MiG-25 jet fighter, flown to Japan by a defecting Russian pilot. And there's the Japanese foreign minister, trying calmly, and with impeccable legal logic, to explain that the plane can't be returned now because it's evidence in a crime, the crime being the violation of Japanese airspace by said Russian pilot, whose punishment — and let no one say he didn't ask for it — is likely to be a one-way ticket to the United States.
Material evidence in a crime such as this plainly deserves the most careful going-over, perhaps even by experts from several countries. After all, who knows what that pilot could have been surreptitiously carrying? Perhaps a little caviar hidden among the plane's electronic countermeasures? Maybe a liter of vodka secreted somewhere in the airframe? A hot balalaika or two cached in the turbojet engines? The only way to find out is to take the plane apart piece by piece, as the cops did with the smuggler's car in «The French Connection.»
The interests of the law must, of course, be served. It all seems very sensible and straightforward to us. Why the Russians can't understand is a puzzle.
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.
In Washington the Soviets, who sometimes try to lobby in Congress as assiduously as the AFL–CIO or American Medical Association, sought to generate pressures in Congress for the return of Belenko. An emissary from the Soviet Embassy delivered a handwritten letter from Belenko's wife, Ludmilla, and mother to the office of Representative Dante Fascell, chairman of the U.S. commission that monitors compliance with the Helsinki Accords, especially the human rights provisions. The Russian handwriting was that of Belenko's wife; the maudlin words almost certainly were those of the KGB. They appealed to the congressman to uphold his commitment to human rights by helping to free this captured son and husband and reunite him with his loving, grief-stricken family. And repeatedly, the Embassy dispatched its second ranking member, Yuly Vorontsov, one of the Soviet Union's three or four most forceful diplomatic operatives, to demand from the State Department an opportunity to confront, or rather, to have a long, leisurely talk with Belenko.
In Moscow the Foreign Ministry staged a melodramatic conference for the foreign and Soviet press corps, starring Belenko's wife and his mother, whom he had last seen twenty-seven years before, when he was two years old. Foreign Ministry official Lev Krylov, who presided over the show, declared at the outset that «Western propaganda» stories that Belenko had voluntarily flown to Japan because of dissatisfaction with life in the Soviet Union were malicious fabrications. «All this is a lie from beginning to end.»
Ludmilla spoke emotionally and often wept before the cameras. «We do not believe and will never believe that he is voluntarily abroad. I do not doubt Viktor's love and loyalty. And this gives me the absolute right to declare that something terrible has happened to Viktor and that he needs assistance, which I request all of you present here to give him.
«On Sunday, one day before the terrible event, Viktor spent the entire day walking and playing with our son, as he usually did on his free days. They worked figurines out of plastic and read fairy stories. I baked pies, and Viktor helped me do it. We had supper in the evening and went to bed. Before going to sleep, Viktor reminded me that our friend's birthday was several days away and proposed that we give him several crystal glasses at his birthday party. On the morning of September sixth, he told me he would be back early from the flight and would take our son from kindergarten. He kissed me and Dima and went off, as he did every day.
«Nothing bode us ill. I am sure that something happened during the flight, and he was forced to land the plane on foreign territory. I firmly believe that Viktor was and will continue to be a Soviet man. It was his dream to be a test pilot. On September third, actually three days before the incident he sent the necessary papers for appointment as test pilot to the command.
«Western press reports that my husband requested political asylum in the U.S.A. are a deliberate lie. I am absolutely sure that such a statement was fabricated against his will.
«Our family is well-off. We live in a good apartment with every convenience. My husband is well paid. His ability as a flier was highly appreciated by the commanding officers. He is a patriot. He received only commendations during his service. He had excellent marks in school. We have no news from Viktor to this day. Is this not testimony that he is under coercion?»
Pausing to sob now and then, Ludmilla read excerpts from a letter she had sent to her beloved kidnapped husband. «Darling, I am convinced that some incredible misfortune happened to you…. My dear Viktor, we are waiting for you at home; return soon. I was officially reassured at the highest level here that you will be forgiven, even if you have made a mistake…. Take all steps and ensure your return to the homeland.» Tearfully, Ludmilla told the press that in the name of humanity she had addressed a personal appeal to President Ford and quoted further from her letter to Belenko: «I rely on [Ford's] humaneness. Though this is a personal matter for us, he is also a father and must understand our sorrow; help me, you, and our son to be together.»
The performance of Belenko's mother, suddenly lifted out of obscurity in the Caucasus, flown to Moscow, handsomely dressed, coiffured, and drilled, was good, if brief, considering that she personally knew nothing of the man she had last seen as a child of two. She did not cry as well as Ludmilla, but did produce some tears, which she dabbed with a white handkerchief. Her few lines were aimed at mothers everywhere, but most important, at Soviet mothers.
«My son, Viktor, has always been a patriot. In the family and his service, he was single-minded and level- headed. I am convinced that some misfortune happened to him. And I, as mother, am deeply pained that someone
