Operation Overflight (2 page)

I told Collins that because of this last condition, I'd have to turn it down.

Collins replied that he was sorry, but should I change my mind, I knew where to reach him. As I was leaving, he added that should I want to discuss the offer with my wife, I could do so. He would appreciate, however, my not mentioning it to anyone else.

Returning home, I told Barbara about the mysterious interview and my decision. I also told her how appealing I found the offer, in spite of the fact that I had no idea for whom I'd be working or what I'd be doing. To my surprise, she shared my enthusiasm, but for less adventurous and more practical reasons.

We could use the additional money, she noted. And I had to agree. Although she worked and our combined salaries equaled about seven hundred dollars per month, we were, like most service couples, living above our income. We had recently made payment on a new car; the balance was still due.

She could move in with her mother while I was gone, she suggested, while keeping her secretarial job at the Marine Corps Supply Center. Since the cost of living overseas was almost always less than in the United States and my pay would be more, we could probably save enough money to pay for the car while possibly making a down payment on a home.

“And eighteen months isn't forever.”

When she wanted to be, Barbara could be quite persuasive. And I was already more than slightly tempted.

Despite Collins' admonition, coffee the next morning was a gabfest. Several of the pilots had already rejected the offer because of the separation from their families. The remainder, myself included, were undecided, but highly curious.

Guesses as to the nature of the employment were as varied as they were wild. But they were just that, guesses. Collins had given us just enough information to whet our curiosity. No more.

That afternoon I called to make another appointment, for that evening.

Driving to the motel, I thought about the interviews. Although secrecy appeared to be the major reason for their unorthodox arrangement, I felt sure the psychological effect had not been lost on Collins and his associates. Occurring at night, in an unusual
place, set apart from the routine and ordinary—all generated excitement.

But I'd had enough mystery. Tonight I was determined to get some hard answers.

Collins supplied them. More than I'd anticipated, and without my asking.

He began by explaining that he and the other two men were representatives of the Central Intelligence Agency. Should I be accepted, I would be working under contract for that agency.

I knew nothing about the Central Intelligence Agency, except that it was a supersecret branch of the government, most often referred to by its initials, CIA.

Though I was impressed, I tried not to show it.

As for the Air Force, Collins continued, should I wish to return to it following completion of my contract, arrangements would be made so I could do so, with no loss of time in grade or toward retirement. In short, I could reenter at the same rank as my contemporaries, my time in the CIA being counted as service time.

Now the particulars. First, I would be checked out on an entirely new aircraft—

To a pilot who loved flying, as I did, there are few words more thrilling. But Collins went on to add them.

—a plane which would fly higher than any plane had ever before flown.

I was hooked.

My pay, training in the United States, would be fifteen hundred dollars per month. On arrival overseas, it would be upped to twenty-five hundred.

I was so surprised I couldn't reply. Even with combat pay, this was far beyond anything I could ever hope to earn in the Air Force; it was nearly as much as the captain of a commercial airliner received!

Collins appeared to read my thoughts, that I was now contemplating what nature of job would necessitate such a pay scale.

“Once you've completed your training, you will be sent overseas. Part of your job will be to make reconnaissance flights along the border outside Russia, the highly sensitive equipment aboard the plane monitoring radar and radio signals.

“But that's only a part,” he continued. “Your main mission will be to fly over Russia.”

Stunned, I listened as he described how during these “overflights” special cameras would photograph Russian defenses, missile-launching sites, military deployments….

It is difficult to describe exactly what I felt at that moment. I was one of what I presumed to be a not inconsiderable number who believed that the Cold War was a very real war, with real objectives, and that since the stalemate and compromise in Korea, the free world had been losing that war, and one country after another, to Communism.

The discovery that the government of the United States had conceived an intelligence operation so bold and daring restored much of my faith in the alertness of that government.

I was amazed. And immensely proud, not only of being chosen to participate in such a venture, but, even more, proud of my country itself, for having the courage, and guts, to do what it believed essential and right.

Collins was still talking. Huge areas of Russia were a dark mystery. Since World War II, tremendous industrial and military complexes—whole cities—had grown up beyond the Urals, never seen by outsiders. Except for the limited intelligence received from inside the Soviet Union, there was no way of knowing what Russia was planning militarily, its capabilities, what we must be prepared to meet should war come. At the time of Pearl Harbor, we at least had some comprehension of Japan's military might. This was not the case with Russia. After the Soviets failed to approve President Eisenhower's Open Skies Plan of 1955, “Operation Overflight” had been conceived to close this gap.

“How do you feel about it now?” he asked.

“I'm in.
I wouldn't miss it for the world. All my life I've wanted to do something like this!”

This was no exaggeration. Had I been asked to do it simply on a volunteer basis, as an Air Force pilot, my enthusiasm and commitment wouldn't have been one whit less great.

“Take another night to think it over,” Collins suggested.

“That's not necessary: I've decided.”

“We want you to be sure. If you feel the same way tomorrow, call me. We'll talk about it.”

He needn't have added the obvious, but he did, that this time I was not to discuss our conversation with anyone, even my wife.

I slept little that night. Early the following morning I called him with my answer.

Our third and last meeting at the motel was quite businesslike. As always, Collins did most of the talking.

It was necessary that I go to Washington, D.C., for briefings and
certain tests. The following week, routine Air Force orders would be issued, directing me to report there for several days' temporary duty. These would cover my absence from the base, as well as authorizing travel expenses. Actual orders—where to report in Washington and when—would be issued verbally by the major with whom I had first been in contact. I was to travel in civilian clothes. Hotel reservations would be made for me. My alias, to be used on the hotel register: “Palmer, Francis G.”—false last name, correct first name and middle initial. ID, with this name, would be issued to me prior to the trip, identifying me as a civilian employee of the Department of the Air Force.

Again Collins anticipated my question. Wives being naturally inquisitive, I could tell my wife that I would have several months to clear up pending business and to make necessary living arrangements. I could also tell her the amount of my pay, that I would be working as an employee of the government—though under no circumstances was I to mention the Central Intelligence Agency—and that my job would be to make reconnaissance flights along the border outside Russia. Just enough to make her feel she was in on what was happening and to impress upon her the necessity for complete secrecy. Nothing more. As for others—parents and friends—I would be given a separate cover story at a later date. Meantime, I was to say nothing.

Collins also informed me he would be in communication when necessary. If for any reason I had to reach him, there was a telephone number to memorize. There would be an answer at all hours of the day or night.

During our meetings I had several times referred to the Central Intelligence Agency as the CIA. Each time, Collins had winced slightly. When he or the other men referred to it, it was always “the government,” or, most often, “the agency.” Almost automatically, I fell into the same habit.

I was learning.

Thus, I suppose, spies are made.

One

I
have never thought of myself as a spy, yet in a certain sense this attitude is probably naïve, for Operation Overflight was to change many of the traditional definitions of espionage, providing a bridge between the age of the “deep-cover” cloak-and-dagger agent and that of the wholly electronic spy-in-the-sky satellite.

Although as a boy I had dreamed of myself in many roles, interestingly enough, being a spy was not one of them. Looking back, however, I can see almost an inevitability in the events that led me to that motel door.

Born August 17, 1929, in Burdine, Kentucky, in the heart of the Appalachian coal-mining country, I was the second of six children of Oliver and Ida Powers. The other five were girls. The lone boy was not to follow in his father's footsteps, however. From as early as I can remember, I was to become a doctor, not through any choice of my own but because that was what my father had decided I was to be.

His reasons were simple: doctors made money, their families suffering few hardships. A coal miner most of his years, he had known only the harshest kind of life.

A close call in the mine while I was a child had cemented his resolve. While he was working as brakeman on a “motor,” an electric engine used to pull strings of coal cars, another motor had rammed his, the force of the collision pinning him against the roof of the mine. When other miners finally extricated him, his hip was badly injured. Neither the resultant limp nor the recurrent pain kept him out of the mines, however; it was the only work available. One of my first jobs as a boy, in Harmon, Virginia, had been to walk up to the mine each morning to see if there was work that day. These being years of the Depression, more often than not there wasn't. Sometimes at night I could hear my parents talking, not about where the next dollar was coming from, but the next nickel. Many days there wasn't enough money for a loaf of bread.

Fortunately my sisters and I were spared the agonies of envy. None of our friends and neighbors had much more. It was a poor region.

Growing up the only boy in a family of five girls made me
something of a loner. Reading was my main pastime. History, historical fiction—other times, other places—fascinated me. One of my greatest disappointments as a boy occurred when I read of Admiral Byrd's discovery of Antarctica. It seemed there were no new worlds left unfound, that all the great discoveries had been made.

Much of the time that I wasn't reading I spent outdoors. Although, together with the other boys, I swam in the local rivers and streams, did some fishing and a little hunting—rabbit, squirrel, bird—I most enjoyed getting off by myself and tramping the Cumberland Mountains. Best of all was to sit on the edge of a high cliff on the side of a mountain and look out over the valleys. It seemed to give me a perspective I couldn't find in my daily routine.

Green, hilly, with abundant trees, it was beautiful country, the Virginia-Kentucky border territory—or would have been, except for the mines. Their presence poisoned everything, the water in the streams, the hope in the miners' lives. They scarred the landscape, made people like my mother and father old before their time.

Yet even on the mountaintop I couldn't see any other horizons for myself. An obedient son, I had accepted my father's decision that I was to be a doctor, though the prospect interested me not at all.

My father had a second dream—to get out of the mines himself. He tried repeatedly, even enlisting as a private in the Army for three years, at twenty-one dollars per month. But always he returned underground.

I had the same restlessness. Two incidents during my teens contributed to it.

When I was about fourteen my father and I took a short trip through West Virginia, passing an airport outside Princeton. A fair was in progress, a large sign offered airplane rides for two and a half dollars. I begged my father to let me go up. He finally relented. The war was on now, the mines operating at full capacity, and money was no longer quite so scarce.

The plane, which seemed incredibly large to me at the time, was a Piper Cub. The female pilot, viewed from the vantage point of my fourteen years, seemed like an old woman, but was probably about twenty. My enthusiasm was so obvious that she kept me up double time. As my father remembers it, when we returned to earth I told him, “Dad, I left my heart up there.” I don't recall saying it, but I probably did, since it came as close to describing my feelings as anything could. There was something very special about it. Like climbing mountains, only better.

Much as I enjoyed it, however, it led to no great decision regarding my future; that was already decided.

In 1945, during my junior year in high school, my father took a job at a defense plant in Detroit and moved the family there. It was a world apart from Appalachia. The patriotic fever of the times was contagious, and everyone seemed to be doing something for his country. Except me. Though I was certain my father would never give his permission, I was determined, on finishing high school the following year, to enlist in the Navy.

But the war ended in 1945, and we returned to the Cumberlands, where I finished my last year of high school, at Grundy, Virginia.

I was keenly disappointed to have missed World War II.

This feeling was compounded when I started college the following fall. The school, Milligan College, near Johnson City, in east Tennessee, was, like all colleges at the time, packed with returning veterans, each with stories of his wartime exploits. I envied them. It seemed I had been born too late for the important things.