--- alias: - Francis Gary Powers - Gary Francis Powers - Gary Powers - Francis G. Powers born: 1929-08-17 category: Intelligence & Government created: 2026-10-01 died: 1977-08-01 location: Letcher County, Kentucky (born); Pound, Virginia (raised) relations: - fn: 3 role: U-2 pilot start: 1956-05 type: employed_by with: '[[Central Intelligence Agency]]' - end: 1969-09 fn: 20 role: U-2 test pilot type: employed_by with: '[[Lockheed]]' - end: 1977-08-01 fn: 27 role: helicopter pilot and reporter type: employed_by with: '[[KNBC]]' - fn: 5 role: pilot start: 1960-05-01 type: participant_in with: '[[U-2 Incident]]' - end: 1960-08-19 fn: 8 reverse: true role: State Prosecutor start: 1960-08-17 type: prosecuted with: '[[Roman Rudenko]]' - end: 1960-08-19 fn: 8 reverse: true role: defence counsel start: 1960-08-17 type: represented with: '[[M. I. Grinev]]' - fn: 11 role: exchanged prisoner start: 1962-02-10 type: participant_in with: '[[Powers-Abel exchange]]' - fn: 14 reverse: true role: chairman, CIA Board of Inquiry type: investigated with: '[[E. Barrett Prettyman]]' - fn: 17 role: father type: relative_of with: '[[Francis Gary Powers Jr.]]' summary: American Central Intelligence Agency U-2 pilot shot down near Sverdlovsk on May 1, 1960, tried in Moscow, exchanged for Rudolf Abel in 1962, and killed in a 1977 television helicopter crash. tags: - Person - CIA - U2Incident - ColdWar - Lockheed - PrisonerExchange - Dimona updated: 2026-10-01 --- Francis Gary Powers was an American pilot whose [U-2 Spy Plane](/concepts/u-2-spy-plane/) was shot down over the [Soviet Union](/places/soviet-union/) on May 1, 1960, leading to a major international incident. [Seymour Hersh](/people/seymour-hersh/) wrote that Powers and his colleagues continued intermittently to overfly the [Middle East](/places/middle-east/), and were steadily back at work in the area in 1958, when the [CIA](/organizations/central-intelligence-agency/)'s photo interpreters began seeing significant activity at an Israeli Air Force practice bombing range south of [Beersheba](/places/beersheba/), which turned out to be the early signs of the [Dimona](/places/dimona/) nuclear reactor.[^1] ### Recruitment and the U-2 program Powers was born on August 17, 1929, in Letcher County, Kentucky, the son of a coal-industry mortarman, and attended Milligan College in Tennessee from 1947 to 1950.[^2] He told the Senate Committee on Armed Services in 1962 that he spent most of his life near Pound and Grundy, [Virginia](/places/virginia/), worked one summer as a lifeguard, joined the [United States Air Force](/organizations/us-air-force/) in October of the year he left college, and was first employed by the CIA in May 1956 with "well over a thousand hours" of flying time, a little better than 500 of them in the U-2.[^3] The pilots of the program were hired on civilian contracts. According to the statement the CIA placed in the Senate record, the contracts required them to perform such services as might be required and to follow the instructions and briefings given by their superiors, and the written guidance for capture was to "surrender without resistance and adopt a cooperative attitude toward their captors," to admit previous Air Force affiliation and current CIA employment, and to make no attempt to deny the nature of the mission.[^4] ### The flight of May 1, 1960 The flight that became the [U-2 Incident](/events/u-2-incident/) began when Powers took off from Peshawar, [Pakistan](/places/pakistan/), at 0159 Zulu on May 1, 1960, in a U-2C, on a route planned to run over Tyuratam, Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk, Kirov, Plesetsk, Severodvinsk and Murmansk and to end on the northwest coast of Norway.[^4][^5] Soviet radar began tracking the aircraft 15 miles south of the Soviet-Afghan border and that an SA-2 surface-to-air missile detonated close to and just behind it at 70,500 feet over the Sverdlovsk area, four and a half hours into the mission.[^5] In his Senate testimony Powers described an explosion he took to be behind him and external to the aircraft, an orange glare, a nose-down spin in which he believed both wings came off, a canopy released by hand, and an oxygen hose that tore free as he was pulled out over the cowling; he said he had no written instructions with him and tore his map into small pieces during the parachute descent.[^6] The CIA's standard cover story for U-2 flights, approved by the President in 1956, was that they were weather flights of the [National Aeronautics and Space Administration](/organizations/nasa/). On May 3 NASA issued a statement about a missing high-altitude weather plane whose pilot had reported oxygen difficulties. [Nikita Khrushchev](/people/nikita-khrushchev/) announced the downing of a "spyplane" near Sverdlovsk to the Supreme Soviet on May 5 without mentioning the pilot, and on May 7 announced that the pilot was alive and had admitted the mission. [Dwight D. Eisenhower](/people/dwight-d-eisenhower/) assumed responsibility for the flight at a press statement on May 11. The 1960 Paris Summit opened on May 16 with a protest and a demand for an apology from Khrushchev. NASA withdrew its support of the cover story during the summer, and the U-2 effort was given the new project name IDEALIST.[^5] ### Interrogation and trial in Moscow Powers was held at the Lubyanka Prison in [Moscow](/places/moscow/). In a debriefing transcript of February 20, 1962, marked TOP SECRET, he told CIA interviewers that the first interrogation there, on May 1, had been presided over by Roman Rudenko in a room of 15 or 20 people and lasted about an hour or an hour and a quarter; that his main interrogators were Kuzmin and Vasilyev, with Rodochev as interpreter; that a second interrogation on May 2 was left out of the English volumes of evidence at the trial; and that when the CIA debriefer asked whether a senior official present on May 2 was Aleksandr Shelepin he answered, "I'm almost positive."[^7] The CIA's statement of 1962 described about 100 days of solitary confinement before trial and interrogation of 10 to 12 hours a day at times.[^4] The trial took place from August 17 to August 19, 1960, before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR under Presiding Judge V. V. Borisoglebsky, with the assessors D. Z. Vorobyov and A. I. Zakharov. The State Prosecutor was R. A. Rudenko, the Procurator-General. Powers' counsel was M. I. Grinev of the Moscow City Bar Association. Four witnesses were called by the court. The sentence was ten years' confinement, the first three in prison.[^8] On the advice of his Soviet defense counsel he said he was sorry for his actions, and the CIA's statement of 1962 described the conduct at trial as consistent with the guidance he had received.[^4][^5] ### Contract pay during imprisonment On December 16, 1960, [Richard Bissell](/people/richard-bissell/), then Deputy Director for Plans, sent the [Director of Central Intelligence](/people/allen-dulles/) a memorandum titled "Pay to Mr. Francis G. Powers." It recalled that the Director had taken the position, with Bissell's concurrence, that the public answer to questions should be that Powers, "while in prison in Russia," was receiving "no more and no less than he is entitled to by the terms of his contract," and that this should be the policy and not only the public position. Bissell attached a paper from James A. Cunningham on the status of the matter.[^9] ### The exchange for Abel Rudolf Abel had been convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage and sentenced to thirty years. On March 28, 1960, five weeks before the shootdown, the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed the conviction 5 to 4 in Abel v. [United States](/places/united-states/) (362 U.S. 217), with James B. Donovan arguing for the petitioner.[^10] Confidential negotiations during the 18 months after the trial were conducted by Abel's court-appointed counsel Donovan, who corresponded with Abel's "wife" in [East Germany](/places/east-germany/); Acting Director Pearre Cabell wrote to Secretary of State [Dean Rusk](/people/dean-rusk/) in November 1961 supporting a trade; and the exchange took place on February 10, 1962, on the Glienicke Bridge, with the American graduate student Frederic Pryor released at another location.[^11] The CIA's 2020 account of the exchange, published on its website, states that Powers' father had proposed the swap to Abel in prison a month after the capture and that the CIA lawyer Milan Miskovsky worked with Donovan to negotiate it.[^12] A memorandum for the record by the CIA's Legislative Counsel John S. Warner dated February 12, 1962, records that on February 5 he told the chief counsel of the House Armed Services Committee, Robert Smart, and the Senate Armed Services Committee staff member William Darden that negotiations were under way, that "the release of Abel had been approved at the highest level if the Soviets would release Powers," and that "anything else was simply bonus." Warner told them on February 9 that the exchange would probably occur over the weekend. Smart was asked to inform Representative Carl Vinson and Darden told Senator Richard Russell.[^13] ### Debriefing and the Prettyman Board After the return the CIA reconvened the Damage Assessment Team that had met for two months in the summer of 1960. In 1960 the team had concluded that Powers' knowledge was extensive and that he had probably revealed most of it. After two weeks of debriefing in February 1962 it found the damage much less than estimated.[^11] Dulles, who had left the directorship in November 1961, told Powers "We are proud of what you have done." The new Director, [John McCone](/people/john-mccone/), appointed a Board of Inquiry.[^11] The General Counsel, [Lawrence Houston](/people/lawrence-houston/), proposed the terms in a February 1962 memorandum to the Director. He wrote that the [Department of Justice](/organizations/department-of-justice/) favored a retired federal judge as chairman, that the first choice was E. Barrett Prettyman and the second Harold R. Medina, that he recommended Lieutenant General Harold R. Bull (retired) and John A. Bross as members, that no Air Force officer should sit in view of the efforts to disassociate the Air Force from the U-2 project, and that he himself would be counsel to the Board. The question put to the Board was whether Powers acted in accordance with the terms of his employment, his instructions and briefings, and his obligations as an American citizen from the start of the mission until his release.[^14] In the Board's hearing of February 22, Houston examined witnesses and entered as Exhibit 17 a cable of February 21 from Kelly Johnson of Lockheed, who had spoken with Powers about the flight.[^15] The Board reported on February 27, 1962, that Powers had acted in accordance with his instructions and obligations and recommended that he receive his back pay. The findings rested on the testimony of debriefing experts, a review of his background by doctors, psychiatrists, former Air Force colleagues and his commander at Adana, his own testimony, a polygraph examination he had volunteered to undergo, and analysis by Kelly Johnson of photographs of the wreckage. McCone remained skeptical and had the Air Force convene its own panel, which supported Johnson. He then relied on a report of the [National Security Agency](/organizations/nsa/) suggesting that Powers had descended to a lower altitude and turned back toward Sverdlovsk before being hit, and ordered the Board to reconvene on March 1. It adhered to its findings.[^11] On March 7, 1962, the [NSA](/organizations/nsa/) Deputy Director, Louis W. Tordella, told Houston that he wished to place on the record that, contrary to Bross's statement in the transcript, it had not taken questioning and cross-examination to bring out the evidence contradicting the account, and that Bross's description of the NSA briefing as "very vehemently and very positively" presented was not accepted; Houston recorded the points to be filed with the transcript.[^16] David A. Foy, reviewing a 2019 book by Powers' son in Studies in Intelligence, wrote that the Board authorized $52,500 in back pay.[^17] ### The Senate hearing of March 6, 1962 On March 6, 1962, at 2 p.m. in room 318 of the Old Senate Office Building, Powers testified in open session before the Senate Committee on Armed Services, accompanied by Houston. Present were Senators Russell (chairman), Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, John Stennis, [Stuart Symington](/people/stuart-symington/), Henry M. Jackson, Sam Ervin, Strom Thurmond, Robert C. Byrd, Leverett Saltonstall, Margaret Chase Smith, Francis Case, Prescott Bush, J. Glenn Beall and Barry Goldwater. Russell said the committee had extended the invitation through the CIA and that the hearing was in "the interest of fair play for Mr. Powers." Saltonstall told Powers: "I commend you as a courageous, fine young American citizen who lived up to your instructions."[^6] The printed record closes with the CIA's statement, which says the poison needle was intended primarily for torture or similar circumstances, that there were "no instructions that he should commit suicide," that the Board of Inquiry's conclusion was accepted by the Director, and that "the amount due Mr. Powers under the terms of his contract will be paid to him."[^4] The [Senate Foreign Relations Committee](/organizations/senate-foreign-relations-committee/) also held brief hearings the same day with McCone representing the agency, and Senator John J. Williams asked McCone whether Powers was "being left with just a little bit of a cloud hanging over him."[^11] ### Book, employment and settlement On June 25, 1962, a meeting in the Director's office concluded that a book by Powers on his experiences "would be undesirable, would be harmful to Powers and not in the best interests of the Agency." The CIA memorandum of June 27, 1962, signed by [Lyman Kirkpatrick](/people/lyman-kirkpatrick/), directed that if Powers raised the issue again he be told he would "most likely come out second best," and noted that "one of the arguments that has been constantly advanced for the high pay of the U-2 pilots has been that they would not have an opportunity for personal gain through writings."[^18] A later memorandum of the Acting Assistant Director for Special Activities, James A. Cunningham, recorded that Powers, "a special contract employee," had sought approval to publish after a certain stage in his debriefing, that he was told the Agency would interpose no objection if the work was submitted for clearance before publication and was given a list of Agency-cleared attorneys, that the Director later decided a book would be unwise, and that Powers, dissuaded, had incurred $1,022.28 in legal fees. The memorandum recommended reimbursement; Houston concurred on October 2, 1962, and the approval by Marshall S. Carter carries a stamp of November 13.[^19] The Air Force agreed on April 4, 1962, to reinstate Powers effective July 1, and postponed the reinstatement after divorce proceedings began. Powers meanwhile began working for Lockheed as a U-2 pilot and in March 1963 told Colonel Leo P. Geary that he would stay.[^20] On April 19, 1963, Kelly Johnson cabled the CIA to confirm approval of Powers for flying U-2 aircraft under Lockheed's contracts except those in support of Project OXCART, and on April 25 the Agency replied that approval was "hereby given" under the various U-2 contracts except those involving OXCART.[^21] In the same month McCone awarded the Intelligence Star to all the U-2 pilots except Powers. Powers received it from Deputy Director Carter on April 25, 1965, two days before McCone's resignation took effect; the award was dated 1963 on the back.[^20] On August 9, 1967, a CIA Office of Special Activities memorandum recorded that Powers would visit headquarters to discuss two subjects: the possibility of employment with the Agency, and whether he could be given approval to write a book about his May 1 experiences.[^22] Powers remained at Lockheed until U-2 testing ceased in September 1969. Michael Beschloss claimed that Lockheed fired Powers for criticizing the Agency in his memoirs, which he had shown to the Agency in draft; the CIA history quotes Kelly Johnson's "U-2R Log" for September 25, 1969: "We have no flight test activity at all must let Gary Powers go. Have protected him for about seven years, but he doesn't have an ATR (Air Transport Rating), so we have no other job for him, not even flying the Beechcraft."[^20] Powers published Operation Overflight, written with Curt Gentry and published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, in 1970; a [Los Angeles Times](/organizations/los-angeles-times/) review of May 12, 1970, found in the CIA's files said the Air Force had reneged on a promise to reinstate him with credit for his time as a U-2 pilot.[^23] A CIA Office of General Counsel memorandum of October 19, 1971, by Houston, titled "Settlement for Francis Gary Powers," states that Powers had retained an attorney who wrote to the President on August 31, 1971, seeking Air Force credit for his time with the Agency and reinstatement, which in another eight years would have entitled him to a 20-year retirement. It states that the Air Force could not restore him to active duty and that a proposal approved by Secretary of the Air Force Robert Seamans and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird would offer him up to $250,000 in lieu of all claims, placed in a trust with a corporate trustee. It continues: "The mechanics of the movement of money and arrangements for the trust will be accomplished by the Agency so that there will be no traceable record back to the Government." The Air Force offered the Agency the chance to supply up to half of the funds; Carl Duckett had argued for participation; the Director had approved up to $125,000; and the memorandum requested an advance of $250,000 to John S. Warner so that a settlement could be completed in [Los Angeles](/places/los-angeles/) on October 26 and 27. The recommendation carries the approval of the Acting Executive Director-Comptroller; the date is not legible in the copy.[^24] On October 31, 1972, John Parangosky, Chief of the Special Projects Staff, answered a memorandum of October 27 reporting that Powers, speaking at an open forum at California State University, Northridge, had said he was laid off at Lockheed two weeks after submitting his book to the CIA for review and, asked whether he meant the CIA had pressured Lockheed, had answered "Yes, I do, but you can draw your own conclusions from those facts." Parangosky wrote: "For your information this is a lot of bologna. The record is replete with Agency help proffered Powers and Lockheed's desire to help him. In fact, after Lockheed felt it could no longer support Powers, the Agency funded an extension to enable Powers to alleviate his own situation."[^25] Foy wrote that Powers and his son, Francis Gary Powers Jr., believed the Lockheed dismissal was done at the CIA's behest.[^17] ### Death and burial Powers became a traffic reporter for a Los Angeles radio station and then flew a helicopter for a television station.[^20] On August 1, 1977, the KNBC "Telecopter," a Bell 206B JetRanger registered N4TV, crashed in the Sepulveda Basin in Van Nuys, California, killing Powers and the cameraman George R. Spears. A reconstruction of the accident published by the aviation history site This Day in Aviation states that Powers had reported low fuel to the Van Nuys tower, that the engine stopped from fuel starvation, and that the National Transportation Safety Board record, docket LAX77FA060, lists as probable cause improper in-flight decisions and fuel mismanagement; the same page reports that a [Freedom of Information Act](/events/freedom-of-information-act/) request for the NTSB report was answered with a statement that 1977 accident records had been destroyed.[^26] A CIA web feature attributes the crash to a faulty fuel gauge.[^27] On August 6, 1977, John F. Blake, Acting Deputy [Director of Central Intelligence](/organizations/director-of-central-intelligence/), wrote to the Director that Representative Robert Dornan of California had telephoned on August 3 with "a rather impassionate plea for assistance for the interment of Gary Powers in Arlington," that Blake had asked Frank Moore's office at the [White House](/places/white-house/) and the Under Secretary of the Army to associate the Agency with the request, and that he had told the Under Secretary that Powers held the CIA Intelligence Star, "the counterpart to the military 'Silver Star.'"[^28] Powers is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.[^17] The Distinguished Flying Cross was awarded posthumously on November 24, 1986. On February 15, 2000, after review at the request of his son, the Air Force retroactively promoted Powers to captain, credited the period of his CIA service and authorized the Prisoner of War Medal. George Tenet awarded him the CIA Director's Medal in 2000, and the Silver Star was awarded on June 15, 2012.[^26][^27] [^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 4. [^2]: "1 August 1977," This Day in Aviation (Bryan R. Swopes), tag page "NTSB LAX 77FA060," biography section. https://www.thisdayinaviation.com/tag/ntsb-lax-77fa060/ [^3]: *Francis Gary Powers: Hearing Before the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, Eighty-Seventh Congress, Second Session, March 6, 1962*. Government Printing Office, 1962, p. 2 (copy in CIA Reading Room, CIA-RDP83-00764R000500100023-2). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp83-00764r000500100023-2 [^4]: "Statement Concerning Francis Gary Powers," printed in *Francis Gary Powers: Hearing Before the Committee on Armed Services*, March 6, 1962, pp. 23 to 26 (CIA-RDP83-00764R000500100023-2). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp83-00764r000500100023-2 A separate copy is CIA-RDP67-00318R000100190001-7. [^5]: Pedlow, Gregory W., and Donald E. Welzenbach. *The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954 to 1974*. CIA History Staff, Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1998, chapter 4, pp. 176 to 182 and 185 to 187. https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/CIA-and-U2-Program.pdf (scanned pages read with optical character recognition). [^6]: *Francis Gary Powers: Hearing Before the Committee on Armed Services*, March 6, 1962, pp. 1 to 5 and the exchange with Senator Saltonstall (CIA-RDP83-00764R000500100023-2). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp83-00764r000500100023-2 [^7]: "Debriefing of Francis Gary Powers #16," February 20, 1962, 1133 hours, TOP SECRET, CIA-RDP80B01676R002200060004-0, pp. 1 to 6. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp80b01676r002200060004-0 [^8]: *The Powers' Case: Material of the Court Hearings in the Criminal Case of the American Spy-Pilot Francis Gary Powers, Moscow, August 17 to 19, 1960*. Soviet Booklet No. 76, London, September 1960, pp. 7, 25 to 40, 86. https://archive.org/details/powerscasemateri76powe [^9]: Richard M. Bissell Jr., Deputy Director (Plans), Memorandum for the Director of Central Intelligence, "Pay to Mr. Francis G. Powers," December 16, 1960, CIA-RDP62B00844R000200150001-6 (second copy CIA-RDP62B00844R000200160001-5). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp62b00844r000200150001-6 [^10]: *Abel v. United States*, 362 U.S. 217 (1960), decided March 28, 1960, opinion by Justice Frankfurter. https://openjurist.org/362/us/217 [^11]: Pedlow and Welzenbach, *The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954 to 1974*, chapter 4, pp. 183 to 185 ("The Fate of Francis Gary Powers"), citing the Board of Inquiry records and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee executive session of March 6, 1962 (declassified 1982). https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/CIA-and-U2-Program.pdf [^12]: "May Day Over Moscow: The Francis Gary Powers Story." Central Intelligence Agency, April 29, 2020. https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/may-day-over-moscow-the-francis-gary-powers-story/ [^13]: John S. Warner, Legislative Counsel, Memorandum for the Record, "Passage of Information with Respect to the Powers/Abel Exchange," OGC 62-0271, February 12, 1962, CIA-RDP64B00346R000100170064-7. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp64b00346r000100170064-7 (second copy CIA-RDP64B00346R000100140013-6). [^14]: Lawrence R. Houston, General Counsel, Memorandum for the Director of Central Intelligence, "Board of Inquiry for Francis Gary Powers and Terms of Reference," OGC 62-0274, February 1962, CIA-RDP80B01676R002200020012-5. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp80b01676r002200020012-5 [^15]: Board of Inquiry, Francis Gary Powers, transcript excerpts of February 22, 1962, TOP SECRET, CIA-RDP80B01676R002200080007-5. https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP80B01676R002200080007-5 [^16]: Lawrence R. Houston, Memorandum for the Record, "Board of Inquiry, Francis Gary Powers," March 7, 1962 (conversation with Louis W. Tordella, Deputy Director, National Security Agency), TOP SECRET, CIA-RDP80B01676R002200070001-2. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp80b01676r002200070001-2 [^17]: Foy, David A. Review of Francis Gary Powers Jr. and Keith Dunnavant, *Spy Pilot: Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 Incident, and a Controversial Cold War Legacy* (Prometheus Books, 2019). *Studies in Intelligence* 63, no. 2 (extracts, June 2019), pp. 41 to 43. https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/Spy-Pilot.pdf [^18]: Lyman B. Kirkpatrick, memorandum "Writings by Francis Gary Powers," June 27, 1962, CIA-RDP75-00001R000400130015-4. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp75-00001r000400130015-4 [^19]: James A. Cunningham Jr., Acting Assistant Director (Special Activities), Memorandum for the Acting Director of Central Intelligence, "Reimbursement for Legal Services Incurred by Francis Gary Powers," SA-0860-62, with concurrence of Lawrence R. Houston dated October 2, 1962 and approval by Marshall S. Carter, CIA-RDP80B01676R003100040001-5. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp80b01676r003100040001-5 [^20]: Pedlow and Welzenbach, *The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954 to 1974*, chapter 4, pp. 185 to 187 and footnote on p. 187. https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/CIA-and-U2-Program.pdf [^21]: Cable from Kelly Johnson of Lockheed received April 19, 1963, and reply of April 25, 1963, concerning approval of Francis Gary Powers to fly U-2 aircraft, SECRET, CIA-RDP89B00739R000300110131-3. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp89b00739r000300110131-3 [^22]: John Parangosky, Deputy Director of Special Activities, Memorandum for the Record, "Visit of Gary Francis Powers to Headquarters," OSA-2981-67, August 9, 1967, CIA-RDP70B00501R000100040021-8. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp70b00501r000100040021-8 [^23]: Kirsch, Robert. "The Book Report" (review of Francis Gary Powers with Curt Gentry, *Operation Overflight*, Holt, Rinehart and Winston), *Los Angeles Times*, May 12, 1970, copy in CIA-RDP88-01350R000200190013-0. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp88-01350r000200190013-0 [^24]: Lawrence R. Houston, General Counsel, Memorandum for the Acting Executive Director-Comptroller, "Settlement for Francis Gary Powers," OGC 71-1526, October 19, 1971, SECRET, CIA document C03072202. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-03072202 [^25]: John Parangosky, Chief, Special Projects Staff, Memorandum for DC/SMS/DDS&T, "POWERS, Gary Francis," SPS-0918/72, October 31, 1972, with DDS&T 3066/72 of October 27, 1972, CIA document C03069466. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-03069466 [^26]: "1 August 1977," This Day in Aviation, tag page "NTSB LAX 77FA060," including the update on the Freedom of Information Act response. https://www.thisdayinaviation.com/tag/ntsb-lax-77fa060/ [^27]: "May Day Over Moscow: The Francis Gary Powers Story." Central Intelligence Agency, April 29, 2020. https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/may-day-over-moscow-the-francis-gary-powers-story/ [^28]: John F. Blake, Acting Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, Note for the Director of Central Intelligence, August 6, 1977, CIA-RDP80M00165A002600120017-6. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp80m00165a002600120017-6