It was clear for all to see that the prosecution was using Powers as a propaganda tool to convict American policy, American leaders, and the American system in the eyes of the world.
Soon after entering the room, Frank struggled with nerves and took a seat when he was expected to stand, causing him to be admonished by the presiding judge, Lieutenant General of Justice V. V. Borisoglebsky, whose Russian pronouncements included an English translation.
Like their son, Oliver and Ida felt very out of place.
Prior to leaving Richmond several days earlier with his party, which included their grown daughter, Jessica Hileman; attorney Carl MacAfee; family friend Sol Curry; and physician Lewis K. Ingram, Oliver told a reporter: “We are doing all we can to help our son and know he will find some comfort from our being in Moscow.”95
He said he was still willing to trade his life for his son’s, if only he could get a chance to appeal to Khrushchev. But the premier would not see him.
Angered by the way many people in his own country were talking about his son, Oliver said he believed the American people had already convicted Francis and “the sentence will be passed by Khrushchev.”96
While the CIA underwrote the costs of the trip for Barbara, her mother, their attorneys, and Baugh, who provided regular updates concerning the trial and Barbara’s activities—his notes scribbled at the end of the day while sitting on the toilet in his hotel room—the rest of the family was essentially cut off from government “direct contact and control.”97 The deal with Life angered officials in Washington, who believed they could not trust Oliver.
Despite her health problems, which left her frail, gaunt, and needing help moving in and out of vehicles and seats, the gray-haired Ida—looking very much like the grandmother she was—had been determined to make the trip.
“Talk about culture shock,” said their daughter Jan. “They [her parents] didn’t know how to act in a country that was so totally different.”
During a tour of Moscow, Ida was amazed to see women performing manual labor on the streets.
“It was very nerve-wracking for them to sit there during the trial,” Jan said, “especially feeling like the end result was a foregone conclusion.”
When the Soviets announced nine days before the trial that Powers had “confessed” to spying, the State Department issued a carefully worded statement noting that the pilot “has been in the exclusive control of the Soviet authorities for 101 days…. Despite all efforts of this government, no one other than his jailers and captors had had any access to him, and anything he says should be judged in light of these circumstances and Soviet past practices in matters of this kind.”98
Even before the trial began, Barbara made news by essentially conceding the argument, which undermined Washington’s point. During a press conference, she refused to take issue with the prosecution’s charge that her husband had admitted to the central crime in question. “The fact that he pleaded guilty of being the pilot of the plane whose wreckage they found in the Soviet Union—I only feel that it was normal to admit it,” she said. “What else could he say?”99
Yet she told reporters he should not be held responsible for his actions. “My husband’s work and service was all part of a program which required orders from the President,” she said. “Therefore, I would term him a reconnaissance scout—not a spy—under orders from his own government.”100
Handling Barbara during the trip proved to be a tremendous challenge for Baugh.
For weeks, Washington had worried that the Soviets were brainwashing Powers. The CIA asked to examine the letters the pilot had written home, and Barbara complied with the request.
First the correspondence was checked for “evidence of the prisoner’s use of the simple code in which he had been instructed during his training.”101 No clue was found.
Further examination of his handwriting led the CIA doctors to believe “more than likely some type or organic psychiatric change”102 had taken place. The State Department pushed back against the suggestion that Washington should introduce the possibility that he had been brainwashed.
Frank would insist he had not been brainwashed.
At a time when most Americans still relied heavily on daily newspapers, television news remained in its adolescence. The evening newscasts on the three commercial networks lasted a mere fifteen minutes—it would be another three years before Walter Cronkite’s broadcast on CBS consumed an entire half hour—and were constricted by various technical barriers. The first communication satellite would not be launched until 1961, which meant that the still-new marvel of video tape represented the cutting edge of broadcast technology. The networks went all out to provide coverage of the trial, including NBC’s The Huntley-Brinkley Report, which featured the reporting of John Chancellor, on one of his first big overseas assignments.
Radio coverage helped shape public opinion around the world as well. In a report for the BBC, correspondent Ian McDougall painted a vivid picture:
There stood this crew-cut, diffident, simple, rather polite man, surrounded by the entire apparatus of Soviet law, and knowing himself to be, as he said himself, the cause of a lot of trouble. An astonishingly naïve person, yet a charming one, a frightened man with his back to the wall, a boy who wanted to own his own service station and instead found himself the cause of the president not being able to come to Russia….103
The pilot understood the fine line he was required to walk. He was willing to appear remorseful, which his court-appointed Soviet attorney, Michael I. Grinyov, insisted was necessary to prevent him from being executed. But he was unwilling to cross the line and denounce his own country.
“I’ve been treated much better than I expected,” he told the court while recounting the circumstances of his capture.104
Roman A. Rudenko, the Soviet prosecutor general, began his questioning of the defendant by establishing certain basic facts.
Question: When did you receive the order to fly over Soviet territory?
Answer: On the morning of May 1.
Question: Who gave you this order?
Answer: The commanding officer of my detachment.
Question: Who was the commanding officer of the detachment?
Answer: Colonel Shelton.
Question: Where was this detachment stationed?
Answer: Adana in Turkey.
Question: What was the maximum altitude?
Answer: 68,000 feet, plus or minus a few. I don’t remember.105
For the small task force huddled at the Matomic Building and parsing every word, bracing for the worst, this answer was a signal.
Question: What were you told by Colonel Shelton about the safety of the flight at such an altitude?
Answer: I was told it was absolutely safe and that at such an altitude I would not be shot down.106
Often frustrated that his attorney never objected and seemed reluctant to question witnesses, Powers at one point took it upon himself to challenge experts who contended that the fact that his plane contained no official markings suggested it was on a spy mission. Determined to find some way to fight back, even if it was on a technical point, he convinced one expert to concede the possibility that markings could have been removed.