BRINKMANSHIP WITH A U2

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30511, 5 August 1964, Page 17

BRINKMANSHIP WITH A U2

(N.Z Press Association—Copyright)

WASHINGTON, August 4. A former top State Department official said today that a stray LJ2 plane almost triggered World War 111 by blundering over Russia during the 1962 Cuba missile crisis.

Mr Roger Hilsman, who headed the State Department’s intelligence division at the time and is now a Columbia University professor, writes about the U2 error in a “Look” magazine article. Mr Hilsman says that on

the afternoon of October 27, at the height of the crisis, a U2 plane on a routine airsampling mission between Alaska and the North Pole unwittingly flew into Russia He says: “Soviet fighter planes had scrambled. The U2 pilot had gone on the air—in the clear (uncoded)—to call for help "American fighters in Alaska had also scrambled, and were attempting to rendezvous with the U2 to escort it home. . . .

“The implications were ob vious and horrendous: the Soviets might well regard this U2 flight as a last-minute intelligence reconnaissance in preparation for nuclear war.” When President Kennedy was told of the incident, he “gave a short laugh that broke the tension." “There is always some so-and-so, he said, who doesn’t get the word,” Mr Hilsman quoted him as saying. Mr Hilsman says Mr Khrushchev himself later wrote of the U2’s mistake, and said that Russia had put “everything” into “combat readiness” at the time.