Family has high hopes for Powers exhibit

Friday, Oct. 3, 2003 | 11:24 a.m.

A couple hundred artifacts from the life of spy pilot Francis Gary Powers on display at the Atomic Testing Museum through the end of June are but a fraction of an exhibit his family hopes one day will fill a national Cold War museum.

"If I had to guess, I'd say it's about 1 percent," said Francis Gary Powers Jr. "We have thousands of pieces in storage and on display in other museums in the United States and in Germany."

While the Las Vegas display is a small one, it is significant -- complete with letters from Russia, childhood mementos, posthumous medals and even the wallet that Powers carried on him the day the Los Angeles TV news helicopter he was piloting crashed in 1977, killing him at age 47.

The local exhibit also includes one of young Powers' favorite pieces, the last of three Latvian style rugs his father wove to pass the time while being held in a Russian prison in the early 1960s.

Also included are Powers' CIA Director's Medal and and Prisoner of War Medal -- awards that young Powers had to battle the U.S. government to receive 13 years after his father's death.

Powers was long denied such honors because on the day of his fateful flight, May 1, 1960, the former Air Force pilot was reclassified as a civilian government employee to avoid the flight being labeled an act of war in case his plane was shot down.

Other Powers artifacts are on display at the Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., the Fort Mead Museum in Maryland, the Florida International Museum in St. Petersburg, Fla., the Freedom Museum in Virginia and the Leipzig Museum in Germany.

Powers is in the process of raising funds to build the national Cold War Museum in either Virginia or Washington D.C. Serving on the board of that group is his longtime friend, Brown University Professor Sergei Khrushchev, son of late Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev.

Sergei Krushchev, who came to the United States in the 1970s and today is an American citizen, will join Powers at Saturday's exhibit opening.

The Francis Gary Powers story tells of the passing of an age of innocence in the United States. While Americans have since become jaded by U.S. government lies told during the Watergate, Iran-Contra and Clinton-Lewinsky scandals, it was shocking when President Dwight Eisenhower concocted the lie to deny Powers' spy mission.

Powers, who was recruited by the CIA for the top-secret U-2 program, was taking pictures of Soviet missile installations from 70,000 feet when he was shot down by a Russian missile. After being advised that Powers could not have survived the crash, Eisenhower authorized the elaborate lie.

The deception backfired, however, when Premier Khrushchev produced a living Powers, subjecting the United States to international embarrassment.

The Soviets found Powers guilty of espionage in August 1960 and he was sentenced to 10 years in Vladimir prison. Two years after the U-2 crash, the nations conducted a spy swap, Powers for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.

Powers worked as a test pilot for Lockheed until 1970, the year his book, "Operation Overflight," was published. Seven years later, Powers died when his TV helicopter crashed after running out of fuel.