controversies of the Cold War. We returned to
(09:31):
our American stories after these messages, and we returned to
(10:10):
our American stories with Gary Powers Junior telling the story
of his father, a fighter pilot turned spy behind the
controls of one of the world's most advanced and highly
secretive planes, the U two. Gary is an author, speaker,
and expert on all things Cold War. He even does
Cold War tours. You can find out more at cha
(10:33):
dash tours dot com or Gary's website, Gary powers dot com.
Let's get back to the story we lead off of
Gary Powers himself followed by his son to explain how
and why the U two program came about. What do
you feel? What are your feelings on the CIA now?
And did you get pretty much involved with the CIA?
Speaker 5 (10:55):
Well, not involved, and I work hard. I mean that's
just about content on it.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
I mean the U two thing was planned by the CIA.
Speaker 5 (11:04):
Yeah, it was plan conducted and you know, financial and
everything by the CIA, and of course the information was
also given to the other branches of military that needed it.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
We were just coming off the heels of World War two,
the Soviets, the Americans or allies. But tensions had started
to rise even before the end of World War II
between Stalin and Roosevelt, primarily because of our two ideologies
communism on one side, capitalism on the other. It's like
oil and water, they just don't mix. And so Americans
(11:44):
started to get concerned about the Soviets advancements and their
quote unquote Domino theory where they were taking over countries
and communism was spreading and we didn't want communism to
take over the world. And then you have to throw
into the mix. America had the nuclear bomb, while in
August of nineteen forty nine the Soviets explode their first
(12:06):
atomic bomb. So now there are two countries with nuclear
weapons that have different political ideologies. There's a bomber gap,
there's a missile gap. They are developing these missiles like sausages,
is what Khrushchev said at some press conference. So this fear,
this tension rises between these two countries, which is basically
the Cold War, and the CIA was tasked with finding
(12:32):
out the strengths and weaknesses of our adversaries. How many missiles,
how many bombers, What are they planning to do? Are
they going to launch a surprise attack? So this is
what the CIA is tasked with, is to gather intelligence
to keep Americans at home safe, and a CIA develops
the U two spyplane to find out by taking pictures
(12:53):
what they're doing. Because we could not get ground agents
into the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union a closed society.
You could not just sneak in to the country. Like
Soviet spies could sneak into America through Canada or Mexico,
it couldn't be done because they had checkpoints. These cities
(13:13):
could not be accessed. So the easiest way to get
information was to fly over these foreign countries to find
out their strengths and weaknesses by developing the U two spyplane.
It took about eight months to develop in nineteen fifty five.
They did it with a slide rule before computers, and
this is a technologically advanced airplane that's flying at seventy
(13:34):
to seventy five thousand feet, So it was just amazing
that they could do this back in the nineteen fifties
with the technology they had at the time. The reason
that the CIA was tasked to do the UTUBE program
is that it was a civilian agency. The pilots were
sheep dipped out of the Air Force. They were then
(13:54):
in a civilian capacity working for the quote unquote State
Department or for NASA, not the CIA, because if it
was a military plane with a military pilot flying over
a foreign hostile country, that would be an act of war.
Eisenhower did not want to provoke World War three. He
wanted to gather intelligence. There were three initial squadrons of
(14:19):
CIAU two pilots, the A, B, and C squadrons. Dad
was in the B group, the second batch. The pilots
were the best of the best. They were basically the
top gun of the time. Some of them had egos,
they're fighter pilots. I mean, come on. Dad did not
have an ego. He was a very mild mannered, down
(14:41):
to earth individual who just loved to fly. The U
two pilots were a very tight knit group. They couldn't
talk to anybody about what they were doing, including their family.
All they could say, if it was ever brought up, oh,
we're doing weather research, weather analysis, we're studying air currents,
we're studying incipretation, things like that, which was the cover story.
(15:04):
And my grandfather at one point in time, after Dad
has been recruited, he's been trained, he's going to go overseas.
Right before he used to partying. My grandfather, his dad
calls him up and says, I know what you're doing.
You're working for the FBI. He was close, so, you know,
normal people could probably put two and two together, but
(15:27):
it was so secret at the time that it had
to have a cover story. The plane was new and
it was breaking altitude records every day it flew above
seventy thousand feet. But they couldn't boast a brag about it.
They just had to, you know, bite their tongue and
know that they were doing a job bible for national security.
And so this is what my father was doing for
about six years nineteen fifty six to nineteen sixty two.
(15:49):
Well two of those years were in prison. So the
YouTube program is doing successful flights over the Soviet Union,
China other countries between nineteen fifty six and nineteen sixty
May first of sixty Now the first four years, the
Soviets are aware that these planes are flying over their territory.
(16:11):
Kruse Chef publicly appears at the UN and lambasts the
US for flying these missions. But the US says, what planes,
we're doing weather research, We're not over your country. Prove it.
So kruse Chef desperately wants to shoot down one of
these planes, but for the first four years, well they can't.
They can't do it. The Soviets have a missile at
(16:36):
that time called the SA one. It could only reach
sixty thousand feet. U two's are flying at seventy thousand
feet and above. They were safe. But over four years
of research and development, the Soviets improve their weapons system.
They now have developed the SA two missile that can
reach seventy thousand feet and above. So on May first,
(16:57):
my father is tasked with flying over a si he
called sperredlofsk gets up very early, goes through his briefen,
gets into his pressure suit, takes off in the airplane
at about nine am, crosses over the Soviets border, starts
to flip on and off the camera switches that will
take the photographic imagery of the ground below. He's add
as assigned altitude of seventy thousand, five hundred feet. The
(17:24):
MiGs are scrambled. Two of them go up to try
to intercept him. They can't reach his altitude. The missiles can.
Eight of these new and improved missiles, the SA twos,
are fired at his airplane. One of them explodes behind
the tail section. The tail basically is blown off, the
nose pitches forward, the wings snap off. Dad goes into
(17:50):
an adverted spin, tumbling out of the sky from seventy thousand,
five hundred feet. The bay is able to bail out
of the aircraft is not a ject. If he ejects,
he'll sever his legs. On the way out, he can't
get in the proper position, so he's able to crawl
out of the airplane separates from the aircraft. His parachute
opens at fifteen thousand feet. He parachutes down to the ground.
(18:11):
On the way down, he takes off his face plate.
He surveys the countryside. He lands on the outskirts of
a collective farm. The farmers rush up to him. They
help him. They start to ask him questions. They realize
he doesn't speak their language. That makes them little nervous.
About that time, a black car shows up. Two men
(18:32):
get out, put him in the back seat, and they
take him to the local officials in town. There he's
in detention quote unquote, being asked some basic questions by
someone who speaks broken English. That afternoon evening, the KGB
show up. They take my father by armed guard an
airplane to Moscow's airport shuttle him over to Lubiyanca Prison.
(18:54):
Lubyanka Prison is the infamous KGB prison, part of an
adjacent to the AGB headquarters downtown Moscow. So this is
where Dad finds himself his first out of captivity on
May first of sixty.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
And you've been listening to Gary Powers Junior tell the
story of his father. When we come back, what happens
next at that KGB prison in Moscow. The story of
Francis Gary Powers continues here on our American stories, and
(19:38):
we return to our American stories and the final portion
of our story with Francis Gary Powers Junior, the son
of spy and YouTube pilot Francis Gary Powers, who was
shot down over Russia, resulting in one of the most
heated controversies of the Cold War. Let's return to the story.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
Kruse Chef at the time when this happens is very upset.
He was in America in nineteen fifty nine with his wife.
The Eisenhowers hosted them. The Eisenhowers were supposed to go
over to Russia in the fall and or summer of
nineteen sixty, but that trip was canceled because of the
U two incident. There was also a parasomic conference that
(20:27):
was getting scheduled for May sixteenth of that year, two
weeks after the U two shootdown. Well, kruse Chef shows up.
Eisenhower de Gaul, the British Prime Minister. They show up,
Kruse Chef stands up demands in Eisenhower apology, Eisenhower refuses,
Kruse Chef parades, the President's storms out of the summit conference.
(20:47):
And while all this is unfolding, Dad's been stuck in
the Russian prison sale going through the interrogations, bright spotlight
grewing questions, threats of death, and it looks as if
the Cold War is about to heat up. So Dad,
at the time of the shootdown, you have to remember
that in May of sixty we're coming off the McCarthy era,
(21:12):
the one university of one communist who. It's the middle
of the Cold War, and so it was easier to
blame the pilot than to admit publicly we were behind
the Soviets and missile technology. It was easier to blame
the pilot than to further embarrass a US president who
(21:34):
had just been caught line. So Eisenhower is the first
American president to be caught publicly lined. After sixty four years,
we now take that for granted. It sold the press.
Fake news is nothing new. It's been going on for years, centuries.
(21:54):
The fake news of the time said that he had
a flame out, said that he defected, said that he
spilled his guts and told the Soviets everything he knew.
Oh he disobeyed orders. Oh he should have killed himself.
Oh he didn't follow orders to kill himself. Kruschef during
his press conference basically took the poisoned pin and said, oh,
look at what they give these American spy pilots to
(22:17):
commit suicide with this. One wanted to see to live
another day, but that wasn't the case. The CIA told
the pilots, if you're caught, you will be tortured. Here
is a way to alleviate the pain and suffering. It
was a hollowed out silver dollar containing a poison tipped
(22:37):
needle dipped in kerrari or shellfish toxin one prick. It
would shut down the central nervous system, the pilot would
die from lack of oxygen, and it was told of
the pilots it's an optional device to use in the
event of torture, not in the event of capture. And
that's one of the things we were able to clear up,
especially with the de classification conference in nineteen ninety eight.
(23:00):
There was no flame out, there was no dissent. There
was no sabotage, there was no pilot error. So my
dad goes through three months of interrogations. They're trying to
break them. They're trying to get him to cooperate, bright spotlight,
grueling questions, threats of death, no physical torture, thank goodness,
(23:20):
Because he was too high profile an individual, the Soviets
wanted to show the world how nice they wore, how
humble they are, what a great country they are. First
seven days he lies to him outright, but then international
headlines around the world start to reveal that he's been
shot down, he's alive and in Soviet captivity. He can't
lie anymore because the United States press or publishing articles
(23:43):
about the U two spy plane and other stuff. So
they're starting to trick them up and trap them up
in things he said versus what's being said in the press.
For example, my father said that he was trained in Arizona,
but the New York Times published that he was trained
at Area fifty one in the Nevada Desert. So the
KGB guard, the interrogator, comes in, shoves the newspaper in
(24:05):
Dad's face, yells at him. You lie to us. You
might as well, tell us everything. We'll get it out
of your American press anyways. And so all of a sudden,
you know, Dad has to take on this different ploy.
He tells the full truth when he knows they can
verify the information in the press. He lies to him outright.
When he knows there's no way they can find out
(24:26):
the answers, then he gives a part truth apart lie
dances around the subject when he knows that they know
something about the answer, but not enough to counter dictum.
And so this is how my father gets through his
interrogations for three months. At the end of the interrogations,
he's put on trial the Hall of Columns downtown Moscow.
Not once did the defense council object to any question
(24:48):
asked of my father. In the Soviet Union, you are
guilty until proven innocent, unlike here in America, where we
are innocent until proven guilty. The switch of those two
words makes all the difference in a democratic versus a
communist society. Now they give him a ten year sentence
(25:08):
in a Soviet prison, and the Soviet prison is nothing
like the American prison system, with air conditioning, color TV,
three meals a day in a Soviet prison. You are
cold in the winter, you're hot in the summer. Dad
lost twenty five thirty pounds in captivity because of the
poor diet. He ends up serving a total of twenty
one months captivity, then gets exchanged on February tenth of
(25:30):
sixty two at the Glenacker Bridge for Soviet spy Willie Fisher.
He goes by Rudolph Abel. He is an artist. He's
a photographer. He has a flat in New York City.
He actually gets some clients and does some work for
some people to make some money, painting and over taking photos.
(25:50):
But all the while he is a KGB keronel, a
cloak and dagger spy trained in ciphers, in hollowed out nichols,
hollowed out pencils, radio receivers and transmissions that are secret.
He is caught, he's tried, he's sentenced to thirty years
in prison, and so he's serving the sentence when my
father is shot down. Now behind the scenes, the Americans
(26:14):
want to get my father home. They want to debrief him.
What the hell happened, How did that plane get into
their hands? They need to know what took place the Soviets.
At the same time, the KGB want to get their
guy back, debrief them. How did you get caught, what happened?
What information did you tell them? What didn't you tell them?
We need to do damage control. So both sides want
(26:34):
to get these two agents back. So sometime in June
of nineteen sixty, my grandfather writes a letter to Rudolph Abel.
Mister Abel, I'm the father of Gary Powers that who
may have read about in recent news. I'd like to
talk with you about an exchange between my son for you.
(26:55):
I will do everything in my power to contact the
US government if you could contact your government. And Abel
writes back, thank you for the letter. I'm sorry, I'm
not the right person to talk to. You'll need to
talk to my wife in East Germany aka the KGB.
And so my grandfather gets credit for thinking about, hey,
let's do the spy exchange. The American government contracts with
(27:19):
James Donovan. James Donovan is an attorney who represented the
Soviet spy Abel at his trial. So James Donovan reaches
a deal with the Soviets, the East Germans and the
Americans to exchange my dad. So my father and able
are on the bridge. It's cold, dark, foggy morning, right
out of a John L. Caray novel. Two spies on
(27:39):
each side of the bridge separates east from west. They're
positively id'd. They walk home to their respective freedoms. Abel
returns home a hero of the Soviet Union, a parade
in his honor, a posted stamp in his likeness. My
father returns home to controversy, all of which were truths, mistruths,
(28:00):
amna windows or outright lives of the time. He could
care less, and he was often quoted as saying he'd
do the exact same things again given the exact same
set of circumstances. It all came out when he appeared
before a US Senate Select Committee hearing on March six
of sixty two. The senators for two hours asked him
questions back and forth, and they got to the bottom
of what had happened, and they realized he followed his
(28:23):
orders to a t. He did not reveal any sensitive
information to the enemy, He did not collaborate with them,
and did everything he could to prevent the release of
information that he knew about. So my father gets on
with his life. Dad, however, is a pilot. He wants
to fly, but he's the known spy. The Air Force
doesn't want to take him back in they would be
(28:44):
accused of employing spies. The CIA has no use for him.
His cover is blown, so Kelly Johnson, the designer of
the airplane, comes to the rescue. He's a Lockheed test
pilot between nineteen sixty three and nineteen seventy. He then
picks up another pilot job in seventy two, flying for
radio station KGIL. He works with NBC for about a
(29:05):
year and a half until August first of seventy seven
his helicopter runs out of gas. He and the cameraman
are killed in the accident. Very important. Up until nineteen
ninety eight, it was always a civilian operation, but declassification
documents now revealed it was a military operation, CIA working
(29:28):
hand in hand, but the Air Force could not be separated.
For all intent and purposes, it was a military operation.
Once that word military was declassified, that allowed the American
government to set the record straight. In May of two thousand,
they posthumously awarded Dad the Pow Medal. Then in June
of twenty twelve, they honored Dad at the Pentagon with
(29:52):
the ceremony awarding him posthumously the Silver Star. So as
a family, we were very honored, very humbled, very grateful
to our o nation for helping to set the record straight.
It took forty and fifty years, respectively, but it goes
to show it's never too late to set the record straight.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
The story of the Powers family the classic American story.
Here on our American Stories.
And we returned to our American stories. Up next, the
story about espionage spies. One of the most advanced planes
in the world and one of the most consequential events
of the Cold War. Let's get into the story.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
It's the Hall of Commums in Moscow, scene of many
a previous Russian trial and now Francis Gary Pyres, pilot
of the American YouTube spy plane shot down over Russia,
faced the judges with composure.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Now April and games for you two.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Pilot Gary Power. His life was possibly a stake.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
There's much we can say about Frank Powers. He was,
as Jim Brown indicated, an unlikely man who had to
deal with notoriety.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
He was a cia U two pilot flying reconnaissance missions
over the Soviet Union and other foreign hostile countries in
the nineteen fifties. In May of nineteen sixty May first
of nineteen sixty he gets shot down over the Soviet Union.
He's imprisoned by the KGB. He is ultimately exchanged for
a Soviet spy, Rudolph Abel in February of nineteen sixty two.
(01:15):
So he made the history books because he got caught
spine for our country against the Soviets. Well, how do
I know the man? I know the man is Dad.
(01:37):
So it was a normal life, middle class family, upper
middle class family in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles.
Mom was a housemaker, raising two kids. Dad was a
pilot working for radio stations at the time. I remember
hiking and biking and fishing and being disciplined and having
conversations with him. He taught me to shoot a twenty two,
(02:00):
but I also was able to fly with him. He
would pick me up after school about three o'clock ish,
then we'd go to the airport. We'd get in the
KGIL airplane. Then we'd fly around the San Fernando Valley
and Los Angeles. He would be doing his SkyWatch reports
for the afternoon rush hour traffic. Sometimes if it was
bad weather, he'd be in a car Ford Mustang and
(02:22):
it was all green and it was painted with the
KGIL letters on the side, and he'd run around the
streets in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles with
me in the car before school. But the other memories
I have of him is just as a normal dad.
I was very sheltered. I didn't understand why people wanted
to talk to me, including the press that would call
(02:45):
the house, or people at school would come up to
me and ask me questions. What it was like to
have a spy as a dad, Why did your dad
do these missions? What countries was he overflying? Why didn't
he kill himself when he was captured? Things like that,
and I didn't know the answers. In nineteen seventy six,
(03:07):
there was a movie made about him for NBC Television,
The Francis Gary Powers Story, starring Lee Majors. Lee Majors
was at the peak of his career as the six
million Dollar Man, and so I was more impressed with
meeting the six million Dollar Man than I was with
a movie being made about my dad, Just so you know,
I'm just a normal kid that could care less about
(03:29):
what dad did.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
But then there's much we can say about Frank Powers.
He was, as Jim Brown indicated, an unlikely man who
have had to deal with notoriety. He was quiet and
self effacing, but he dealt with his notoriety and a straightforward, straightforward,
thoroughly honest way.
Speaker 5 (03:45):
To some.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Francis Gary Powers was a hero, not to himself. To others,
he was less than a hero. It is small comfort
to us, even less for his family, his wife Sue,
his daughter d his son Gary, to know that Franciscary Powers.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
Died doing what he liked to do. On August first,
nineteen seventy seven, my dad dies in a helicopter crash
while working for NBC Television. Our lives are turned upside down.
And that's when the light bulb goes on over my head.
Oh not everybody's dad gets shot down, imprisoned, or exchanged.
(04:24):
In college, I came out of my shell. I was curious.
I started to do this research to find out more
about my father. More importantly, I wanted to find out
the truth because he was controversial. There were conspiracy theories
about him. There are armchair generals. He should have done this,
he should have done that. If I was there, I
would have done it this way. Oh he disobeyed orders.
(04:45):
Oh he should have killed himself. Oh he didn't follow
orders to kill himself. News in the newspapers said that
he had a flame out, said that he defected, said
that he spilled his guts and told the Soviets everything
he knew. I didn't know what the the truth was.
I didn't know how to answer questions being asked of
most he never really sat me down, per se. So
(05:17):
A dad is born in southwest Virginia in August of
nineteen twenty nine. His dad's a coal miner. It's the
height of the depression. There's not a lot of money
to spread around. He's running around barefoot, go into a
single room schoolhouse, growing up on the family farm, hunting, fishing,
And sometime in about nineteen forty, nineteen forty one, he's
(05:39):
ten eleven years old, the family goes to a country
fair in Princeton, West Virginia. There's a sign airplane rides
two dollars and fifty cents, and my dad begs his
father for two dollars and fifty cents to do this
plane ride. Well, two dollars and fifty cents in nineteen
forty is probably eighty dollars to day, and so when
(06:01):
you don't have a lot of money and you're a
coal mining family on a farm, that's a lot of
money to give your kid for an airplane ride. But
dad is able to sweep talk his dad into it.
He takes this plane ride. A female pilot in a
Piper Cub airplane keeps him up for about ten minutes
longer than she should have because he was so excited
and enthralled by this airplane ride. So he comes down.
(06:25):
He lands after twenty minutes. He rushes up to his
mom and dad. He grabs him basically says, I've left
my heart up there. He knows from that moment on
he wants to be a pilot, and he's going to
do everything he can going forward to pursue that dream.
He is the first of his family to go to college.
He graduates in nineteen fifty and immediately enlists in the
(06:46):
US Air Force. He's an F eighty four pilot, but
then things happen. He ends up with an appendicitis. It
lays him up in the hospital. He misses his deployment
over to the Korean Peninsula with his squadron. He's walking
around the air Force base. One day he sees his
name on a duty roster. The commanding officer wants certain
(07:06):
pilots to report to talk to some gentlemen of Washington,
d c. About career opportunities. And my father's a little
confused career opportunities. What possible opportunities are there. I'm an
Air Force fighter pilot. I've been in for six years.
I've got fourteen more years to go until I retire.
What possible opportunities could there be? So it goes to
this meeting two guys in suits from the CIA. They
(07:28):
are looking to recruit the best pilots out of the
Air Force to fly these reconnaissance missions as in a
civilian capacity. They tell the pilots just enough to get
them interested. It's dangerous, it's patriotic, it's vital for national security.
And oh, the pay will be doubled or tripled at
the Air Force salary because of overseas duty pay, hazard
(07:49):
duty pay, things like that. Just enough incentive to get
the best pilots to sign on the dotted line.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
And you've been listening to Gary Powers Junior tell the
story of his dad. By the way, we love it
when these family stories get preserved by family members. It's
a part of the mission of this show with the
American family, preserve our American stories. And my goodness, what
a stem winder. This is this man, this dad, this
(08:22):
father who raises his kids in the La suburbs San
Fernando Valley. He's a pilot for a radio station. He hustles,
he provides his kids with an ideal life, and ultimately
his son, well, he starts to learn about what his
dad did for a living, really, what he did for
living before this living he made for television, and learn
(08:45):
more about what his dad did for the country. When
his dad passed and it lit a fire under his son.
His son wanted to know the truth of what happened
to his dad. Who was he, what did he do
for the CIA, what happened when that plane was downed?
And my goodness, all the conflicting reports must have driven
him crazy. And what if those stories, some of them terrible,
(09:08):
were true about his dad? What if they weren't. In
the end, he was sort of an investigator trying to
find out the truth about his own family story. More
of the story of utube pilot Francis Gary Powers, who
was shot down over Russia, resulting in one of the
most heated controversies of the Cold War. We returned to
(09:31):
our American stories after these messages, and we returned to
(10:10):
our American stories with Gary Powers Junior telling the story
of his father, a fighter pilot turned spy behind the
controls of one of the world's most advanced and highly
secretive planes, the U two. Gary is an author, speaker,
and expert on all things Cold War. He even does
Cold War tours. You can find out more at cha
(10:33):
dash tours dot com or Gary's website, Gary powers dot com.
Let's get back to the story we lead off of
Gary Powers himself followed by his son to explain how
and why the U two program came about. What do
you feel? What are your feelings on the CIA now?
And did you get pretty much involved with the CIA?
Speaker 5 (10:55):
Well, not involved, and I work hard. I mean that's
just about content on it.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
I mean the U two thing was planned by the CIA.
Speaker 5 (11:04):
Yeah, it was plan conducted and you know, financial and
everything by the CIA, and of course the information was
also given to the other branches of military that needed it.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
We were just coming off the heels of World War two,
the Soviets, the Americans or allies. But tensions had started
to rise even before the end of World War II
between Stalin and Roosevelt, primarily because of our two ideologies
communism on one side, capitalism on the other. It's like
oil and water, they just don't mix. And so Americans
(11:44):
started to get concerned about the Soviets advancements and their
quote unquote Domino theory where they were taking over countries
and communism was spreading and we didn't want communism to
take over the world. And then you have to throw
into the mix. America had the nuclear bomb, while in
August of nineteen forty nine the Soviets explode their first
(12:06):
atomic bomb. So now there are two countries with nuclear
weapons that have different political ideologies. There's a bomber gap,
there's a missile gap. They are developing these missiles like sausages,
is what Khrushchev said at some press conference. So this fear,
this tension rises between these two countries, which is basically
the Cold War, and the CIA was tasked with finding
(12:32):
out the strengths and weaknesses of our adversaries. How many missiles,
how many bombers, What are they planning to do? Are
they going to launch a surprise attack? So this is
what the CIA is tasked with, is to gather intelligence
to keep Americans at home safe, and a CIA develops
the U two spyplane to find out by taking pictures
(12:53):
what they're doing. Because we could not get ground agents
into the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union a closed society.
You could not just sneak in to the country. Like
Soviet spies could sneak into America through Canada or Mexico,
it couldn't be done because they had checkpoints. These cities
(13:13):
could not be accessed. So the easiest way to get
information was to fly over these foreign countries to find
out their strengths and weaknesses by developing the U two spyplane.
It took about eight months to develop in nineteen fifty five.
They did it with a slide rule before computers, and
this is a technologically advanced airplane that's flying at seventy
(13:34):
to seventy five thousand feet, So it was just amazing
that they could do this back in the nineteen fifties
with the technology they had at the time. The reason
that the CIA was tasked to do the UTUBE program
is that it was a civilian agency. The pilots were
sheep dipped out of the Air Force. They were then
(13:54):
in a civilian capacity working for the quote unquote State
Department or for NASA, not the CIA, because if it
was a military plane with a military pilot flying over
a foreign hostile country, that would be an act of war.
Eisenhower did not want to provoke World War three. He
wanted to gather intelligence. There were three initial squadrons of
(14:19):
CIAU two pilots, the A, B, and C squadrons. Dad
was in the B group, the second batch. The pilots
were the best of the best. They were basically the
top gun of the time. Some of them had egos,
they're fighter pilots. I mean, come on. Dad did not
have an ego. He was a very mild mannered, down
(14:41):
to earth individual who just loved to fly. The U
two pilots were a very tight knit group. They couldn't
talk to anybody about what they were doing, including their family.
All they could say, if it was ever brought up, oh,
we're doing weather research, weather analysis, we're studying air currents,
we're studying incipretation, things like that, which was the cover story.
(15:04):
And my grandfather at one point in time, after Dad
has been recruited, he's been trained, he's going to go overseas.
Right before he used to partying. My grandfather, his dad
calls him up and says, I know what you're doing.
You're working for the FBI. He was close, so, you know,
normal people could probably put two and two together, but
(15:27):
it was so secret at the time that it had
to have a cover story. The plane was new and
it was breaking altitude records every day it flew above
seventy thousand feet. But they couldn't boast a brag about it.
They just had to, you know, bite their tongue and
know that they were doing a job bible for national security.
And so this is what my father was doing for
about six years nineteen fifty six to nineteen sixty two.
(15:49):
Well two of those years were in prison. So the
YouTube program is doing successful flights over the Soviet Union,
China other countries between nineteen fifty six and nineteen sixty
May first of sixty Now the first four years, the
Soviets are aware that these planes are flying over their territory.
(16:11):
Kruse Chef publicly appears at the UN and lambasts the
US for flying these missions. But the US says, what planes,
we're doing weather research, We're not over your country. Prove it.
So kruse Chef desperately wants to shoot down one of
these planes, but for the first four years, well they can't.
They can't do it. The Soviets have a missile at
(16:36):
that time called the SA one. It could only reach
sixty thousand feet. U two's are flying at seventy thousand
feet and above. They were safe. But over four years
of research and development, the Soviets improve their weapons system.
They now have developed the SA two missile that can
reach seventy thousand feet and above. So on May first,
(16:57):
my father is tasked with flying over a si he
called sperredlofsk gets up very early, goes through his briefen,
gets into his pressure suit, takes off in the airplane
at about nine am, crosses over the Soviets border, starts
to flip on and off the camera switches that will
take the photographic imagery of the ground below. He's add
as assigned altitude of seventy thousand, five hundred feet. The
(17:24):
MiGs are scrambled. Two of them go up to try
to intercept him. They can't reach his altitude. The missiles can.
Eight of these new and improved missiles, the SA twos,
are fired at his airplane. One of them explodes behind
the tail section. The tail basically is blown off, the
nose pitches forward, the wings snap off. Dad goes into
(17:50):
an adverted spin, tumbling out of the sky from seventy thousand,
five hundred feet. The bay is able to bail out
of the aircraft is not a ject. If he ejects,
he'll sever his legs. On the way out, he can't
get in the proper position, so he's able to crawl
out of the airplane separates from the aircraft. His parachute
opens at fifteen thousand feet. He parachutes down to the ground.
(18:11):
On the way down, he takes off his face plate.
He surveys the countryside. He lands on the outskirts of
a collective farm. The farmers rush up to him. They
help him. They start to ask him questions. They realize
he doesn't speak their language. That makes them little nervous.
About that time, a black car shows up. Two men
(18:32):
get out, put him in the back seat, and they
take him to the local officials in town. There he's
in detention quote unquote, being asked some basic questions by
someone who speaks broken English. That afternoon evening, the KGB
show up. They take my father by armed guard an
airplane to Moscow's airport shuttle him over to Lubiyanca Prison.
(18:54):
Lubyanka Prison is the infamous KGB prison, part of an
adjacent to the AGB headquarters downtown Moscow. So this is
where Dad finds himself his first out of captivity on
May first of sixty.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
And you've been listening to Gary Powers Junior tell the
story of his father. When we come back, what happens
next at that KGB prison in Moscow. The story of
Francis Gary Powers continues here on our American stories, and
(19:38):
we return to our American stories and the final portion
of our story with Francis Gary Powers Junior, the son
of spy and YouTube pilot Francis Gary Powers, who was
shot down over Russia, resulting in one of the most
heated controversies of the Cold War. Let's return to the story.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
Kruse Chef at the time when this happens is very upset.
He was in America in nineteen fifty nine with his wife.
The Eisenhowers hosted them. The Eisenhowers were supposed to go
over to Russia in the fall and or summer of
nineteen sixty, but that trip was canceled because of the
U two incident. There was also a parasomic conference that
(20:27):
was getting scheduled for May sixteenth of that year, two
weeks after the U two shootdown. Well, kruse Chef shows up.
Eisenhower de Gaul, the British Prime Minister. They show up,
Kruse Chef stands up demands in Eisenhower apology, Eisenhower refuses,
Kruse Chef parades, the President's storms out of the summit conference.
(20:47):
And while all this is unfolding, Dad's been stuck in
the Russian prison sale going through the interrogations, bright spotlight
grewing questions, threats of death, and it looks as if
the Cold War is about to heat up. So Dad,
at the time of the shootdown, you have to remember
that in May of sixty we're coming off the McCarthy era,
(21:12):
the one university of one communist who. It's the middle
of the Cold War, and so it was easier to
blame the pilot than to admit publicly we were behind
the Soviets and missile technology. It was easier to blame
the pilot than to further embarrass a US president who
(21:34):
had just been caught line. So Eisenhower is the first
American president to be caught publicly lined. After sixty four years,
we now take that for granted. It sold the press.
Fake news is nothing new. It's been going on for years, centuries.
(21:54):
The fake news of the time said that he had
a flame out, said that he defected, said that he
spilled his guts and told the Soviets everything he knew.
Oh he disobeyed orders. Oh he should have killed himself.
Oh he didn't follow orders to kill himself. Kruschef during
his press conference basically took the poisoned pin and said, oh,
look at what they give these American spy pilots to
(22:17):
commit suicide with this. One wanted to see to live
another day, but that wasn't the case. The CIA told
the pilots, if you're caught, you will be tortured. Here
is a way to alleviate the pain and suffering. It
was a hollowed out silver dollar containing a poison tipped
(22:37):
needle dipped in kerrari or shellfish toxin one prick. It
would shut down the central nervous system, the pilot would
die from lack of oxygen, and it was told of
the pilots it's an optional device to use in the
event of torture, not in the event of capture. And
that's one of the things we were able to clear up,
especially with the de classification conference in nineteen ninety eight.
(23:00):
There was no flame out, there was no dissent. There
was no sabotage, there was no pilot error. So my
dad goes through three months of interrogations. They're trying to
break them. They're trying to get him to cooperate, bright spotlight,
grueling questions, threats of death, no physical torture, thank goodness,
(23:20):
Because he was too high profile an individual, the Soviets
wanted to show the world how nice they wore, how
humble they are, what a great country they are. First
seven days he lies to him outright, but then international
headlines around the world start to reveal that he's been
shot down, he's alive and in Soviet captivity. He can't
lie anymore because the United States press or publishing articles
(23:43):
about the U two spy plane and other stuff. So
they're starting to trick them up and trap them up
in things he said versus what's being said in the press.
For example, my father said that he was trained in Arizona,
but the New York Times published that he was trained
at Area fifty one in the Nevada Desert. So the
KGB guard, the interrogator, comes in, shoves the newspaper in
(24:05):
Dad's face, yells at him. You lie to us. You
might as well, tell us everything. We'll get it out
of your American press anyways. And so all of a sudden,
you know, Dad has to take on this different ploy.
He tells the full truth when he knows they can
verify the information in the press. He lies to him outright.
When he knows there's no way they can find out
(24:26):
the answers, then he gives a part truth apart lie
dances around the subject when he knows that they know
something about the answer, but not enough to counter dictum.
And so this is how my father gets through his
interrogations for three months. At the end of the interrogations,
he's put on trial the Hall of Columns downtown Moscow.
Not once did the defense council object to any question
(24:48):
asked of my father. In the Soviet Union, you are
guilty until proven innocent, unlike here in America, where we
are innocent until proven guilty. The switch of those two
words makes all the difference in a democratic versus a
communist society. Now they give him a ten year sentence
(25:08):
in a Soviet prison, and the Soviet prison is nothing
like the American prison system, with air conditioning, color TV,
three meals a day in a Soviet prison. You are
cold in the winter, you're hot in the summer. Dad
lost twenty five thirty pounds in captivity because of the
poor diet. He ends up serving a total of twenty
one months captivity, then gets exchanged on February tenth of
(25:30):
sixty two at the Glenacker Bridge for Soviet spy Willie Fisher.
He goes by Rudolph Abel. He is an artist. He's
a photographer. He has a flat in New York City.
He actually gets some clients and does some work for
some people to make some money, painting and over taking photos.
(25:50):
But all the while he is a KGB keronel, a
cloak and dagger spy trained in ciphers, in hollowed out nichols,
hollowed out pencils, radio receivers and transmissions that are secret.
He is caught, he's tried, he's sentenced to thirty years
in prison, and so he's serving the sentence when my
father is shot down. Now behind the scenes, the Americans
(26:14):
want to get my father home. They want to debrief him.
What the hell happened, How did that plane get into
their hands? They need to know what took place the Soviets.
At the same time, the KGB want to get their
guy back, debrief them. How did you get caught, what happened?
What information did you tell them? What didn't you tell them?
We need to do damage control. So both sides want
(26:34):
to get these two agents back. So sometime in June
of nineteen sixty, my grandfather writes a letter to Rudolph Abel.
Mister Abel, I'm the father of Gary Powers that who
may have read about in recent news. I'd like to
talk with you about an exchange between my son for you.
(26:55):
I will do everything in my power to contact the
US government if you could contact your government. And Abel
writes back, thank you for the letter. I'm sorry, I'm
not the right person to talk to. You'll need to
talk to my wife in East Germany aka the KGB.
And so my grandfather gets credit for thinking about, hey,
let's do the spy exchange. The American government contracts with
(27:19):
James Donovan. James Donovan is an attorney who represented the
Soviet spy Abel at his trial. So James Donovan reaches
a deal with the Soviets, the East Germans and the
Americans to exchange my dad. So my father and able
are on the bridge. It's cold, dark, foggy morning, right
out of a John L. Caray novel. Two spies on
(27:39):
each side of the bridge separates east from west. They're
positively id'd. They walk home to their respective freedoms. Abel
returns home a hero of the Soviet Union, a parade
in his honor, a posted stamp in his likeness. My
father returns home to controversy, all of which were truths, mistruths,
(28:00):
amna windows or outright lives of the time. He could
care less, and he was often quoted as saying he'd
do the exact same things again given the exact same
set of circumstances. It all came out when he appeared
before a US Senate Select Committee hearing on March six
of sixty two. The senators for two hours asked him
questions back and forth, and they got to the bottom
of what had happened, and they realized he followed his
(28:23):
orders to a t. He did not reveal any sensitive
information to the enemy, He did not collaborate with them,
and did everything he could to prevent the release of
information that he knew about. So my father gets on
with his life. Dad, however, is a pilot. He wants
to fly, but he's the known spy. The Air Force
doesn't want to take him back in they would be
(28:44):
accused of employing spies. The CIA has no use for him.
His cover is blown, so Kelly Johnson, the designer of
the airplane, comes to the rescue. He's a Lockheed test
pilot between nineteen sixty three and nineteen seventy. He then
picks up another pilot job in seventy two, flying for
radio station KGIL. He works with NBC for about a
(29:05):
year and a half until August first of seventy seven
his helicopter runs out of gas. He and the cameraman
are killed in the accident. Very important. Up until nineteen
ninety eight, it was always a civilian operation, but declassification
documents now revealed it was a military operation, CIA working
(29:28):
hand in hand, but the Air Force could not be separated.
For all intent and purposes, it was a military operation.
Once that word military was declassified, that allowed the American
government to set the record straight. In May of two thousand,
they posthumously awarded Dad the Pow Medal. Then in June
of twenty twelve, they honored Dad at the Pentagon with
(29:52):
the ceremony awarding him posthumously the Silver Star. So as
a family, we were very honored, very humbled, very grateful
to our o nation for helping to set the record straight.
It took forty and fifty years, respectively, but it goes
to show it's never too late to set the record straight.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
The story of the Powers family the classic American story.
Here on our American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.