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 wants to take advantage of my son’s trouble, to prevent him from returning home. Who but a mother knows her child best? That is why I say that my Viktor is honest before the homeland and myself.”
Krylov concluded the conference with another recitation of the infamous “arbitrary actions and lawlessness” of the devious Japanese and a denunciation of President Ford. Belenko’s behavior in Japan proved that his flight was not intentional. “How else is one to explain his warning shots when unauthorized persons tried to approach the plane and his protests against the plane being photographed? The Japanese authorities used force on Belenko. He was handcuffed and had a bag over his head and was hidden on the back seat of a car when he was moved….”
The combined American-Japanese abduction of Belenko, Krylov charged, was the act of callous homewreckers and flagrantly violated the Helsinki Accords on human rights only recently signed by President Ford himself.
The authors of the script the two ladies acted out understandably made a few factual errors, knowingly and unknowingly. Ludmilla never baked pies. Belenko never kissed his wife and son good-bye in the morning because he had to leave for the base so early that they were still asleep. He did not promise to pick up the child from kindergarten in midafternoon because, no matter when flights were completed, Shevtsov or the Monster required all officers to remain on the base until 6:00 P.M. Like many fighter pilots, Belenko would have liked to become a test pilot. But he and the rest knew that, the right connections in Moscow being absent, such an aspiration was impossible of fulfillment, and he had never applied to be a test pilot.
Yet the appearance of the women, highly publicized in the Soviet Union, served the purpose of saving face for the Party. The faith of the Party in Belenko was not misplaced; the theories the Party followed in making of him a New Communist Man, a “Soviet man,” as Ludmilla put it were not invalid; none of the causes of the whole tragic incident were to be found within the Soviet system or the Mother Country. The trouble, as so many other Soviet troubles, grew out of the plotting of the Dark Forces.
However, the press conference did not produce the desired effects abroad. A succinct editorial in the Baltimore Sun typified much of the Western reaction:
Soviet officialdom is not noted for humor except, on occasion, for the crude and inadvertent kind. A classic example of the latter must be credited to one Lev V. Krylov, a Foreign Ministry official assigned to orchestrate a campaign for the repatriation of Senior Lieutenant Viktor Belenko. Lieutenant Belenko is the Soviet pilot who defected to Japan September 6 in a MiG-25 that has been fondly scrutinized by American intelligence. The Kremlin wants Lieutenant Belenko back — not to punish, heaven forbid, but to reunite him with a wife and mother who wept in front of Soviet cameras. Comrade Krylov apparently was so affected by this display of emotion that he accused Japan and the United States of acts “tantamount to splitting a family by force.”
This would almost be funny if one could put out of mind, for a moment, the tens of thousands of German families divided by the Berlin Wall and the thousands of Russian Jews in exile who wait and wait and wait for the Soviet Union to grant exit permits to their relatives.
The renewed slander of Japan disseminated at the press conference, together with another incident, infuriated the Japanese. In New York Gromyko summoned the new Japanese Foreign Minister, Zentaro Kosaka, to a Soviet UN office and, “offering not even a glass of water,” spoke to him with such condescension that Kosaka, a courtly diplomat given to understatement, described the meeting as “extremely severe.”
The Japanese government in Tokyo made public a specific rebuttal of the Soviet charges:
The Soviets claim that a bag had been thrown over Lieutenant Belenko’s head, but the fact was that he had his jacket thrown over his face by his expressed wish because he didn’t want to be exposed to cameras.
The Soviets claim that he was handcuffed because of the string seen in a picture of him, but the fact was that he held a paper bag containing his belongings, and the string of the bag appeared in the photo.
The Soviets claim that he was kept 25-30 meters away from a Soviet Embassy official who came to see him, and the Japanese police interfered with the conversation. The fact was that the distance was only eight meters, and there was no interference whatever.
The statement written and signed by Lieutenant Belenko was penned in a hotel in Hokkaido, where he landed the MiG-25 Foxbat. It was shown to Ambassador Dmitri Polyansky, but he refused to take it.
[The statement said] “I hereby state that I, Viktor Ivanovich Belenko, do not wish to return to the Soviet Union and hope to reside in the United States. This decision has been made autonomously and out of my own free will. Viktor I. Belenko.”
Privately the Japanese now said in effect to the Americans: Let’s get started. We’ll take it apart and ship it back to them in pieces.
On October 1 at four in the afternoon, President Ford received Gromyko and Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin in the Oval Office of the White House. The subject of Belenko was not on the scheduled agenda of discussions, and Ford was surprised when Gromyko broached it — suddenly, indignantly, belligerently.
“We were after that plane like a dog in heat,” he announced — not because the Russians cared about the loss of secrets it embodied but because it was stolen. Gromyko declared that Belenko was a thief, a common criminal whom the United States was obligated to extradite in the interests of simple justice. As a criminal, who had absconded with something as valuable as an aircraft, he obviously did not qualify for political asylum. Both international law and the interests of Soviet-American relations required that he be forcibly repatriated to face the prosecution his crime deserved.
President Ford made no attempt to disguise his astonishment or anger. Having been continuously briefed all along about Belenko and attendant developments, he was aware of the press conference in Moscow three days before and the consistent Soviet portrayal of Belenko as a “good man,” a “Soviet man,” a “patriot,” “one of our best people,” a highly commended officer, who, after straying off course, had been kidnapped and dragged away from country and family against his will, an esteemed comrade, who, even if he had made some unknown mistake, would be forgiven. Now, with a straight face, the foreign minister of the Soviet Union told him that this same man was a thief who must be brought before the bar of justice.
Ford was blunt. He was thoroughly familiar with the Belenko case. If ever there was an authentic Soviet defector, if ever anyone merited political asylum, it was Belenko. He was more than welcome in the United States as long as he lived. So far as the United States government was concerned, the issue was closed and not subject to further discussion or negotiation.