The Foreign Service Journal, May 2011

70 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 1 1 A F S A N E W S A s our colleagues in Lahore can certainly attest, cases of de- tainedAmericans accused of spying are some of the most complicated that we can encounter. The month of May gives us the opportunity to recollect one of the most high-pro- file of such cases: Francis Gary Powers. On May 1, 1960, as the U.S. was preoccupied with contain- ing Soviet influence, Soviet missiles brought down Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane near Sverdlovsk. Powers had been a U.S. Air Force pilot who joined the Central Intelligence Agency to fly covert aerial reconnaissance missions. When the CIA found out that Powers had gone missing, the U.S. issued a statement that the downed plane was a weather plane. Powers parachuted safely but was captured, and the wreckage of the U-2 was rela- tively intact. The U.S. was caught red-handed, spying on the Soviets. Of course, Moscow made a huge spectacle of the incident, expressing indignation about the U.S. spying effort. But the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations at the time, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., gave amost effective response. During aMay 26, 1960 U.N. Security Council meeting, Lodge asserted that the U.S. had not been doing anything that the Soviets themselves had not done. As evidence, he produced a gift that the Soviets had given U.S. Ambassador Averell Harriman in 1946: a replica of the Great Seal, which had hung in the ambassador’s residence in Moscow. In 1952, agents from the Office of Security (the pred- ecessor to Diplomatic Security) found a radio transmitter in that Great Seal. Lodge’s presentation did not erase the embar- rassment of the incident, but it did undercut support for a res- olution condemning the U-2 spying missions. The Soviets convicted Powers of espionage, and he returned to the U.S. in 1962 in a prisoner swap. Despite criticism that he had not activated the U-2’s self-destruct mechanism, a Senate panel determined that he had followed orders and conducted himself well in difficult circumstances. He died in 1977 in a hel- icopter accident after having covered bush fires for a California TV station. This is the second installment of a monthly column on U.S. diplomatic his- tory by FSO Greg Naarden, who has served in Frankfurt, Dushanbe and Kabul. He is currently assigned to Washington, where he is trying to track down artifacts for the U.S. Diplomacy Center (http://diplomacy.state.gov). AFSA also arranged meetings for Amb. Neumann with the Austin district directors for Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a member of the Senate Committee on the Budget; Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, a member of the Senate Com- mittee on Appropriations; and Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, a member of the House Committee on Foreign Af- fairs. Also attending were Austin FS re- tirees John Wood and Jerry Mitchell, as well as Ambassador Tibor Nagy, vice provost of the Office of International Af- fairs at Texas Tech University. Discussion centered on current AAD and AFSA efforts to persuade Congress to sustain full funding for U.S. diplo- macy. The Foreign Service representa- tives also requested, if budget reductions were unavoidable, that programs, not people, should be cut. Decreasing the FS work force would seriously damage the effectiveness of diplomacy, and would require many years and budget cycles to recover. All three directors agreed to brief the senators on the urgency of this issue. In addition, JohnWood, coordinator for Central Texas ForeignAffairs Retirees, arranged an informal brunch forAustin- area retirees. AAD and AFSA leaders urged the attendees to stay in contact with their members of Congress and local congressional staff, and to press them to sustain full funding for the State Department, USAID and the other for- eign affairs agencies so that they can ef- fectively resolve the grave challenges fac- ing U.S. foreign policy around the globe. The Austin events were part of a se- ries of new AFSA outreach programs in various regions around the U.S. aimed at educating the American public, as well as opinion leaders, about the role diplo- macy plays in defending vital American interests. THIS MONTH IN DIPLOMATIC HISTORY: MAY Francis Gary Powers’ Unscheduled Landing in the USSR BY GREG NAARDEN Left to right: Jerry Mitchell, Austin FS retiree; JohnWood, Coordinator, Central Texas retirees; John Etue, regional director for Sen. Hutchison; Amb. Ronald Neumann, president, AAD; and Tom Switzer, AFSA communications director, at the Austin offices of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison on March 3. TIBOR NAGY Texas • Continued from page 65