The Battle of the Bugs, Newsweek, April 20. 1987 by Tom Morganthau

 

Chapter 11.8 Leningrad 1985-1987 ver. 20231123-DESKTOP-DV9672E

KAL007 Chapter 11.7 Soviet Desk 1981-85 and 11.13 ISCA 1992-95

KAL007, September 1, 1983.

The day after KAL007 was shot down off Sakhalin, the State Department formed a task force to deal with the inevitable Consular issues arising from the shootdown.  I worked on the task force for over a week, talking with and consoling relatives of the 269 passengers and crew, many of whom were Americans.  We all suspected the worst: that the Soviets had cold-bloodedly shot down a civilian airliner in full knowledge that it was not a spy plane.  Subsequent release of the flight tapes in 1993, after the fall of the Soviet Union, revealed that the Soviet shootdown of the plane was a paranoid mistake, but in the immediate aftermath, the continuing denials by Soviet Marshal Nikolay Ogarkov, particularly his press conference on September 9, proclaiming that KAL007 was a spy plane, enraged everyone on the task force, and we were all looking for ways to retaliate. 

One immediate thought that came to mind was to deny Aeroflot landing privileges in the United States.  Aeroflot had previously been threatened with a suspension of its landing privileges in the U.S. when, in contrast to KAL007, which made an innocent navigational error, Aeroflot planes actually did divert their flight tracks out of New York so that they could overfly the U.S. submarine base at Groton, Connecticut.  After several such incidents, we told them to stop or they would lose their flight privileges altogether.  Aeroflot did stop, but by then events had overtaken the whole fly/no fly controversy, and a decision to stop Aeroflot from landing in the U.S was inevitable.  The first immediate result was that Foreign Minister Andrey Gromyko's visit to the UN in mid-September was cancelled, since he refused to fly on anything but Aeroflot.

Gromyko Gets Snubbed.

The following year, the Department decided to allow Gromyko's plane into JFK on an exceptional basis so that he could attend the UNGA.  He flew in on September 19, 1984.  Unfortunately, it was not the greeting ceremony that he or the Soviets were expecting.  Primarily for security reasons, his Il-62 was guided to the most remote area of JFK, so far away that the rest of the airport was out of sight, and it took almost ten minutes to get there via back roads from the main terminal.  In order to impress upon Gromyko just how ill-favored he was, it was decided that the U.S. side should greet him on arrival at an insultingly low level.  It was in that manner, therefore, that I was delegated to be Gromyko's official airport greeter.  Gromyko's Il-62 taxied up to the parking area and the entire Soviet brass lined up in protocol order all the way up the landing stairs and a considerable distance out onto the tarmac.  I was there with the FBI and a couple of USUN officials at the far end of the line.  Gromyko stepped out, greeted all his high-ranking cronies, and began looking around for the highest-ranking American.  He eventually found me at the end of the line.  Looking even more like a cold fish than usual, and sporting his usual grimace that rapidly turned into a frown, Gromyko gave me a limp-wristed and somewhat clammy handshake as I welcomed him to the United States.  He never bothered to look me in the eye.  Then he and his minions loaded themselves into the first limousine and trundled off.  My FBI escorts thought it was all very funny, and so did I.  I would not see him again until Codel O'Neill visited Moscow the following year.  By then, fortunately, US-Soviet relations were changing decisively for the better.

KAL007 Postscript 1992-1993: Recovering the Tapes.

In late 1992, a few months after I came on board ISCA (the ex-Soviet Desk), I found myself off to Moscow again to discuss a familiar subject: KAL007.  Despite repeated Soviet claims that they had never recovered the Cockpit Voice Recorder and Digital Flight Data Recorder from KAL007, we long suspected that they had, and were covering up the fact because the “black boxes” would provide a conclusive refutation of the bizarre Soviet assertion that KAL007 was a spy plane.  We suspected it would also prove conclusively what many already believed, that KAL007 was shot down in international waters.  With the fall of the Soviet Union and the advent of the Yeltsin Administration, the logjam on many long-held secrets began to break, including KAL007.  On October 15, 1992, Yeltsin handed over the black boxes to South Korea.  However, the tapes were either absent or unreadable, and the resulting hue and cry led to a hurried call for negotiations to turn over the original tapes to ICAO.

Talks to negotiate the handover were held on December 8-10 at the Osobnyak in Moscow, a site I knew well from my last tour in the Soviet Union.  The negotiations, which were led on our side by Jim Collins, and on the Russian side by Presidential Administration head Yuriy Petrov, Deputy Defense Minister Kondratyev, and Deputy Foreign Minister Mamedov, dragged on interminably, even though everyone knew what the ultimate outcome had to be.  Around 9pm on December 9, with everyone getting very tired, Jim left me in charge to work through the final details with the Russians, as well as with local diplomats representing Korean, Japanese and other victims of the crash.  The negotiations continued at a snail's pace, with a number of Russian players from the security services interposing all kinds of frivolous objections.  I remember in particular Tatyana Anodina, a chain-smoking general who represented Aeroflot -- she was especially hardline.  Fortunately, others, like Interstate Aviation Committee head Rudolf Teimurazov were anxious to come to an understanding, and we eventually achieved final agreement at about 4am the next morning.  Last minute changes in the document were viewed with some misgivings by the Japanese and Korean delegations, but as the changes were not substantive in nature, they decided to go along.  The signing ceremony took place that day, and the handover was scheduled for January 8, 1993 at ICAO headquarters in Paris.

The following month, I flew off to Paris to witness the handover.  Janet Speck, the desk's civil aviation officer, accompanied me.  We were met at Charles de Gaulle airport by the local FAA Representative, who proceeded to take us on a tour of his favorite bars and restaurants while complaining incessantly that he was tired of “being stuck in Paris for the last nine years.”  Janet and I, who had been stuck for years in considerably less pleasant locales, could scarcely refrain from bursting out laughing.  The fact was, Paris was a complete paradise.  All my previous visits there seemed to have taken place during heat waves, with no air conditioning in the hotels, and fights literally breaking out in the streets.  This somewhat cooler and gentler Paris was a definite pleasure to visit.  Our hotel, the Maillot, near the Arc de Triomphe, was strictly two-star, but quite pleasant as well.

The next day, Janet and I, and about fifty other officials from all over the world watched as Yeltsin's chief of staff Yuriy Petrov handed over the tapes in a ceremony at ICAO's modest headquarters building. A preliminary analysis revealed the tapes to be intact and in good condition.  Later detailed analysis would reveal that most of our suspicions about the Soviet cover story on KAL007 were correct.  The plane had flown off course due to an error in setting the autopilot, which had been programmed to fly the great circle route and not a specific set of waypoints that would allow it to skirt the Soviet border.  At no time were the pilot and crew aware they were being chased by Soviet fighters.  A few mysteries remained, but the biggest ones were solved, ten years after the fact.

Ambassador Toon Interview with Foreign Service Journal, April 1982

 

Chapter 11.7 Soviet Desk 1981-1985 // ver.20231214a

Ambassador Toon in Moscow 1977-1979

When I arrived in Moscow, Ambassador Toon had already been there as Chief of Mission for six months. Appointed by President Gerald Ford, he presented his credentials only a few days before Ford’s successor, Jimmy Carter, took office. Toon’s first months were most precarious. The Soviets had initially opposed his appointment, and Toon was clearly out of sync with his new Washington leadership. Jimmy Carter and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance were in favor of a much more accommodationist approach to the Soviet Union, and were intent on saving détente, which had flowered under Nixon, but was now withering at the edges. There was talk of recalling Toon and replacing him with a more congenial political appointee, such as Sargent Shriver. Eventually, though, and probably at the urging of NSC Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, another hardliner more sympathetic to Toon’s views, the decision was taken to let Toon remain.

Toon’s troubles were not over by a long shot, however. He viewed Carter and Vance as naïve in their dealings with the Soviets, and particularly objected to their continued use of Soviet Ambassador Anatoliy Dobrynin as a back channel to the Kremlin, to the detriment of Toon and Embassy Moscow. Like his two immediate predecessors, Beam and Stoessel, Toon was systematically frozen out by most of the Soviet hierarchy, and never had the kind of access that Dobrynin had. Toon felt that his side should have insisted on equal access and equal status for the two Ambassadors, rightly pointing out that the White House could not know how accurately Dobrynin was reporting to the Kremlin. There is little doubt that a double-track policy would have been much wiser in order to avoid misunderstandings, but Carter White House staffers preferred the more personal Dobrynin channel, since it gave them greater influence over the process. In fact, they were only following the precedent set by the Nixon Administration, when a secretive President and NSC Advisor Henry Kissinger effectively gutted the role of the State Department and Embassy Moscow in policymaking vis à vis the Soviet Union.

Relations between Toon and Dobrynin were somewhat less than congenial. In his memoir, “In Confidence,” Dobrynin referred to Toon as “a belligerent career diplomat,” while ignoring the fact that one of the possible reasons for Toon's belligerence was Dobrynin's own success in monopolizing high-level contacts.

Ambassador and Mrs. Toon with Tchaikovskiy Winner Elmar Olveira
 Moscow 1978

Occasionally, and despite the fact that the field was tilted decisively in Dobrynin's favor, Toon could make his influence felt. For example, in June of 1978, in the wake of the arrest of Soviet spies Valdik Enger and Rudolf Chernyayev, the Soviets reacted by arresting International Harvester representative Jay Crawford, in effect holding him hostage for the release of their spies. Toon, who sarcastically referred to Enger and Chernyayev as “the Woodbridge Duo,” bent every effort to help Crawford, and in a short time a deal was fashioned to have Crawford released to his custody while Enger and Chernyayev, who were U.N. employees and did not have diplomatic immunity, were released to the custody of Ambassador Dobrynin. Crawford was expelled from the Soviet Union a few days later, and the “Woodbridge Duo” was eventually sentenced to 50 years in jail.

The following month, Toon lobbied strongly against the July 12-13, 1978 Gromyko-Vance meeting in Geneva to discuss arms control issues, since it came at the same time as the trials of Anatoliy Shcharanskiy and Aleksandr Ginzburg. In the end, the Carter Administration decided to go ahead with the meeting, but accompanied it with statements highly critical of Soviet treatment of the two dissidents. Several months later, on April 27, 1979, Ginzburg, Eduard Kuznetsov, Mark Dymshits, Valentin Moroz, and Georgy Vins were traded for the “Woodbridge Duo,” thus bringing a number of serious espionage and human rights issues to a successful conclusion. Toon’s role in the effective handling of this problem was typical of his unsentimental and unsparing view of relations with the Soviets.

This complicated and instructive episode in U.S.-Soviet relations pointed up the dilemma often faced by Carter Administration policymakers. The Administration was very strongly committed to supporting human rights in the Soviet Union, but it did so at a cost to the relationship in other areas. Early in the Administration, before this reality became apparent, the White House sometimes overreached in its zeal to promote human rights issues, and the Embassy would often bear the brunt of Soviet displeasure. For example, early on Toon was instructed to deliver a Presidential letter to Soviet human rights leader Andrey Sakharov, an act which, had he carried out his instruction literally, would have gotten him expelled, at least according to Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Georgiy Korniyenko. After this initial close shave, Toon decided to control more closely all Embassy contacts with human rights activists and dissidents. This policy was widely misunderstood at the time, but it probably saved several Embassy officers from expulsion. Dick Combs notes that the policy was not as draconian as many assumed, since Toon delegated to him control of Embassy contacts with the Soviet dissident community. In practice, this allowed Political Officers to continue their work without stultifying restrictions, while requiring others to clear contact work with Political/Internal.

With regard to high-level talks, Toon was systematically frozen out of the Administration’s SALT II negotiations, even though he knew the issue well and accurately predicted that the Soviets would reject the Administration’s initial proposals as non-negotiable and grossly biased in favor of the U.S. Toon's lack of influence in arms control matters suited the White House, Secretary Vance, and the Soviets themselves, who were all in a position to prevent Toon from carving out a role for himself.

Toon’s perceived hardliner attitude, and his dour manner, earned him the moniker “Looney Tunes” from detractors within the Administration, but few really understood the impossible situation he faced in implementing a policy that was often ill-advised, and on which he was rarely consulted. After leaving Moscow for retirement, Toon lamented that under Beam and Stoessel the role of the U.S. Ambassador in formulating policy had been significantly eroded. He had tried, but had not been able to make much progress in rectifying this situation during his three years in Moscow.

Toon’s difficulties in Moscow were compounded by the fact that the Soviets made a conscious effort to isolate him, as they did all diplomats, from the realities of Soviet life and politics. Toon was a perceptive observer of the Soviet scene, but his lack of contact with Soviet citizens, from the most powerful to the most humble, hampered his ability to accurately discern what was going on inside the Soviet world. Toon, for example, favored Politburo powerhouses Andrey Kirilenko and Vladimir Shcherbitskiy as possible successors to Brezhnev. In the end, however, neither made it to the top spot. There was also one memorable staff meeting at which Toon coldly predicted that the Soviet Union would last at least another 60 years, this just 12 years before the actual disintegration of the USSR. Of course, at the time, I was even further off in my own estimate, and thought that there was no prospect for an end to Soviet power.

As a lowly staff aide, I knew little about the bureaucratic politics surrounding Toon’s tenure, or the difficulties of his work in Moscow. Toon would of course make occasional comments that indicated the severe problems he and the Embassy faced, both in Moscow and in Washington, but, more often than not, he retained his steely reserve, and betrayed little about his real feelings to his staff. Later on, he would unburden himself to his friends in the Moscow correspondent corps, and to diplomatic historians, but at the time much of the behind the scenes bureaucratic tussling was just that – hidden from view. In any case, I was not particularly aware of or interested in these battles in the clouds. I was simply glad to be working for Ambassador Toon again, and, in my own limited area of responsibility, there was more than enough to keep me fully occupied.

After a very frustrating tour of duty, Toon left post for retirement on October 16, 1979, but he did stay on long enough to preside at ceremonies marking the beginning of construction of the ill-fated New Office Building that September. Toon was replaced by a political appointee who was inadequate for the job in almost every respect.

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“The opinions and characterizations in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. government.”

Chapter 11.6 PM 1979-1981 ver.20230704