Transcript of WRC Radio Interview with Drew Pearson of the Washington Post

WRC - Radio (Washington) August 23 1960 INTERVIEW WITH DREW PEARSON .o Patty Cavin at 12:15 P.M. over WRC (Washington): Miss Cavin interviewed columnist Drew Pearson, and the following was heard: CAVIN: "Columnist Pearson and his partner Jack Anderson have the exclusive inside story of what really happened on May D y, 1960, when Lockheed pilot Francis Gary Powers took off in his sleek U-2 on what *seemed to be an innocent weather flight. The account is published for the first time in the September issue of True, and seems to be backed up today by statements made last night by CIA Chief Allen Dulles. We'11 have words with Drew Pearson first up on our show "Page 34 of the September issue of the man's magazine True has a rather startling headline. It says, "Exclusive Inside Story of Pilot Powers and his Secret U-2 Spy Flight. The byline belongs to Drew Pearson and his partner Jack Anderson. We have Mr. Drew Pearson at our NBC microphone now, and, Drew, I was fascinated and somewhat appalled to read this account of what really happened for the first time, because it differs rather considerably from the reports that we have had sine May Day on the Powers flight and what really did happen from the newspapers' standpoint. How come?" PEARSON: *Well, I don't know, Patty, except that we had access to the Air Force records in this flight, and they very carefully monitored everything that Powers did, both at the time and then they had to reconstruct what happened afterwards, and, for instance, when his plane was displayed at Gorki Park in Moscow, the propeller blades were bent back, which wouldn't mean very much to you and me, but to the Air Force it meant a great deal. It meant his plane had stalled in the air at a flight--8 an altitude actually of 70,000 feet, and the plane never crashed. It came down to a landing which didn't break up the plane too much." CAVIN: "As you and Jack Anderson say in True magazine, to a belly-scraping landing." PEARSON: "Your words are better than mine. I see that you've really read that article.' CAVIN: "Well, I couldn't put the article down, I must admit. Actually, Drew Pearson, let's go back and start at the findings that you and Jack Anderson began with. You traced the beginning of U-2's." PEARSON: "Yes, we went back to approximately five years ago, perhaps a little bit before that. These flights have been taking place for a long time, not merely by the U-2 planes, but at first the United States various intelligence forces had attempted to get information by balloon, and had sent balloons at a very high alti- tude across Russia with photographic equipment. "Well, this ran into trouble. Later we sent planes across with pilots who were Americans of other origins who could speak Russian very well, and then we switched finally to the U-2 plane after it was developed by Lockheed. We gave orders--there's no secret about any of this now==it's pretty well come given orders that we had to have a U-2 plane--it wasn't called U-2 originally--which could fly at a