Shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission at the height of the Cold War, Francis Gary Powers’s story of being captured and exchanged for a Russian spy went on to be immortalised in Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies. His son, Gary Powers Jr discusses growing up the son of a spy, consulting on the film, and setting straight the conspiracies that surround his father’s story over 60 years later.
“I remember when I was eight years old, I had a children’s encyclopedia collection. When I was bored one day, I looked on the shelf, and I said, hey I wonder what Powers has.
“So I looked it up, Powers, and sure enough, there’s a picture of Dad on trial in the Soviet Union,” Gary Powers Jr says.
“I run up to Mum and go, ‘Why is Dad in this book?’ And she explained to me that he was a CIA pilot who was shot down and prison exchanged. I was like, I’m eight years old, I’m going to go play,” he adds.
It wasn’t until Powers Jr began reading his father’s book that he started to discover more about him.
On May 1st 1960, while flying through Soviet airspace to take aerial reconnaissance for the CIA, Powers’s U-2 jet was hit by a surface-to-air missile.
His subsequent capture and prisoner exchange for Russian spy Rudolf Abel would go on to inspire Steven Spielberg’s 2015 Cold War drama, Bridge of Spies.
“I’d read a couple pages, he’d come into my bedroom, tuck me in, kiss me goodnight, and I’d ask him a few more questions here and there. But I’m ten, I don’t understand the significance of everything I’m experiencing,” Powers Jr says.
“I mean, not everybody’s Dad is in an encyclopedia, or when we’d go to an airshow, people would ask for his autograph. That was just my normal,” he adds.
Two years later, Francis Gary Powers died in a helicopter crash whilst working for NBC News, which was when the reality of who his father was began to set in.
“Everything just kind of explodes. People are coming over to the house, the phones ringing off the hook, no one ever directly tells me my father died,” he says.
“At the wake, there were a bunch of people watching TV in the house, which was all about the memorial service and the loss of Gary Powers. So it’s like, OK, Dad’s passed. That’s when the lightbulb went in my head. Not everybody’s Dad gets shot down, imprisoned and exchanged.
“Not everybody’s Dad is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Not everybody’s dad was controversial or had conspiracy theories about him. I was the kid whose Dad was a spy,” he says.
Powers Jr went on to establish the Cold War Museum in 1996, allowing him to honour Cold War veterans while being able to research the truth of what his father went through.
In June 2014, Powers Jr started hearing whispers from friends in Hollywood that Steven Spielberg was set to make a film featuring his father’s story.
When Bridge of Spies was confirmed in July, Powers Jr explained his concerns to Producer Marc Platt.
“I said if it’s based on the misinformation, the fake news, they’ll paint him in a negative light. If they base it on the declassified information that’s come to the surface in the last 50 years, they’ll paint him as a hero to our country,” he says.
Following the conversation, Powers Jr was offered the role of consultant on the film.
The concerns he had about potential misinformation stemmed heavily from critical press coverage surrounding his father at the time of his return to America.
“They said he failed the country, he disobeyed his orders, he was sabotaged, and that he actually landed the plane intact,” he says.
On Powers’s return, he was cleared by both the CIA and a U.S Senate select committee hearing.
“But he’s not cleared by the court of public opinion at the time; his reputation is tarnished. They say he should’ve killed himself or that he allowed himself to get caught.
“And because it’s the first time a U-2’s been shot down, it was easier to blame the pilot than to publicly admit we were behind the Soviets in missile technology,” he says.
At this point in the Cold War, it was widely believed the Russians had yet to develop missile systems that could reach the altitude at which Powers was flying when he was shot down.
As a result, the downing of the U-2 was incorrectly thought to be the result of a mechanical problem, causing it to descend to an altitude the missiles could reach.
“We know Dad was shot down at his assigned altitude, 70,500 feet. There was no flame out, no descent, no sabotage,” he says.
“Pilots were given a suicide pen device on these missions; there was no order to take it, it was to be used at the pilot’s discretion in the event of torture, not capture. But because he had it on him, the rumours were he should’ve killed himself,” Powers Jr says.
In truth, the CIA pilot’s brief in the event of being captured was to take a ‘cooperative attitude’ towards their captors.
“This misinformation and these multiple versions of events helped to keep America’s secrets secret; this was the Cold War mentality,” he says.
It wasn’t until 1998 that the facts about Powers’s mission were declassified and the truth came to light.
In 2000, Powers was posthumously awarded the Prisoner of War Medal, followed by the Silver Star at a ceremony at the Pentagon in 2012.
Powers Jr recalls being on set when, to his surprise, he was invited to appear in a scene alongside Austin Stowell, portraying his father.
“I’m on set, and they put me in a vintage suit and I do a cameo appearance. I didn’t really understand what was going to happen until it happened. I helped escort my Dad out for his mission, which was really surreal,” he says.
But it’s what comes just before the credits roll that sticks with Powers Jr.
“At the very end of the film, Spielberg acknowledged Dad as a hero to our country.
“The main thing is Dad’s reputation is intact, that people know he did everything he was supposed to do. It took 50 years for his reputation to become whole again. And we’re very honoured and grateful for the record being set straight,” Powers Jr says.
