Return of the Native

Everyone was most cordial. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Richard Russell set the tone for the session: "I understand from Senator Byrd that you are a Virginia boy." U-2 Pilot Francis Gary Powers, making his first public appearance since his release from captivity in the Soviet Union, smiled back. Then, in a soft drawl, he told his story. Committee members asked a few gentle questions, and sent him on his way with their paternal blessings. It was all over in 90 minutes.

The way had been paved for Powers by Central Intelligence Agency Director John McCone in two days of closed-door testimony. McCone assured the committee that Powers had lived up to his $30,000-a-year CIA contract. During and after his Moscow trial. Powers had been criticized in the U.S. for admitting too much. But McCone provided the committee with a memorandum explaining that U-2 pilots had been instructed, in case of misadventure, to "surrender without resistance," "adopt a cooperative attitude," and to feel "perfectly free to tell the full truth" about the nature of their missions and their employment by the CIA--withholding only some of the specifications of the U-2 itself.* Powers himself could add little to what was already known about his flight and capture. He could remember "feeling, hearing, and just sensing an explosion." When he looked up, everything he saw "was orange." Said he: "I had never seen anything like this before, and I am sure there was an explosion. I feel that the explosion was external to the aircraft and behind me, but I don't really know." After a desperate struggle. Powers managed to bail out of his U2. His treatment by his Russian captors, he said, had been "much better than I expected." He won applause from the spectators in the packed Senate caucus room when he said: "There was one thing that I always remembered while I was there, and that was that I am an American." Powers left the hearing room exonerated by the committee of any misconduct.

Back home in Pound, Va., townspeople were planning a welcoming ceremony to be held after Powers' release from Georgetown University Hospital, where he was sent for a physical examination. Having passed all his other tests, Powers was free to remain in the CIA if he wished, free to collect some $50,000 in back pay. Asked how he would spend it, Powers replied: "Slowly." Then he disappeared into a waiting Government car--leaving behind him a persistent feeling that some of his story remained untold.

* U.S. servicemen are under much tougher restrictions. The code of conduct for armed forces personnel requires that if captured they give nothing more than their name, rank, service number and date of birth.

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