MiG Pilot: the Final Escape of Lt. Belenko

With the revelation that American «consultants» were en route to assist in the Japanese «investigation,» the Russians realized they had no chance now of preventing examination and exploitation of the MiG-25. So they redirected their propaganda toward the Soviet people and their pressures toward the United States.

Tass on September 14 initiated the Soviet efforts to represent Belenko as a hero and patriot abducted and spirited away against his will by the Dark Forces with the connivance of the devious and unscrupulous Japanese. According to Tass, Belenko during a routine training flight strayed off course, ran out of fuel, and made a forced landing at Hakodate. (An unidentified Soviet source attempted to lend credence to this version by telling Western newsmen that Belenko maintained radio contact with his base up until his landing.) Tass asserted that Japanese police clamped a hood over Belenko's head, dragged him away by his arms, shoved him into a car, and hid him in isolation, refusing Soviet pleas to see him.

On the very day following the landing of the Soviet aircraft in Japan, an official representative of the White House announced that President Ford had decided to grant asylum to the Soviet pilot. The same White House representative was forced to acknowledge that the American authorities did not even know whether the pilot had sought asylum in the U.S.

It is difficult to label this announcement as anything but inflammatory. Even the sensation-oriented American press and television called this «unusual» for the White House, apparently dictated by reason of the election campaign. It is evident that American «special services» were behind this «invitation» to the Soviet pilot. Subsequent events showed their participation in the removal of Belenko to the U.S….

Despite persistent demands on the part of the Soviets, Japanese authorities refused for several days to satisfy the appeal for a meeting between Soviet representatives and the pilot. When such a meeting finally took place, it was reduced to a worthless farce. At a distance of 25–30 meters, fenced off from the representatives of the Soviet Embassy in Japan by a barricade of office tables, sat Belenko, like a mannequin, surrounded by police and other representatives of the Japanese authorities. Not even a Soviet doctor, who would have been able to render a professional opinion as to the physical condition of the pilot, was allowed at the meeting.

This was in no way a meeting conducive to talking with Belenko. His two or three incoherent sentences were hardly confirmation of the Japanese representatives' assertions as to the pilot's intention «to receive political asylum» in the U.S. The entire course of the meeting, which lasted only seven minutes in all, including time to translate his sentences into Japanese, demonstrated that Belenko was in an abnormal condition, under the influence of drugs or something else. Immediately following this meeting, he was placed in an airplane owned by an American company and taken, under guard, to the U.S. This is how the Japanese authorities, in collaboration with American «special services,» treated the Soviet pilot.

Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko flew to New York on September 20 and, when asked about the Belenko affair, said, «This is a matter that will come up in discussions between us and the United States.» That evening during a private dinner with Kissinger at the Waldorf-Astoria, Gromyko emphasized that the return of Belenko was an issue of such grave importance to the Soviet Union that Brezhnev himself was personally concerned with it. The Russians, he said, were not at all sure that the man presented to them in Tokyo was even Belenko. The belief that Belenko had been abducted and was being held against his will would continue to poison U.S.-Soviet relations until it was eliminated, and it could be extirpated only if the Russians, with one of their own physicians present, were allowed to talk personally to Belenko at length.