…The officers led the man in the “space suit” to a chair at the center of the table, right in front of the microphones, and ordered him to sit down. The man seemed not to understand at first, then lowered himself into the chair without saying a word. The highest-ranking officer there, a major-general, began asking him questions. I was too busy working my camera and signaling to the soldiers who were manning the floodlights to pay much attention to what was actually being said. But then I realized that the “cosmonaut” spoke no Russian. One of the men in civilian dress was translating the questions into English. It seemed the strange man was an American.
The general, in a kind of pathetic voice, was saying, “... and we shot you down with the first rocket!”
When I heard this, I was shocked. “My God,” I thought, “they’ve shot down an American spacecraft!”
I soon realized that the general was talking about an airplane and that the man was not an astronaut but an American pilot. The general asked him his name and the man answered. By the next day it would be a name known throughout the world. The man was Francis Gary Powers, and the downed plane was his Lockheed U-2 surveillance aircraft. The meeting I was capturing on film was the first interrogation of Powers after his parachute landing near Sverdlovsk. … ….Powers’ replies were so terse that even I with my nonexistent knowledge of English could understand him, for the only two words he spoke were “yes” and “no.” He sat quietly, looking straight ahead. He seemed almost to be oblivious to what was going on around him. Only once, at the very beginning, did he glance straight into my camera. His face was pale, and I could see that this show of calm and dignity do not come easily to him. I was especially impressed by his strength and self-control given all he had been through—having his plane shot down and bailing by parachute, landing in a plowed field, then being arrested by the local militia and transferred to the military authorities.
The interrogation was relatively brief, twenty or twenty-five minutes at the most. I filmed it in its entirety, except for a few minutes when I had to change the cassette on my camera. Finally a young officer came into the room and told the general, “We’re ready.” The general stood up and ordered the guards to escort Gary Powers out of the building. He was to be taken to the airport and flown to Moscow….