DEBRIEFING OF FRANCIS GARY POWERS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01676R002200060004-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 32
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 30, 2002
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: January 1, 1962
• Content Type: MIN

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DEBRIEFING OF FRANCIS GARY POWERS
#16
20 February 1962
1133 Hours
We are starting now at 1133 a.m.
Frank, you recall the other day that we started to talk
about the interrogation process and we - and you went
through the first interrogation that they gave you in
Layanka Prison on the first of May - the one where they
had several men around the wall, 15 or 20 people in the
room and it was presided over by Rudenko, and it lasted
an hour or an hour and fifteen minutes, orsomething like
that, and it appears that that first interrogation was
more or less a name, rank and serial number type of thing,
establishing who you were, why you were in Russia, and all
that sort of thing) it was your introduction to the interroga-
tion process. Now then, we also mentioned the other day 0
or you also put on the record that from then on up until
the time of your trial you were under constant interrogation.
That is, you went through three or four interrogations a
day, sometimes at night, for a while seven days a week -
they were of varying lengths from one hour to three hours -
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four hours, and some of them even longer than that -
to the best of your recollection now, going back to,
say, your second interrogation - after your first one,
after the first big one when Rudenko was there, and I
know you can't remember each one of them, the second
one, the third one, the fourth one, but, to the best
of your recollection I would like to have you develop
for me just how they proceeded and carried out this
interrogation process. Did they bring in experts?
Who presided? You said that Kussmine and Vasillyev
were your interrogators and Rodochev was your interpreter.
Now then, were they the only people you were exposed to
or did they run in a bank of experts on you, and what did
they want to know most? Did they want to talk about
Adana at 1010 first? Did they want to talk about the
plane first? See what I am driving at ?
I see what you are driving at, but it is very difficult
to remember this.
I realize this.
There was so many questions, and coming from several
different people. There is one thing that I forgot the
other day that I have thought of since then. Going through
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some notes that I had, there was an interrogation
on the 2nd of May in the morning and that one was
completely left out of the evidence. It consisted
of a smaller group than the night before, on the 1st,
but some of the same people. If I am not mistaken,
Rudenko was there again, and I recognized in one of the
photographs I saw yesterday another big wheel that was
there. I think
said he was now head of the KGB.
He's got it down there - I don't remember his name.
Head of the KGB then or now?
He was a wheel then, I could tell by the way the people
acted when he was around.
Was It fihelepen?
ghelepen, I'm almost positive. That's the name that
mentioned yesterday in the photographias I remeMber.
This seemed to be a fairly short interrogation the next
morning, and as well as I can remember, approximately as
long as the one the night before, establishing who I was,
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where I
interrogation
Of course,
you were
Or out a
was from, what
started
in those preliminary
CIA, on a photographic
I was doing, etc. The real
on the 3rd of May.
interrogations
mission, out of
there was -
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