US Interrogator: Now this was briefings that you got from [REDACTED] prior to going or over a period of time?
Powers: I think… I’m pretty sure they were all from [REDACTED] and not just prior to this flight but over a period of time before this flight. One probably was when we… when this pin was given to us and we were told what it would do, and we were told we could take it if we wanted to and so forth…. I think he briefed us some there, and I’m not positive whether this particular question about telling everything came up before my flight while we were studying the maps, or maybe before someone else’s operation that I was in on. But I do remember hearing it and I do remember that it came to my mind at that time.
US Interrogator: But finding yourself in this situation you had the background of briefing of that type?
Powers: Yes, and that decided my course. I don’t know what I would have done if I had not thought of that. I have no idea; but, you’ve got to realize that I was in a pretty good state of shock at the time. I… probably wasn’t thinking too clearly, although it seems to me that I was, but I was nervous, my heart was… pulse rate very fast, and, felt horrible. I don’t remember how long I’d been up at that time, but I was completely exhausted seemed like. But anyway, this entered my mind and when I saw that my cover story did not hold up or the one that I made up would not hold up, I knew there was… I wanted to keep as much information from them as possible… and I knew there were some things that… that it would be very embarrassing for a lot of people [to] find out about it, and I was going to do my best to keep that type of information from these people; but I also decided at that time and between that… that time and also on the airplane to Moscow, which took a few hours, I don’t remember how long… that in order to… to withhold this information that I thought was very important, I had to convince these people that I was telling them the truth. And doing that, I had to anticipate what would be released in the press, which I had no idea what would be. And maybe my imagination ran away with me in some of these instances because the press seems to have a pretty good intelligence system of their own…. There was a lot of thoughts like this running through my mind, but I definitely made up my mind that some things couldn’t be revealed. Other things that might appear in the press, they would know that I was telling the truth in everything. And I think it worked fairly good in several cases….18
On this matter, the Prettyman inquiry interviewed at least one senior official who worked with my father.
[NAME REDACTED]: We followed a practice—at least I did—of telling the pilots that if they were captured that they were of course to attempt not to reveal any information at all, if possible—and this usually degenerated into a fairly general discussion of ways and means. We would discuss Air Force experience with PW’s [prisoners of war], and the fact that eventually almost anyone could be broken down and compelled to talk—and that the tactics should be to delay—not an out-and-out lie if you’re going to get caught in it, but delay your interrogators as much as possible—give him a limited amount of information and specifics… [especially with regard to] altitude and performance of the aircraft….19
The CIA debriefers eventually moved on to finding out what the Soviets learned about his mission.
US Interrogator: Did they ask you questions concerning what you were after in the remaining portion of the flight?
Powers: See, there were a few notations [at this point, he was gesturing to a map similar to one captured by the Soviets]. I think, up here, we had a few airfields annotated. The main thing they wanted to know was how I knew or how I got the information that there would be an airfield there. See, it wasn’t on the map, we had put it there ourselves, and I just told them that someone gave it to me to put it on. Where he got it I don’t know. They wanted to know what I was looking for, and I told them, “I don’t know.” And actually I don’t know.
US Interrogator: Did they try to pump you with any suggestions?
Powers: Well, I don’t know whether they mentioned rocket-launching sites or if that’s the thing that came into my mind when they asked this question, but I know it was in my mind anyway—these rocket-launching sites.
US Interrogator: Did they at any time at all threaten you with any physical harm during your interrogations?
Powers: No, but they did just the opposite, told me that I would not be tortured. Of course, I didn’t believe them. They at no time—well, at Sverdlovsk, one time, I had some ear trouble, I guess from past descent, and I reached up two or three times to—well, I don’t know, habit, I guess—to try to clear the ear and one time, I guess, a man grabbed my hand and threw it down, and that is the roughest treatment I got. They never hand-cuffed me. Those people at that first place looked fairly angry and mean, but the only thing was this throwing my hand down.
US Interrogator: Did they, on the other hand, try to coerce you by bribery of any kind? Did they promise you something?
Powers: Now, this is something I don’t know. I tried to find out, now this was where [Roman Andreyevich] Rudenko was attorney general, or whatever he is, came in at one of the meetings with him. I was feeling fairly despondent and I said, “I’ll never get out of here.” And he said, “Oh, there are ways.” And I said, “What kind of ways?” He said, “Oh, there are just ways.” “Well, what kind of ways?” “Well, I think you should think about it.” And I went to the cell and thought about it, and I kept waiting for him to bring it up again because I was interested in what they were talking about, and they never did bring it up. So I mentioned it to the interpreter. I asked what kind of ways did he mean, and he said, “What do you think?” And I said, “Well, I have no idea.” And that is all that was mentioned. And it seemed at one time they might have had some sort of plan to maybe try to talk me into doing something and giving me my release as pay for something, I don’t know. That was just my impression of this little incident. I never did know what was meant by what he said.20
The KGB pushed him hard on the question of previous overflights. “They harped on it so much… every day,” he said on his tapes. “When I got angry, I said, ‘If I’d taken a thousand flights, do you think I’d tell you? They stopped [asking] shortly after that.”21
The CIA wanted to know about the condition of his wreckage.
US Interrogator: Frank, could you describe your visit to the Gorky Park to see the remains of the aircraft—the circumstances of that?
Powers: I think it was around the middle of May. I don’t remember whether they told me the night before or not. I think they did at the last interrogation on the day before that at a certain time—I think it was about nine o’clock in the morning that they were going to take me to review the remains of the aircraft. I don’t know that it was Gorky Park, but it seems like I’ve heard it mentioned here and that’s why I called it Gorky Park, but it was definitely a park. Took me out in an automobile and there was another automobile or two following. Got there. You know, they had ropes around, had all this roped off. There was one or two places they let me get in behind the rope to see something close, but most of the time I had to stay out in front of the ropes. Could get close to the stuff that was there. And they took me around, asking me about each of these individual pieces of equipment and so forth.