MiG Pilot: the Final Escape of Lt. Belenko

At 1:35 A.M. the special closed-circuit telephone rang in the Watch Center — a «NOIWON» (National Operations and Intelligence Watch Officers Network) alert signaling the entire U.S. crisis-management community that something extraordinary had occurred. As Steiner picked up his phone, other Watch Officers lifted similar emergency phones at the Situation Room in the White House, the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon, the Operations Centers at the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia, and the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland. A male voice announced over the circuit: «The Defense Intelligence Agency is convening a NOIWON alert. On the basis of a preliminary report from the U.S. Fifth Air Force, we understand that a Soviet MiG-25 has landed at Hakodate in northern Japan….» The MiG had touched down at 12:50 A.M. Washington time. The circumstances of the flight and intent of the pilot had not yet been ascertained by American representatives in Japan. Two more alerts from the DIA at 1:49 and 2:06 added a few sparse details but failed to clarify whether the pilot had landed intentionally or of necessity. Meanwhile, the news ticker in the Watch Center typed out an Agence France-Presse dispatch reporting that the pilot had jumped from the aircraft and commenced firing a pistol. To Steiner, that sounded as though the Soviet pilot probably had lost his way or been forced down by mechanical trouble and was hostile to the West.

But at 4:30 A.M. the NOIWON bell rang a fourth time, and the voice speaking from the Pentagon was excited. The Soviet pilot, Viktor I. Belenko, had told representatives of the Japanese Foreign Ministry that he had flown the MiG purposely to Japan and desired political asylum in the United States.

At the National Military Command Center someone shouted, «Goddamn! We've got a Foxbat [NATO designation of the MiG-25] and the pilot to boot. Goddamn!»

With this the situation became all the more serious and urgent, especially so because of one of the most shameful incidents of pusillanimity in American history. On November 23, 1970 Seaman Simas Kudirka jumped from a Soviet fishing ship onto a U.S. Coast Guard cutter while the two ships were tied up alongside one another in American territorial waters off Martha's Vineyard. Ashore in Boston, a Coast Guard rear admiral, acting in what he presumed to be the spirit of detente, ordered officers on the cutter to hand the defector back to the Russians. Contrary to U.S. naval political traditions, the American officers allowed six Russians to board the cutter, beat the defector and drag him back to the Soviet ship.

As a consequence of this disgrace, the U.S. government adopted measures to ensure that no bona fide Soviet defector ever again would be turned away or that, if he were, those responsible would have their professional heads chopped off. Precise instructions were promulgated to be followed from the moment it appeared that a foreign national was seeking political asylum. These included a stringent requirement that all American officials who might be concerned be swiftly notified and that a formal, permanent record of everyone involved be maintained.

Accordingly, Steiner and his Watch team successively and rapidly telephoned at their homes and awakened an aide to State Department Counselor Helmut Sonnenfeldt, Director of Press Relations Frederick Brown, and officials in the Bureau of East Asian Affairs, the Soviet and Japanese Desks, the Humanitarian Affairs Bureau, the Visa Office, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. A full report was cabled to Kissinger. Then Steiner on his own initiative telephoned the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo because from his service in Moscow, he recognized the gravity and potential danger involved. Please emphasize to our Japanese friends, he said, that the physical safety of the pilot is paramount. Probably they already realize that. But it cannot be stressed too much. Protect the pilot. Be sure he is free to make his own decision.

By 6:00 A.M. the Watch Center was crowded with men and women called out of their sleep to study the messages flooding in from the Embassy, the Pentagon, the CIA, the Fifth Air Force in Japan, and the wire services. On a typically active night, the Watch Officer's log entries noting major events might fill one page; Steiner's had filled four. Having had no time for his yogurt and cola, he drove home through calm, treelined streets, tired and pleased: pleased that he and the Watch team had done their duty, pleased that people in other agencies had done their duty, that the system had worked exactly as it was supposed to work.

In Paris, reporters accosted Kissinger and peppered him with questions about the fate of Belenko. «The United States will probably grant asylum,» he said. «If we do not, you may assume I have been overruled.»