STORIES
Why Beijing
Yet while the CCP has shown itself to be adept at identifying and addressing a range of problems - from the need to pursue vigorous economic reforms to the need to ensure balanced growth between rural and urban areas - Tibet remains its Achilles’ heel. After almost 20 years of a relatively quiescent Tibet, the recent protests across the Tibetan parts of China have caught Beijing off-guard. Following the riots of the 1980s, the CCP’s strategy towards Tibet has been one of dealing with dissent harshly while simultaneously developing the region economically. The hope is that rising prosperity will bind the restive region closer to the center and convince Tibetans that it is the party, rather than the Dalai Lama, that can ensure a better life for them. The opening of the Beijing-Lhasa railway is but one high-profile example of this approach. The railway is also evidence of the confiden
ce Beijing felt for the success of its measures. Gradually, the Tibet Autonomous Region has been opened up to tourism, and temples that were once hotbeds of dissident have been allowed to resume
activity. The events of the past few weeks, however, demonstrate that Chinese authorities have failed to read the pulse of the Tibetan people accurately. This failure boils down to an inability to grasp a society in which the spiritual is prioritized over the material. No matter how much the Dalai Lama is projected domestically as a sinister “splittist”, the average Tibetan still believes the spiritual leader is a living Buddha; a belief which cannot be bought off by subsidies and trains. The Tibet issue is therefore not one of “independence”, as it is commonly framed, but of the freedom to believe and worship. In Tibet such freedom is equivalent to worshipping the Dalai Lama. There is a visceral religiosity in Tibet, evidenced by the fluttering prayer flags attached to every conceivable grounded object, the smell of incense and yak butter lamps in the air and the crush of prayer wheel-whirling pilgrims who circle Lhasa’s temples atany given time of the day. Moreover, this religiosity sets Tibet apart from the rest of startlingly secular China. Even before the communist accession of 1949, after which religious worship was attacked as a feudal superstition, religion in Han China was of a different texture than that in Tibet. Confucianism and legalist philosophies shaped the dominant modes of Chinese thinking and these were rarely concerned with the metaphysical or divine, being firmly grounded in matters of the here and now. Buddhism, which was introduced to China from India around the first century AD, was the exception to this traditional Chinese emphasis on the practical rather than spiritual but was never able to achieve clear supremacy of place within the
Chinese belief structure. In any event, China’s multi-layered philosophical and religious history was abruptly rent apart during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) when, following Mao Zedong’s diktats, temples and places of worship across the country were attacked, and monks publicly paraded in the street and flogged. It was communist ideology rather than religion that people were taught and expected to
believe in. In the post-reform period much has changed. In many ways the new religion worships in banks and ATM machines. But while money-worship may have replaced ideological fervor for the most part, a genuine religious renaissance is also taking place and with the consent of the CCP. Although officially atheist itself, the party has transformed from a revolutionary to a status-quo power and sees the usefulness of traditional philosophies like Confucianism and Buddhism with their emphasis on harmony and order. Although religious freedoms in China are growing, Beijing continues to set strict parameters within which this “freedom” can be practiced. Heads of temples, mosques and churches are handpicked by the CCP. All places of worship must be registered with the government. Moreover, freedom of religion is allowed only as long as the believers continue to accept the politburo rather than a religious leader as their
supreme authority. Catholics, for whom the pope elicits a devotion that is beyond the control of the leadership, are subject to tight controls and ties between Beijing and the Vatican had been severed since 1951. “House church” Protestantism which involves informal gatherings by believers in private homes or other places outside authorized churches is vulnerable to crackdowns. Followers of religions other than the five which are officially recognised - Buddhism, Islam, Taoism, Protestantism and Chinese Catholicism - are viewed with suspicion. “I find it difficult to tell even my friends that I’m a vegetarian because in their eyes that would make me unorthodox and therefore suspect,” said one Chinese member of the Radha-Saomi spiritual group in north India. In the CCP’s refusal to allow religious devotion unless it remains subservient to the
party lies the real nature of the Tibet issue and the undiminished belief of Tibetans in the Dalai Lama. In the summer of 2006, I visited Lhasa as part of a journalistic contingent aboard the first Beijing-Lhasa train. Everywhere I went in the city ripples of excitement seemed to spread simply by virtue of my Indian nationality. Roadside sellers of bric-a-brac, monks in the Potala Palace, itinerant city guides, aged pilgrims: what this motleyassortment of Lhasa residents had in common was the desire to talk to me about the Dalai Lama. Eyes brimming with curiosity, they asked, “Had I been to Dharamsala?”, where the Dalai Lama’s government in exile is based in India. “Had I met his holiness?” Many showed me pictures they carried of the exiled leader, even though possession of such icons is banned by Beijing. What became clear was that religious freedom in Tibet, in the absence of the freedom to believe in the Dalai Lama, is meaningless. For the hundreds of monks in Tibet denouncing the Dalai Lama, their living Buddha, is a compulsory daily routine. The CCP has inserted itself into Tibetan religious rituals in other ways as well. Beijing recently announced that the party has the sole authority to approve reincarnations - the divine process by which a “living Buddha” is chosen in boyhood. In a speech last year, Zhang Qingli, the party secretary of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, went so far as to say that “The central party committee is the real Buddha for Tibetans”. The fierce anger that such blasphemy is bound to evoke in the heart of believers does not seem to be grasped by Beijing. In India, the mere slaughter of a cow has been known to provoke riots where hundreds have been left dead. The publication of a few cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed has caused violent protests around the world. Many feel the constant vilification and forced criticisms of the spiritual leader of the Tibetans should be seen in this context. Beijing’s strategy for dealing with the Tibet “issue” is to wait for the Dalai Lama’s passing in the belief that in his absence Tibetans will be more inclined to focus on the material prosperity Chinese rule promises and less concerned with devotion to a god-king who can offer them little in tangible returns. There is little to indicate that this will be the case. “We [Tibetans] will never be bought. Our souls are not for sale,” says one Tibetan resident of Beijing. The manner in which Tibetans have reacted to Beijing’s overtures over the past three decades suggests that a recognition of Tibetan spirituality is needed, rather than Beijing’s attempts to change or suppress it.
Land of poppies but no ATM's
Yet in the critical days following the disaster, Myanmar’s military and isolationist regime complicated recovery efforts by delaying the entry of United Nations delivering food, medicine and much needed supplies to the disaster-hit region. Expert relief workers were denied visas as the Burmese Foreign Ministry stressed its capability in handling the aftermath of the cyclone and insisted that it was not ready to accept large-scale foreign assistance. The priority for the ruling junta seemed to be a self-congratulating national referendum; even as Burmese citizens died in their thousands. The government’s failure to permit entry for large-scale international relief efforts was described by the UN as ‘unprecedented’. Finally, from 13 May onwards, US military transport aircraft carrying relief supplies were allowed to land in Yangon (Rangoon). AP news stories stated that foreign aid provided to disaster victims was modified to make it look as though it came from the ruling military regime, and state run television continuously ran images of General Than Shwe ceremonially handing out disaster relief items, including (wait for it) television sets! According to British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, “A natu
ral disaster was turned into a humanitarian catastrophe of genuinely epic proportions in significant part by the malign neglect of the ruling military junta in Burma.” The British began colonising Burma in 1824 and incorporated the country into the British Raj in 1886. Burma was then administered as a province of British India until 1937 when it became a separate, self-governing colony. The country achieved independence on 4 January 1948 as the ‘Union of Burma’. It became the ‘Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma’ on 4 January 1974, before reverting to the ‘Union of Burma’ on 23 September 1988. On 18 June 1989, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) adopted the name ‘Union of Myanmar’ for English transliteration. This controversial name change in English is still not recognised by many opposition groups and many Englishspeaking
nations. Burma (or Myanmar) is bordered by China on the northeast, Laos on the east, Thailand on the southeast, Bangladesh on the west, and India on the northwest, with the Bay of Bengal to the southwest. One-third of Burma’s total perimeter, (1,930 kilometres) forms an uninterrupted coastline. ,The military has dominated domestic government in Burma since General Ne Win led a coup in 1962 that toppled the civilian government of U Nu, and the country has struggled to mend its ethnic tensions ever since. Political control remains under the very tight control the military junta since 1992, led by Senior General Than Shwe. The country’s culture, heavily influenced by neighbours, is based on Theravada Buddhism intertwined with local elements. In May 1990, the government held free elections for the first time in almost 30 years. The National League for Democracy (NLD), the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, won 392 out of a total of 489 seats, but the elections were swiftly annulled by SLORC, which imposed martial law and refused to step down, placing Ms Suu Kyi under house arrest and brutally cracking down on protesters, killing around 8,000 people. In 1997, the State Law and Order Restoration Council was renamed the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) with a mandate to draft a new constitution, which has yet to be completed. On 23 June 1997, Burma was admitted into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations(ASEAN). Meantime the National Convention continues to convene and adjourn, and many political parties such as the NLD have been excluded from the political process. Meantime Ms Suu Kyi remains unable to tour her own country, even after being awarded the international Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. On 27 March 2006 the military junta, which had moved the national capital from Yangon (Rangoon) to a site near Pyinmana, officially named it Naypyidaw, meaning ‘city of kings.’ After a long period of isolation, Burma has started to encourage tourism. Foreigners can expect to pay several times more than locals do for accommodation, domestic airfares and entry to tourist sites. The main tourist facilities are in Yangon, Bagan, Ngapali Beach, Inle Lake and Mandalay. Visitors should travel with sufficient cash (US dollars) to cover their expenses for the duration of their visit. Note that Travellers Cheques, credit cards and Automatic Telling Machines (ATM’s) are non-existent in Burma. The government strictly controls travel to, from and within the country. Since October 2006, the Burmese authorities have often prohibited entry or exit at most land border crossings, unless the traveller is part of a package tour group that has received prior permission from the Burmese authorities. A passport and visa are required for entry into Burma, and travellers are required to show their passports with valid visas at all airports, railway stations and hotels. Security checkpoints are common outside of tourist areas. Other tourists from the western coast of Thailand on ‘visa runs’ to Ranong can cross by boat to Victoria Point and go in and out of the country within an hour for a few dollars paid to Burmese Immigration officials. Victoria Point is also a large outdoor ‘duty free’ shopping area, where visitors can purchase such items as cigarettes and whiskey
very cheaply. Burmese authorities rarely issue visas to persons they deem ‘sensitive’ including journalists and many journalists visiting on tourist visas have been denied entry. On 27 September 2007 security forces shot and killed a Japanese journalist in the Sule Pagoda downtown area during a demonstration. The Burmese government has a standing law that bans all gatherings of more than five people, and this is sporadically enforced whenever the authorities feel that domestic security is threatened in any way. Even chatting casually to locals is discouraged and all official foreign tour groups are carefully shepherded around by governmentapproved tour guides who take the visitors only to approved sites. The story goes that one day a local taxi driver approached an American tourist, offering her an ‘unofficial’
tour of Yangon that he promised would be much more interesting that the official guided one. The touristasked, “Isn’t that illegal?” The taxi driver smiled as he replied, “In Burma, madam, everything is illegal.” Ethnic rebellions still smolder in regions along Burma’s borders with Thailand, China, India and Bangladesh, and anti personnel landmines along these border areas pose an additional danger to locals and foreign travellers. Burma is a corner of the ‘Golden Triangle’ of opium production and Myanmar is today reckoned to be the word’s second largest producer of opium. Neither Burma, Vietnam, Laos or Thailand had any history of opium production until colonial times, yet from then on, much of the world’s heroin came from the Golden Triangle, including Burma. The main player in the country’s drug market is the United Wa State Army, a militia that control areas along Burma’s eastern border with Thailand, part of the infamous Golden Triangle. The Wa Army, an ally of Myanmar’s ruling military junta, was once the militant arm of the Beijing-backed Burmese Communist party, and Burma has been a significant cog in the trans-national drug trade since 1945. Goods travel primarily across the Thai border, where most illegal drugs are exported. The Wa Army is often in sporadic combat with the outlawed Karen minority along the Thai-Burma border for control of the drug trade. (The Karen are rumoured to be supplied with weaponry by the CIA). The poppy plant is the basis for heroin. The flowers are cultivated and collected before being processed, with additional chemicals, into the powerful drug in jungle factories from where it is shipped abroad to be sold at a huge profit. Authorities in the area realised long ago that entire regimes can be financed by this illegal trade. Poppy cultivation in the country decreased more than 80 per cent from 1998 to 2006 following an eradication campaign in the Golden Triangle. However officials with the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime state that opium poppy farming is
expanding again. The number of hectares used to grow the crops has climbed back29 per cent early in 2008. A UN report cites corruption, poverty and a lack of government control as the main reasons for the increase. In 1961, U Thant, then Burma’s Permanent Representative to the UN and former secretary to the Prime Minister was elected Secretary- General of the United Nations; the first non- Westerner to head any international organisation. He went on to serve as UN Secretary General for ten years. Among the Burmese working at the UN under U Thant was the young Aung San Suu Kyi, born in 1945. In January 2007, Russia and China vetoed a draft resolution before the United Nations Security Council calling on the government of Myanmar to respect human rights and begin a democratic transition of power. In a landmark legal case, some human rights groups have taken legal action against the Unocal Corporation, previously known as Union Oil of California and now part of the Chevron Corporation. The charges are that since the early 1990’s Uncoal has joined hands with ‘dictators’ in Myanmar to turn thousands of Burmese citizens into virtual slaves to build facilities. Uncoal, before being purchased, stated that they had ‘no knowledge or connection’ to these alleged actions although it continued working in Myanmar. The case was unique as it was the first time that anyone has attempted to sue an American corporation in an American court on grounds that the companyviolated human rights in another country. Under British administration until the mid 1950’s Burma was the wealthiest nation in Southeast Asia, and was once the world’s largest exporter of rice. Burma also supplied oil through the Burmah Oil Company and boasted a wealth of natural and labour resources, producing 75 per cent of the world’s teak and had a highly literate population. Now the country is one of the poorest in South Asia, suffering from decades of stagnation, mismanagement and isolation. Burma’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grows at a rate of 2.9 per cent annually – the lowest rate of economic growth in the Greater Mekong sub-region. Following widespread political protest in 1990, all universities were closed, as radical students were officially viewed as dangerous dissidents and halls of learning as hotbeds of violent insurgency. As a direct result, levels of education and literacy have plummeted. Many nations, including the USA, Canada, and the European Union have imposed investment and trade sanctions on Burma. Foreign investment comes primarily from China, Singapore, South Korea, India and Thailand, which have good trade relations with the ruling junta. Since 1992, the government has encouraged tourism, but fewer than 750,000 tourists enter the country annually. Aung San Suu Kyi has requested that international tourists do NOT visit Burma, as the junta’s forced labour programmes (slavery) are focused around tourist destinations which have been heavily criticized for their human rights records. But tourism in Burma has been promoted by a minority of advocacy groups as a method of providing economic benefit to Burmese citizens, and to avoid totally isolating the country from the rest of the world. Says ‘Voices for Burma’, a pro-democracy advocate group: “We believe that small-scale, responsible tourism can create more benefits than harm. So long as tourists are fully aware of the situation and take steps to maximise their positive impact and minimize the negatives, we feel their visit can be beneficial overall. Responsible tourists can help Burma primarily by bringing money to local communities and small businesses, and by raising awareness of the situation worldwide.”
Spy
Much was expected of the conference, and the agenda was carefully planned
months in advance. But it never took place. In a sensational propaganda coup, the Soviets announced that they had shot down an American U-2 ‘spy plane’ which had been illegally flying high over Russian territory on 1st May. Now how could peace talks take place in the face of such naked imperialist treachery?On the American side, every conceivable blunder was made. State Department officials immediately denied that any such spy flight had taken place. Then they declared that the downed aircraft was in fact a weather observation aircraft that had drifted by accident into Soviet
airspace. That announcement played right into Khrushchev’s hands. Having delayed the news, the premier now revealed that parts of the wrecked plane had been recovered, including high-altitude cameras, recording equipment and film of secret Soviet military installations. And the jewel in his crown was the captured pilot – Gary Powers, aged 31.The American authorities were stunned into silence by this news. Denial and false ‘explanations’ were no longer viable. President Eisenhower was forced to come clean. In an unprecedented admission, he confessed that he had authorized high-altitude espionage flights over USSR territory. Vice-President Richard Nixon also went on television to declare that these flights were part of official US policy; and that they would continue. Khrushchev was now able to enjoy
some theatrical grandstanding, angrily demanding that if the talks were to go ahead the President must apologise before the world, punish his guilty advisers and give assurances that such incursions would not be repeated. Eisenhower, now badly embarrassed by the affair, was unable to swallow these public humiliations. He refused to apologise and the Soviets boycotted the peace talks. The summit meeting collapsed before it had even begun. All that remained to seal Khrushchev’s
huge moral victory was now the stagemanaged trial of Francis Gary Powers himself. This opened in Moscow’s Hall of Commons on 17 August 1960 before batteries of TV cameras and countless pressmen. Though the proceedings were carried out in Russian, simultaneous translations were available in English, French, German and Spanish. Let the whole world judge the majesty of Soviet justice! The event was quite unlike the notorious show trials of the Stalin era. There was no need for the prisoner to be brainwashed or evidence to be fabricated. Powers had been downed fair and square on an illicit over flight, and he had only to be led through his story. Powers was born in Jenkins, Kentucky on 17 August 1929 and raised in Pound, Virginia, on the Virginia-Kentucky border. After graduating from Milligan College in Eastern Tennessee, he was commissioned in the US Air Force in 1950. On completing his training he was assigned to the 468th Strategic Fighter Squadron at Turner AFB in Georgia as an F-84 Thunderjet pilot. Powers was due to fly combat missions in Korea in 1952, but was instead recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for
its secret U2 programme because of his outstanding ability to fly single-engineçjet aircraft. During the 1950’s U-2 pilots routinely carried out espionage missions over ‘hostile’ countries including the USSR. On these flights they systematically photographed military installations and other important intelligence targets, and their images were sent back to the USA for detailed analysis by experts at CIA Headquarters at Langley, Virginia. Given the cover name ‘Palmer’; Powers was trained for three months in the Nevada Desert in the handling of U-2 aircraft, which at that time represented the ultimate in aerial reconnaissance technology. Each plane incorporated a powerful jet engine inside a lightweight glider frame, with a wingspan twice the length of the fuselage. Built in secret by the Lockheed Corporation, the U 2’s were capable of flying and cruising at 68,000 feet (that’s 20.726 kilometres)
an altitude undreamed of before. At this height, the pilots were of course constantly fed oxygen. From 1956 until 1960, Powers flew U-2’s with a team of six other pilots along the frontier between Turkey and the Soviet Union. On the fateful early morning of 1 May 1960, he took off from the secret airbase at Peshawar in Pakistan. His
flight path was to take him across the heartland of the USSR, to his destination at Bodo in Norway. At certain named locations on the route he was to turn on and off the control knobs of cameras and recording equipment. He told the court: “During my briefing I was given some packages with Soviet money and gold coins, which I might
use to bribe people to help me if shot down. These were put into pockets in my flying suit.” He also stated that he was given a silver dollar with a needle containing poison installed in it. If he was captured and tortured, he was thus able to kill himself. He was also advised that no Soviet aircraft or missile could climb to his operating altitude. Powers took off at 5am and crossed the Soviet border half an hour later. Though he was flying at the maximum altitude of 68,000 feet, he was soon being tracked by Soviet anti-aircraft systems. Just after 9am, as he was approaching Sverdlovsk, “I felt a sort of hollow-sounding explosion. It seemed to be behind me. I
could see an orange flash or an orangecoloured light behind me.” Powers had been hit by the USSR’s new weapon, an S-75 Davina surface-to-air (SAM) missile. Unknown to the west, Soviet technology had also advanced. Powers now had to act quickly. The U-2 was equipped with a destructor switch that would allow him 70 seconds to clear the aircraft by ejector seat before the plane exploded. The ejector, however, was jammed. The plane was now spinning towards the ground at speed, and Powers only managed to escape by opening the cockpit canopy. His helmet face-plated frosted suddenly by contact with the icy air as he lunged into the void. His parachute opened automatically and he drifted to the ground, where astonished Russian villagers took him into custody as he nursed a severe headache following hislong descent earthwards. Among the items recovered from the wreckage of his crashed aircraft were cameras, film, radio receiving and recording instruments as well as the destructor that he had been unable to operate. So much compromising material had
survived the crash that Powers had no alternative but to plead guilty to espionage. This serious charge carried the maximum penalty of death, andhis best course was one of damagelimitation. His aim was to make himself out to be a kind of ‘flying jockey’ more than a trained spy. He said that he was someone “paid to fly along an assigned route flipping on and off switches as indicated on a map, with little knowledge of the results of my actions, and even less curiosity.” In this tactic he
was largely successful. The chief prosecutor was Roman Rudenko, a fearsome adversary who had advocated at the Nuremburg Trials in 1948. During cross examination, he asked: “Defendant Powers, did you know the purpose for which you had to turn on and off the recording and camera equipment?” Powers replied, “I could very well guess the purpose for which I turned the equipment on and off. However, to be very exact, I would have to say no.” Rudenko: “With the same ease you could have pulled a switch to release an atom bomb?” Powers: “It could have been done. But the U-2 is not the type of plane for carrying and dropping such bombs.” The court gasped with indignation at the pilot’s apparent complacency. There were more gasps when his survival kit was displayed. Powers had also been issued with a .22 pistol with a
ten rounds in the magazine, and fitted with a silencer that he claimed was a hunting weapon for use if forced to live off the land. Rudenko replied that it was obviously a weapon for use against peace-loving Soviet citizens. Then there was the famous suicide pin, concealed in the silver dollar. It contained the deadly poison curare, and when used experimentally on a dog, the animal had gone into violent spasms and
died within three minutes. In his final summing up speech for the prosecution, Rudenko described Powers as no ordinary pilot spy but an “especially and carefully trained criminal”. He portrayed a callous operative, equipped with a poisoned needleand an assassin’s gun, one who would drop an atomic bomb on the Soviet Union without a qualm. He asked for a strict, warning sentence – not death but 15 years imprisonment. Powers’ defence attorney, Mikhail Grinevdid not contest the evidence. He chose to attack the United States by a different angle. Powers, he claimed, was only a pawn in Washington’s villainous game. The real ‘criminals’ who should be in the dock were top brass in the Pentagon, and Allen Dulles, Director of the CIA. As extenuating circumstances Grinev stressed the ‘mass unemployment and corrupt materialistic values’ prevailing in the USA. Let the verdict be lenient, he pleaded, as yet another example of the humaneness of Soviet justice. The final verdict was three years in prison and seven more years of hard labour. Luckily for Powers, however, his jail term was short. On 10 February 1962, twenty-one months after his
capture, he was exchanged along with an American student named Frederic Pryor in a ‘spy swap’ for the Soviet KGB Colonel Vilyam Fisher (aka Rudolf Abel) at the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin. It was a ‘cloak and dagger’ exchange, typical of the times.
The U-2 incident rocked the world, proving to be a revelation in many ways. An American President had been caught lying when the American public had assumed that peacetime spying was a Russian vice. Now it clearly emerged that the USA was deeply engaged in it also. Military experts had firmly believed that the USSR lacked the missile technology to shoot down an aircraft flying at 68,000 feet, and that myth was also blown away. The ‘U-2 trial’ had also been a public relations disaster for the United States, and there were some who declared that Powers had somehow failed in his duty: he should have used the suicide needle rather than plead guilty to espionage in a Russian court. This was grossly unfair. The Presidenthad already admitted to the world that the U-2 was on a spying flight. How could Powers plead not guilty? Hehad
been hired as a pilot, not a secret agent, and his CIA contract specifically stated that in the event of capture he was free to tell the truth about his mission. As for the famous silver dollar with its deadly hypodermic, Powers was not even obliged to take it on his fateful flight, let alone use it in the event of capture. A Senate Armed Services Committee hearing into the case fully exonerated Powers, and the new CIA Director, John McCone, spoke strongly in his defence. The trial helped to frame new modes of thought in the coming decade. The Cold War was no longer viewed as a simplistic struggle between Good (West) and Evil (USSR). A grey moral zone had emerged. In the sixties people discovered a credibility gap between what their leaders said and what they actually did, and there was a new realism (or cynicism) in international affairs. When Eisenhower’s press secretary, James Hagerty was asked about the candidly said, “Don’t get caught!”Francis Gary Powers went on to workfor Lockheed as a test pilot from 1963 to 1970 and co-wrote a book entitled ‘Operation Overflight: A Memoir of the U-2 Incident’.In 1975 he was hired by the Los Angeles TV station KNBC to pilot a new ‘telecopter’ (helicopter equipped with externally mounted cameras capable of turning through 360 degrees) and he revelled in the dangerous and demanding job. Powers sadly died on 1 August 1977 when his aircraft ran out of fuel and crashed near Burbank Airport on his return from covering brush fires in Santa Barbara County. He was survived by his wife Sue and their two children Dee and Francis Gary Powers Junior. More famously, Elvis Presley died in Graceland 15 days later. In 2000, on the 40th anniversary of his fateful mission over Soviet airspace
Powers’ family was finally presented with his posthumously awarded Prisoner of War Medal, Distinguished Flying Cross and National Defence Service Medal. Postscript: when Francis Junior once asked his dad how high he had been flying on 1st May 1960, the senior Gary Powers replied, “Not high enough, son.”
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