C.I.A. 'Plotted Soviet pilot’s defection’

Press, 12 May 1981, Page 9

C.I.A. 'Plotted Soviet pilot’s defection’

NZPA-Reuter Tokyo The American Central Intelligence Agency was behind the defection of a Soviet pilot who landed his then top-secret MiG25 fighter plane in Japan in 1976, the Japanese Kyodo news agency has reported. Quoting unnamed Japanese security officials, the agency said C.I.A. agents in Moscow, with the help of a British intelligence agent, offered Lieutenant Viktor Belenko political asylum in the United States in return for a fully-equipped Mig2s, also known as “Foxbat.” There was no immediate official comment either in Tokyo or Washington on the Kyodo report. The American State Department said: “We don’t comment on intelligence activities.” The Mig2s made a surprise landing at a civilian airport on Japan’s main northern

island of Hokkaido on September 6, 1976. Kyodo said the pilot, Lieutenant Belenko, testified to Japanese police and Government agencies that an agent from MI6, the British secret intelligence service, first approached him at a Moscow beerhall in October, 1974.

Kyodo said the pilot had made a demonstration flight at the World Aviation Show al London shortly before the approach.

the secret contact was then taken over by a C.I.A. agent and continued by three or four more C.I.A. agents until the pilot was transferred to Sokolovka air base in the Soviet Far East towards the end of 1975, it said.

A decision on the proposed defection was left to Lieutenant Belenko’s own discretion after he was assigned to the Far Eastern base where

he was a commanding officer of a flight unit. After landing the Mig2s at Hakodate Airport in southern Hokkaido, Lieutenant Belenko told Japanese investigators that he was unhappy about what he described as “lack of recognition of his aeronautical ability and his slow promotion” in the Sovviet Air Force, according to Kyodo. Washington granted the pilot asylum and he left for the United States three days after landing at Hakodate Airport. The defection gave Western military experts the opportunity to assess the capabilities of the MiG.

Japan eventually sent the plane back to the Soviet Union some two months after it landed at Hakodate, but the incident soured relations between the two countries.