By Joseph Bosco
On the solar daytime earlier Thanksgiving forty-eight years ago, a human tragedy occurred inwards the waters off the coast of Massachusetts that rapidly became an international incident.
The episode unfolded during the early on menses of détente with the Soviet Union. U.S. President Richard Nixon as well as National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger were negotiating the timing as well as agenda for a acme coming together to launch talks that would Pb to the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. Kissinger, who touted the détente policy equally ushering inwards “a generation of peace,” described the episode inwards his memoir equally 1 of those “minor issues [that] seemed to arise almost spontaneously to sour things.”
On that day, Nov. 23, 1970, a Soviet line-fishing vessel was tied upwardly with a U.S. Coast Guard cutter off Martha’s Vineyard for official talks on line-fishing rights.Late that morning, after furtively signaling to the Americans an intention to defect, a Lithuanian crewman jumped off his trawler as well as boarded the USCGC Vigilant. In his broken English, Simas Kudirka instantly begged for political asylum.
Thus began a tense, day-long ordeal during which the Soviet captain angrily demanded the sailor’s immediate provide piece Coast Guard officers as well as Edward Killham, a Soviet goodness at the State Department, dilly-dallied yesteryear telephone almost what to practise with the man.
After 10 hours of erratic communications amid Coast Guard officers, as well as with State failing to offering whatever practical guidance, the acting commander of the First Coast Guard District inwards Boston directed that the homo live forcibly returned to the Soviets.
When the stunned captain of the Vigilant expressed opposition to the idea, he was bluntly told: “You receive got no discretion. You receive got your orders. Use whatever forcefulness is necessary. Do non allow an incident occur.”
The Soviet officers, who were already aboard the Vigilant for the talks, were allowed to telephone telephone inwards reinforcements from the Soviet ship. They overcame the screaming seaman’s desperate resistance with violent force. Kudirka was beaten, kicked, as well as choked. He was in conclusion trammel as well as dragged inwards a bloody blanket dorsum to his ship, where he was farther beaten until he lay senseless on the opened upwardly deck.
On Thanksgiving morning, U.S. Transportation Secretary John Volpe, whose subdivision included the Coast Guard, convened an emergency coming together of his staff as well as ordered a formal investigation of the incident. On the sideline of the gathering, a mid-level DoT world affairs official was heard to say matter-of-factly that “Kissinger wanted him sent back.” He did non dot whether his comment reflected conversations with his White House counterparts or was but personal speculation.
Volpe told the press that returning the crewman to the Russians was a “serious error” as well as added: “I regret that the proud history of the U.S. Coast Guard, which has given shelter to hundreds of political refugees, was non upheld inwards this tragic incident.”
Meanwhile, a political firestorm erupted. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 New York Times editorial called it “surely 1 of the most disgraceful incidents ever to occur on a ship carrying the American flag.” The Washington Post declared that “[n]o to a greater extent than sickening as well as humiliating an episode inwards international relations has taken identify inwards recent memory.” Protests erupted inwards several major U.S. cities equally good equally abroad. The press reported that Nixon was receiving “a inundation of protests.” One paper headline read “Coast Guard Returned Red Defector When State Department Failed to Act.” Another called the episode “[o]ne of the biggest U.S. blunders inwards memory.” The UN Office for Refugees complained to the U.S. for violating its tradition of asylum.
Nixon called the sailor’s provide “outrageous” as well as expressed frustration that no 1 had told him almost the incident at the fourth dimension it was happening. He asked Kissinger whether “we dropped the ball on this.” We don’t know how Kissinger responded, but he wrote inwards his 1979 memoir that the lawsuit “enraged Nixon as well as me, but it was over long earlier whatever high officials were aware of the incident or could intervene.” In his 1994 book, Diplomacy, Kissinger’s give-and-take of the détente menses makes no cite of the incident.
The State Department placed consummate blame on the Coast Guard. “If the Department had been told that a defection had genuinely occurred, I am confident that things would receive got been handled—or things would receive got developed differently,” spokesman Robert McCloskey said.
A memo did inwards fact circulate inside the subdivision as well as reached Arthur Downey, a Kissinger aide who subsequently said he did non top it on because the incident had obviously ended. Nor did State officials send it anywhere else inwards the chain of ascendancy because, they explained, it was the solar daytime earlier Thanksgiving.
Twenty years after the event, Kilham was interviewed for a history projection yesteryear roughly other State Department official. One of the interviewer’s questions linked the Kudirka incident to a widely held perception that high-level political State appointees were overly sensitive to Moscow’s concerns. So wrote the interviewer:
In general, I receive got ever felt that the Soviet Desk was composed of officers who had served inwards the Soviet Union as well as tended to live real rigid on defending reciprocity as well as assuring that the Soviets did non receive got groovy opportunities for safety breaches. However, in that location would live groovy pressures from senior people who were impressed yesteryear the Dobrynins of this world. We mightiness locomote into a give-and-take of that ship illustration if you lot would like?
In a Dec. 22, 1970, memorandum describing a coming together betwixt Nixon as well as Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, Kissinger described the lingering consequence of the incident inwards U.S.-Soviet relations.
Dobrynin thence mentioned the Soviet irritation at … the handling of the defecting incident of the Soviet sailor. He said he could non sympathise the American performance. If nosotros had given asylum to the Soviet sailor, he would receive got had to brand a protest, as well as the thing would receive got been forgotten inside 24 hours. But, first, to provide him to the Soviet ship, as well as thence to denote daily how profoundly concerned the president was, filled Moscow with outrage. For all these reasons, in that location was at nowadays profound distrust inwards the Soviet Union.
Kissinger doesn’t study the total conversation, but Dobrynin clearly implied that the determination to provide Kudirka to the Soviet ship had been made at the highest grade of the U.S. government. There is no clear evidence that this was the case. Yet it may live truthful that Killham, the Soviet desk officeholder at State, reached a higher-up inwards his subdivision or at the National Security Council as well as was told to allow the province of affairs play out with the sailor’s return, thereby giving the direction plausible deniability of whatever involvement inwards the decision. It is also possible that someone at Foggy Bottom or the White House communicated direct with the Coast Guard’s Boston headquarters as well as ordered it to “not allow an incident occur.”
Both scenarios are conjecture, but either 1 would explicate 3 things: State’s failure to larn dorsum to the Coast Guard with the promised guidance; the denial yesteryear Kissinger’s staffer that he passed data to Kissinger or to anyone else inwards a seat to inform him; as well as the surprisingly violent seat of the acting commandant to guild Kudirka’s return, equally good equally his refusal over the protracted ten-hour menses to notify his superiors on an number he recognized equally existence fraught with diplomatic implications.
It is also possible that Kissinger’s staff needed no specific guidance. Well-ingrained with his strategic priorities as well as agreement how of import it was non to upset U.S.-Soviet relations at a fragile fourth dimension inwards the SALT negotiations, they may receive got been confident that they were inwards describe with their boss’s wishes.
Based on Kissinger’s memorandum of the coming together with Dobrynin, the lesson the Soviets seemed to pull from the episode was that inwards an era of fraught U.S.-Soviet relations, domestic political considerations could larn far the means of larger issues. That was certainly Kissinger’s seat equally well, but ironically Dobrynin’s piddling lecture inwards the Oval Office suggested that Washington would receive got avoided a larger brouhaha yesteryear precisely keeping Kudirka. Dobrynin effectively told thepresident as well as secretaryto posture equally they must on moral as well as human rights, thence let’s larn dorsum to to a greater extent than of import business.
Kissinger sure as shooting appreciated both the directness as well as the subtlety of Dobrynin’s message. Yet he failed to apply it either inwards the aftermath of the Kudirka episode or inwards roughly other Washington-Moscow human rights dilemma that erupted that same year.
After Nixon’s resignation inwards 1974, Vice President Gerald Ford became president as well as retained Kissinger equally secretarial assistant of state. Kudirka had languished inwards a Soviet prison theatre inwards the years since his failed defection, as well as in that location was steady world pressure level to larn him dorsum to America, specially amid Baltic as well as other ethnic populations inwards politically of import Midwestern as well as Northeastern states. Several members of Congress got involved inwards the illustration as well as urged the novel Ford direction to cry back the Lithuanian sailor.
Ford saw the number inwards moral as well as domestic political terms, but for Kissinger, Soviet détente was all the same the geostrategic imperative as well as “minor” irritants inwards U.S.-Soviet relations were all the same to live avoided. When Kissinger prepared Ford for his initiatory off coming together equally President with Dobrynin, precisely days after Nixon’s departure, the Kudirka illustration was on Ford’s heed as well as he wanted to enhance it with the Soviet ambassador.
Kissinger, having been burned yesteryear his Department’s botched handling of the aborted defection, cautioned Ford that the thing was ameliorate left inwards non-presidential hands.
Their Aug. 12, 1974 conversation to ready Ford for the coming together went equally follows:
Ford: I got involved inwards the Kudirka case. They wanted me to speak to Nixon. I talked to John Dean—someone told me to. Dean told me to write a missive of the alphabet to Dobrynin.
Kissinger: May I advise the following: They volition plow downwards a formal proposal. But when Dobrynin comes back, I volition practise it quietly equally a personal request.
Ford: That would live most helpful.
Kissinger: If it doesn’t locomote into their bureaucracy. We receive got groovy opportunities with the Soviets now.
Ford: Dobrynin never answered as well as I didn’t follow up.
Kissinger: We receive got a channel privately as well as non inwards writing. I mean value nosotros receive got a goodness channel with the Soviet Union on everything. They are waiting for a sign.
On Aug. 14, the solar daytime of Dobrynin’s courtesy visit, Kissinger sent Ford a memo instructing him on the approach he should take: “Be real friendly, maintain an involvement inwards keeping the individual channel opened upwardly betwixt Dobrynin as well as me to the president. You could say Dobrynin as well as I should locomote out the coming together with [Soviet Premier] Brezhnev.”
But it did non take away identify that way.
In his initiatory off coming together with the Soviets, Ford shocked his staff, including Henry Kissinger, yesteryear disregarding its advice as well as requesting the Soviets release Kudirka.
While the President’s Daily Diary notes the meeting, it also states: “No noun tape of the conversation has been found.” However, Ford reports the lawsuit inwards his ain memoir, as well as his description confirms that he did non follow Kissinger’s script:
On Wednesday, August 14, I welcomed Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin to the Oval Office with Henry Kissinger. I told him I would consider it a personal favor if his authorities would concur to release Simas Kudirka, a Lithuanian seaman who had jumped aboard a U.S. Coast Guard vessel solely to live turned dorsum to the Soviets yesteryear the American captain. Dobrynin said he would consider what he could do. (Three months later, Kudirka was given permission to locomote out the Soviet Union.)
Dobrynin’s ain describe organisation human relationship of the coming together with Kissinger as well as Ford is interesting. Unaware that Ford had precisely violated Kissinger’s stage-managed directions, he saw a strengthening of the advisor’s seat inwards the administration: “I had an impression, as well as thence a subconscious conviction, that the novel president was going to allow Kissinger direct American unusual policy.” He made the same dot inwards his world remarks, such equally this 1 cited yesteryear U.S. News as well as World Report inwards August of 1978: “Foreign affairs volition larn depression priority—too many problems at home. Mr. Ford volition rely on Henry Kissinger to send on what’s already nether way.”
The obscurantist maneuvering favored yesteryear Kissinger and/or his subordinates at State was repudiated at the outset of the Kudirka crisis yesteryear Dobrynin’s cynical, ultra-realist approach, as well as at nowadays at its denouement yesteryear Ford’s Midwestern mutual feel as well as instinct for doing the correct thing.
The careers of several high-level Coast Guard officers were damaged or destroyed. There is no tape of whatever repercussions at State. On the contrary, inside 2 years of the event, Killham, the State official initially contacted yesteryear the Coast Guard, was invited to locomote with Kissinger at the Geneva START talks, which survived the incident.
With 2 strikes on his approach to balancing American human rights values with Cold War geopolitical realities, Kissinger took his tertiary swing at it. The results were fifty-fifty to a greater extent than chaotic.
In Feb 1974, the famed Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a victim of the Soviet Union’s gulag scheme who subsequently became its chronicler, was exiled from the Soviet Union after years of Congressional pressure level as well as direction requests. He was honored yesteryear American human rights as well as labor organizations inwards Washington as well as was supported yesteryear those groups as well as members of Congress inwards his expressed want to see the White House.
Kissinger instantly went into his hyper-defensive realist crouch. Ford as well as National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft initially decided non to encounter with
Solzhenitsyn because of a scheduling conflict. Kissinger was on opor-garai inwards the Virgin Islands but was consulted as well as approved the decision. “This did non halt the media as well as Ford’s anti-détente critics from making me the villain of the piece,” Kissinger subsequently wrote.
Kissinger didn’t appear to heed playing the purpose of the villain. During a July sixteen press conference he said that piece scheduling had been the initial argue for declining the visit, “I supported Ford’s determination for reasons of unusual policy.” He told reporters, “From the dot of stance of unusual policy the symbolic consequence of that tin lavatory live disadvantageous—which has null to practise with a observe either for the homo or for his message.” Kissinger devoted several pages to the Solzhenitsyn episodein his memoirs,and concluded with the same lesson Dobrynin had counseled inwards the Kudirka incident:
In retrospect, I believe nosotros would receive got been wise to … schedule a coming together with the President . . . inwards equally unobtrusive as well as dignified a trend equally possible -- fifty-fifty if Solzhenitsyn as well as his sponsors had moved sky as well as globe to forestall a low-key approach. As it was, our powerfulness to comport a balanced Soviet policy was far to a greater extent than damaged than it would receive got been had nosotros institute roughly means to encounter with this groovy as well as courageous champion of freedom.
In both the Kudirka as well as Solzhenitsyn cases, official over-sensitivity to “avoid creating an incident” that mightiness upset U.S.-Soviet relations ended upwardly creating to a greater extent than of an number than would receive got occurred yesteryear doing the correct thing for human rights inwards the initiatory off place. As a result, nosotros got the worst of both worlds --squandering an chance to bring America's moral values piece demonstrating ineptness as well as lack of strategic volition to our Soviet adversary. For today’s leaders, these episodes from the détente era may offering useful lessons.
Joseph Bosco served inwards the constituent of the Secretary of Defense during the Bush direction as well as equally special assistant to the Secretary of Transportation during the Nixon administration. The views expressed are the author's own.
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