17 December 2009
Open Skies
U-2 Flying into Atsugi Base, 1959- Photo Toda Yasunori
The compound within the confines of the American air base at Atsugi is no longer fenced. There is no marker to note that it ever was. Years ago, though, a student of history could still find the concrete footings of the poles that held the security wire.
The compound-within-a-compound marked the housing area for the pilots and support personnel who flew the U-2 Dragon Lady.
I mention Atsugi in the context of Admiral Rex because it is from that base that a young civilian pilot named Gary Francis powers launched on a highly sensitive flight over the Soviet Union’s Far East nuclear test and missiles sites. It was May Day of 1960, the great socialist holiday.
Soviet military spending soared in the 1950s, and production of missiles continued to expand. The green eye-shade types in the Pentagon calculated that by the mid-1960s the USSR would be capable of putting as many as 500 ICBMs on alert. That would be enough to put at hazard the Strategic Air Command bombers and missiles, and permit a pre-emptive Soviet First Strike.
Strong measured were required to assess the state of the Russian capabity.
As Gary Powers embarked on the course of pure-oxygen pre-breathing to prepare for his long mission westward nearly thirteen miles in the sky, the Rectanus family was each, in their own way, making final preparations for a long journey to the east.
Rex had to ensure that all details were ready: language and tradecraft courses were complete. Area briefings had been conducted and duly noted. That was the A/ALUSNA side of the house, but deployment for an attaché tour was truly a team effort between the member, his spouse and his family.
Wives- I blush to use that exclusionary term in today’s more inclusive time, since I have been to Embassy’s where the Ambassador’s spouse was a man- were expected to contribute their labor as a free benefit to the spy mission. Some were lucky enough to get bits of the formal training. More often, wives were pressed into service, being the cut-outs on photo missions to Schmidt’s, handling the exposed film and feeling the hot breath of the KGB minders.
The more rigid expectation was the constant round of entertaining that went with life on station. The Embassy Commissary could not manage the day-to-day needs of the constant round of parties in the hot-house foreign community. National holidays required official celebrations, and the stipend of representational funds to support them was never enough.
There was real spying done in the Soviet Union, and sometimes the Attaches did it. But they were overt collectors, declared and known to the Russian service. The bread and butter of the business was “open source” collection, the sort of material that came to one by listening carefully and keeping ones eyes open.
The Moscow Air Show was always a great opportunity to see what the Russians had up their sleeves, and escorting the delegations and meeting the apparatchiks was an excellent opportunity for collection. In 1956, for example, no less than twenty-eight foreign air force delegations were invited to the show at Tushino airfield, right within the capital area where Attaches could travel at will.
Concerned with the commencement of the U-2 overflights, and the “exciter” missions conducted by RB-57 Canberra reconnaissance aircraft against the air defense zones, the Soviets showed off seven new jet fighter models, and the demonstrations flights of the new MiGs and Sukois sparked animated, positive comments from the guests, and generated hundreds of Intelligence Information Reports (IIRs).
Nikita Khrushchev himself took the leaders of the British, French and American delegations to an open air reception after the demonstration. As is the custom in Russia, vodka appeared and toasting began. Khrushchev started off with a long peroration “in defense of peace,” and paused to throw a remark directly at Air Force General Nathan Twining, chief of the American delegation.
"Today we showed you our aircraft. But would you like to have a look at our missiles?
"Yes," responded the General.
"Well, we will not show them to you," replied Khrushchev. "First show us your aircraft and stop sending intruders into our airspace. We will shoot down uninvited guests.”
Bravado aside, Khrushchev observed the Air Attaché pouring the contents of his glass under a bush in an attempt to retain a shred of sobriety.
Khrushchev turned to US Ambassador Charles Bohlen and thundered: "Here I am speaking about peace and friendship, but what does your military attaché do?"
The Air Attache was then pressured into demonstratively drinking an enormous "penalty" toast to Soviet-American friendship, after which he weaved quickly away.
All the stories had been told during the months of training to get ready to go to Moscow.
At Rex’s house in Washington, his beloved wife Dee was making final preparations for posting included advance orders of dry and canned food to ensure that the 4th of July and Thanksgiving would have the right goods on hand for traditional means for dozens of guests, since it was the application of food and alcohol that loosened inhibitions and tongues and provided the grist for the mills of IIRs.
After the dinner and before the dishes, the couples would huddle to make notes on who had said what about whom. Sometimes they could hear the wires squeaking over the pullies used to move the microphones inside the walls of the Moscow apartments, since not everyone could be housed on the “secure” embassy compound.
You were never alone in the Soviet Union, and even if the Attaches and their families got used to it over time, it was always alien and always a little scary. The ground rules for diplomatic personnel had a certain safety net. Black-passport holders never disappeared into the bowels of Lubyanka Prison.
The worst that could happen, almost, was to be caught in “conduct incompatible” with diplomatic status and be expelled from country as “persona non grata.” Being “PNG’d” in some circles was regarded as a badge of honor for aggressive collection, but with the family and career at stake, it was always a fine line to be walked, and all the newly arrived personnel felt their way cautiously at first, at least until they learned the ropes.
Not all did.
Rex, Dee and little Earl arrived in Moscow the day of a cocktail reception, held two weeks after the State Department had announced the disappearance of a special weather reconnaissance flight over Turkey.
It was a cover story, of course, and there was desperation and uncertainty in the CIA, the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom and the Oval Office.
Soviet sources later told the tale of the shoot-down with excruciating detail unknown to the Americans, since the U-2s lacked long-haul radios, and the aircraft and pilots were essentially in radio silence after penetrating Soviet air space. What happened was a mystery, and all they could do was hope that Powers had killed himself as he was ordered to do in the event of mission compromise.
He did not. A Lavochkin OKB S-75 missile (NATO designation SA-2 Guideline) had bagged the U-2 near Sverdlovsk. Soviet investigators found large, wide rolls of exposed film, much of which was later successfully developed later and revealed the American target interest.
What is worse, Francis Gary Powers survived, and not having a black passport, was taken to Lubyanka.
Rex and his family arrived in Moscow to being in-processing shortly after a diplomatic reception was held on the fifth of May. US Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson overheard Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Yakov Malik tell the Swedish ambassador that "we are still questioning the pilot."
To say that all-hell broke loose is an understatement. President Eisenhower had to confirmed at a press conference on 11 May that US reconnaissance flights over the USSR were part of the American effort to collect information on the Soviet Union and had been occurring regularly for a number of years. It was necessary, he said with some embarrassment, because "secrecy and secrets had become a fetish in the Soviet Union."
The U-2 shoot-down had important consequences for the world, and for Rex in his tour in Moscow. US-Soviet relations soured. The KGB got more hard-line. The airborne reconnaissance program was terminated, and money began to flow into development of camera systems that could not be shot down, since they would fly in outer space.
More immediately, a summit conference slated for mid-May in Paris did not take place, and a visit by Eisenhower to the USSR, planned for 10 June 1960, was canceled.
The next year there was a new President in Washington, and almost immediately a test of wills over the deployment of Soviet missiles to Cuba.
In later years, Rex liked to talk of his time in Moscow coinciding so directly with the great event of the new decade. But there was another consequence, even more important for an Attaché on a Commander’s paycheck: all the preparations for the Summit had been made, and the logistics were completed, even if the meetings were not held.
The pallets of Chevas Regal scotch sent for a canceled reception was left for the U.S, Embassy personnel to purchase for 50 cents a bottle.
Copyright 2009 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Tomorrow: At the Bureau