Francis Gary Powers
===================

Francis Gary Powers was the CIA U-2 pilot whose 1960 shoot-down over the Soviet Union and subsequent capture the CIA initially denied. Per John Kiriakou the agency "not only just denied that he was CIA, we denied that he was USG at all", until trading him back in a "bridge-of-spies" prisoner exchange. Powers is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Kiriakou: "This poor guy, after piloting the U-2, ended up piloting a traffic helicopter in L.A., and then he crashed that and was killed in the crash."

The traffic helicopter (Arlington tour)

Per John Kiriakou, Francis Gary Powers, shot down in his U-2 over the Soviet Union in 1960, survived a parachute ejection that no one was sure was even survivable from that altitude, because U-2 pilots were expected to go down with their aircraft. Taken prisoner and paraded before Soviet media, he forced Eisenhower to admit the U.S. flew spy planes.

When Powers returned home there was no hero's welcome; many Americans felt he should have gone down with the plane rather than be taken alive and embarrass the country. Unable to find work, he was eventually hired as a traffic-helicopter pilot by a Southern California television station and was killed in a crash while reporting on traffic. Kiriakou's assessment of his Arlington burial: "He is exactly where he belongs."

See also

- John Kiriakou

See also

- John Kiriakou
