Gary Powers and the Big Lie (Sunday Times, March 11, 1962)
by Ian Fleming
I have strong views about the Powers Case. It will go down to history, I think, as one of the classical espionage cases, classical in the sense of its majestic mishandling. I have nothing against Powers himself. He wasn’t a spy, he was just an extremely good pilot employed to operate an espionage device, one of the finest ever invented, a high-altitude photographical reconnaissance aircraft called the U2.
In connection with this aircraft, which in fact was nothing but a very good “Spy in the Sky,” I have the impression that Americans can lie more safely in their beds today, and Englishmen, too, because of the intelligence brought back by planes of the U2 class piloted by young daredevils such as Powers. These planes, I believe, brought back target information whose possession by America, more voluminous and more accurate than could have been obtained by a million ground spies—if one could have got them in there and out again, which one couldn’t—has made it as possible as any other factor for America to negotiate from strength with Russia—to be able to tell Russia, or perhaps just to leak it discreetly, that in the case of a mass blast-off of I.C.B.M.s by Russia the sources of the attack and other military objectives in the U.S.S.R. could be devastated within minutes, bringing her, however much damage she might do to America and England, militarily to her knees.
So let us take off our hats to the Spy in the Sky and move on to what went wrong in the case of Powers.
Everyone knows that a spy gets paid danger-money for doing a very dangerous job. He knows that if he is caught he is going to get tortured in his most sensitive parts—and, believe me, it is those things the professional spy thinks of far more than of death itself—and then he is going to be killed. It has been so ever since the man from the opposition crept under the tent flap in the desert and listened to the plans of the enemy tribal chiefs and then, with luck, ran all night with the news, to where the camp fires of his own side were burning away in the hills. It has gone on like that through all history, and it is one of the most exciting of all human adventure stories—the single man, in the darkness, facing death alone for the sake of the great mass of his own countrymen.
But the essence of the game—for, in a way, it is a tremendous game—is that, if the spy is caught, and whatever truth is tortured out of him, he is totally disavowed by his own side. Spying is a dirty business, why I have never quite understood. But the convention has always been maintained. If you are in uniform, you are okay. If you’re in civilian clothes you’re a pariah. Smith? Never heard of him, and Bang! You’re dead.
Now every country in the world employs spies and always has done. Nowadays the big corporations employ them also, to spy on the other fellows’ plans and designs—but that is another story. And it is total hypocrisy for any country to adopt a holier-than-thou attitude, to get on a high horse if they catch one of the other fellow’s spies. They’re damned glad they caught him, and the chief of the Red secret service chuckles at the discomfiture of the chief of the Purple secret service, and that’s that.
But in the Powers case things went badly wrong. Powers was in fact a skilled pilot and not a spy—though he probably got plenty of security briefing and knew what he was in for, as he confessed straight away to the Russians, in accepting the huge sums of danger money. What went badly wrong was the handling of the case by the American Government (and here let me say that I am discussing this espionage case purely as a writer of spy thrillers. Let’s keep politics out of it. We in England made almighty fools of ourselves sending a middle-aged romantic called Crabbe out on a ten-mile underwater swim in Portland Bay to examine a Russian cruiser of the Sverdlov class. The only good thing that came out of that mess was that we kept our mouths shut and stuck to our story that we’d hardly ever heard of a man called Crabbe.)
What happened in the Powers case? The Russians broke the story first, though presumably the C.I.A. knew, or guessed, that something bad had happened to Powers (I am told, by the way, that two or perhaps three other U2 planes had been lost before this one, though in these cases the pilot had either been killed or taken his death pill). The next move was with America, and now was the time for The Big Lie.
This is how I, or rather M., the fictional head of the secret service in my James Bond stories, would have handled it. He would have said, through our Foreign Office, as follows, “Thank you very much indeed. One of our experimental aircraft is indeed missing from our Turkish base and your description of the pilot fits in with a man who escaped yesterday from detention at that base. This man Powers is a most unreliable person who has a girl friend in Paris (to explain the foreign currency Powers carried) and he hijacked our plane with the object, presumably, of flying to her. You are quite correct to hold him in detention, and he must clearly suffer all the rigours of Soviet law in the circumstances. Please return our plane and equipment in due course. Sorry you’ve been troubled. P.S.: Powers suffers from hallucinations and delusions of grandeur. Pay no attention to them.”
Or something like that—bland, courteous, firm, but throwing Powers cold-bloodedly to the dogs. After all, it was against a contingency like that that he had been paid several thousand dollars a month. That was danger money. He was expendable. Expend him!
Instead, what happened? Endless havering by the State Department, lies, half-truths and finally admissions from on high that led at least in part to the total collapse of the Summit meeting in Paris. If The Big Lie had been spoken, and stuck to, it would have been in the true traditions of espionage. The democratisation of espionage has muddied the ancient stream that dates back to the man crawling under the tent flap to spy in the sheikhs. Just look at the trouble it caused!
And, just by the way, I don’t for a moment believe that Powers was shot down at 68,000 feet by Russian rockets. I believe it was sabotage at the Turkish base—delayed action bombs in the tail section. Turkey is a bit too close to Bulgaria for comfort. And the Bulgars are the best bomb technicians in the world.
Finally, as an Englishman, I sincerely hope that a U3 is already flying and that a U4 is on the drawing-board. But may they be backed by the Big Lie as well as by young chauffeurs like Powers. This mess wasn’t Powers’s fault, or his plane’s—least of all that of Allen Dulles. It was the fault of the men who think that espionage is a dirty word. It isn’t. It has got to be done well, that’s all—from the Powers of this world, all the way up to the Presidents and the Prime Ministers.
Note: You can read more about the Powers-U2 incident at Wikipedia and the BBC. Fleming was completely wrong about the cause of the plane’s crash. The U2 was indeed brought down by an S-75 Dvina surface-to-air missile. The Soviets already knew about the U2 flights and were expecting Powers to show up.
The Americans attempted an elaborate cover-up and pretended the U2 was actually a NASA weather research plane. But they did this under the impression that Powers had died and his plane was destroyed. Khrushchev delayed revealing the truth to entrap and embarrass the Americans. He succeeded. Eisenhower found himself in the dilemma–admitting responsibility for the U-2 flight would sour the Four Powers summit in Paris, but denying it would indicate to the press and Congress that he did not control his own administration. Fleming kept politics out of his article, but domestic pressure played a large part in forcing Eisenhower’s hand.
I could go into more detail, but that would get in the way of wishing all my fellow Fleming-fans a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I’ll be back with more Fleming in early January. Until then, Happy Holidays!