Exactly what constituted his “maximum altitude” was to be debated for years, contributing significantly to the swirl of misinformation. CIA debriefers addressed the subject two years later:
US Interrogator: Alright. Let’s discuss altitude, ah, to the best of your recollections, Frank.
Powers: Starting at the beginning of the flight?
US Interrogator: Well, yeah, as to what your programmed altitudes were and, ah, what your recollections were.
Powers: Now briefing on that was to climb according to, ah, the regular schedule we had to carry in the climb which I did and, ah, climb to 70,000 feet—level—stay at 70,000 feet the entire flight. But the airplane will not with a full fuel load would not climb to, ah, 70,000 feet immediately. It takes normal[ly] a half hour or so, or I don’t know exactly how much time—I can’t recall. But I was at 70,000 feet I think shortly after crossing the Russian border. I don’t remember exactly where I got the, ah, altitude, but I remained at 70 the entire flight until this happened.
US Interrogator: You would say then that you were at 70,000 on this when this occurred?
Powers: When, ah, that’s what my altimeter, ah, showed, and the altimeter was set on a, a sea level, ah, well, ah, I even forgot the term. But 29.92, ah ah, was set in my altimeters at sea-level pressure.
US Interrogator: Barometric pressure?
Powers: Yes, ah huh. And it was indicating 70,000 feet. So any error that it might have had would be the only—
US Interrogator: Well now, was that the ceiling of the plane?
Powers: No, no. I could have possibly got up to, when the plane was hit, I say hit when the accident happened, the explosion occurred, ah, I could possibly get it up above 72,000 feet because I had retarded the power so I could remain at 70,000 as instructed to….
US Interrogator: What was the ultimate, ah, ceiling of the plane and with, ah, minimum fuel?
Powers: Minimum fuel, I could have gotten up to approximately—minimum fuel approximately 75,000 feet. But with the load I had at the time, I’d say maybe about 72. And that time. Maybe even 73, but somewhere in between those two was my estimate then….
US Interrogator: You were reported and said you were at 68,000 at that time I think. Was this… this I believe was a lesser altitude, wasn’t it, than you had?
Powers: Yes. That was…. I tried to save as much altitude as I could. I mean, not to let them know what the altitude was.
US Interrogator: But you had… oh, I see. Were you actually at 70?
Powers: I was at 70…. My scheduled plan was to climb until I reached 70 and maintain 70 for the duration of the flight.3
This exchange demonstrated the game my father played with his KGB interrogators. By claiming that he was flying at 68,000 at the time of the incident, he believed he was preventing the Soviets from knowing the limit of the U-2’s capability, which he believed might protect future pilots, while also communicating to the CIA that he was attempting to withhold key secrets. This was his way of saying, “Hey, guys, I’m not telling the full truth.”
By the time I secured the interrogation transcript, I had already confirmed that the government eventually concluded he had been shot down at an altitude of 70,500 feet.
I found it interesting that the CIA debriefers repeatedly came back to their question about how high Dad was flying and whether he was sure he did not have a flame-out or descend to a lower altitude before being shot down.
They pressed on this matter because of the classified National Security Agency report on the shoot-down. Only later would Washington learn that a Soviet fighter sent to try to ram the U-2 had been felled by one of the SA-2 missiles and was falling out of the sky at the same time, contributing to the murky situation, which key CIA officials eventually concluded that the NSA misinterpreted.
In 2010, I obtained a previously classified internal CIA interview with John McMahon, the deputy director of special projects during the U-2 Incident. McMahon left no doubt about the hostility some harbored toward Dad, especially McCone.
McCone—influenced by the National Security Agency report, which argued that the pilot “descended to a lower altitude and turned back in a broad curve toward Sverdlovsk before being downed”4—ordered the Prettyman board to reconvene to consider the additional evidence. However, the commission found the evidence inconclusive. The difference in opinion among the American intelligence establishment was hidden from the public but apparently played a role in the CIA’s unwillingness to offer a full-throated defense of him.
McCone was trying to save face. He had put his reputation on the line when he suggested Dad was complicit in his capture, and he was going to do everything he could to show he was right, at the expense of Dad’s reputation.
After McMahon determined, based on certain secret information, which was never revealed during the trial, that Dad had “followed our directions to the letter,” an argument broke out “between myself and [James] Angleton on what would happen with Powers. I urged an exchange and I wrote a paper that General Cabell approved. Then I attended meetings where we tried to figure out, as a community, where to go next. Those meetings were usually at State. President Kennedy approved that we try and get Powers out. Our friends in the CI [Central Intelligence] Staff did everything they could to torpedo that exchange. I can remember several officials in State speaking against the exchange. I pointed out that President Kennedy authorized the exchange, and I wanted the names of those that were against it. The objections disappeared. John McCone, who was the head of the ABC when Powers was shot down, proclaimed then that he defected. So, as Director, he wasn’t too happy eating those words.”5
Air Force Major Harry Cordes, who began working with Detachment B at Groom Lake and eventually deployed with the unit to Turkey, released a written history that also proved enlightening. By the time of the shoot-down, he had been reassigned to SAC as an intelligence officer, but he received all of the intelligence reports concerning the U-2 Incident. While Cordes defended my father, his immediate superior, Colonel Keegan, “considered Powers a traitor for talking to the Soviets, not destroying the U-2 with the destruction switches, and especially for not taking his life with the lethal needle concealed in a coin.”6 Cordes wound up as one of the men who debriefed Dad for the CIA.
The agency men went to great lengths to rule out every possible alternative to a shoot-down.
US Interrogator: That orange glow yeh—a—a—would that sort of phenomenon occur possibly in connection with a flame-out? Could it?
Powers: Well let’s see. I’ve had several just ordinary flame-outs in this airplane and there’s nothing like that, a, in fact, flame-out[s] earlier in the program were, a, very, a, frequent and, a, it couldn’t have been associated with a flame-out in any way. Now, I thought maybe that if say the, I, I remember hearing one time that after an engine change, inspection and so forth, working on a[n] airplane that they were running it up on a, a test stand and the whole tail pipe—jet exhaust pipe—there blew out. Now something like that might have caused it, but I’m sure I would feel that definitely in the airplane if this thing was going through—and not only that, the paint on the tail section would be, I’m sure, would be burnt completely off.
US Interrogator: Now—now one other question. Have you given any consideration to the possibility that there are, a, that this, a, that there could have been sabotage to the plane?
Powers: I’ve done a lot of thinking about this, and I don’t see how there could be. I don’t really see how there could be, because we had tight security and the plane was flown from [REDACTED] moved into a hangar and all of our people who I would trust anywhere worked on it. The plane was taken out—no one else got around it—and then I felt it, so it—it had several hours on it before this time, and no one knew whether the plane would go the next day or not, so they couldn’t—say—set a bomb of some kind in it because they wouldn’t know.