Soldiers, Spies, and the Rat Line

by James V Milano

  Charles Boyle became one of the senior British intelligence officers in Austria, dealing with censorship of mail and telephone and telegraphic communications. Milano met him regularly, as he did the other senior British officers in Graz, where the British had their Austrian headquarters. He met Boyle every month in Vienna, where they were both on the Quadripartite Censorship Committee, together with French and Russian officers. The committee may not have done much business, but it was one of the institutions where Western and Soviet officials could meet without too much hostility. Milano usually found that he agreed with the British most of the time, with the French some of the time, and with the Russians never.

  In some cases, the British and American intelligence communities continued to work as a single organization. In 1948, the American CIC and the British Field Security Service established a joint interrogation center in Trieste. It had two American and two British officers, and it dealt with the constant flow of refugees that passed through the city. Milano and his staff were in constant touch with that center.

  Boyle was Milano's contact on matters of censorship, Butch Groves on positive intelligence, and Archie Morehouse on counterintelligence. Apart from the usual business meetings, he used to meet the three separately or together, often for dinner, and discuss hypothetical intelligence operations. More often than not, these were real operations that they all preferred to treat as mythical. The book of rules, after all, strictly forbade any mention of American operations, even to the closest allies, without specific authority from on high. Milano found the three British officers extremely useful: their own experience and judgment, and the fact that they were not directly involved in any particular operation, gave their opinions and advice great weight.

  It was, no doubt, a two-way street, and the British certainly derived great benefit from their contacts with the Americans. They had paid in advance: about two months after the end of the war, Milano received a letter from the British Embassy in Washington, informing him that he had been awarded the Order of the British Empire. The Order, divided into various ranks, is the chief means by which the British government recognizes outstanding service by ordinary British citizens-and a few foreigners. He has been James Milano, OBE, ever since.

  On June 24, 1948, the Soviet High Command in Germany abruptly closed all Western ground access to Berlin. All trains were stopped at the border, the three roads leading across East Germany to Berlin were closed "for repair," and so were the canals. Only air traffic continued: Stalin never imagined that the Western Allies could supply a huge city entirely by air. It was the first, and perhaps the most serious, of the great crises of the cold war. Czechoslovakia had fallen to communism in February, and the Communist parties of Italy and France were planning to follow their Czech comrades' example. The last non-Communist parties in Eastern Europe had been suppressed, though Tito, in Yugoslavia, had defied Stalin: he was expelled from the Cominform on June 28, four days after the Berlin Blockade began. Another turning point in history occurred at the same time: the British informed Washington that they could no longer be responsible for the security of Greece and Turkey. The civil war in Greece was reaching its climax, and the government could defeat the Communists only with Western help, which would now have to be provided by the United States. It was a moment that tested American resolve to the full. President Truman, who was facing a difficult election campaign that fall, had to meet the Soviet challenge head on or risk losing all Europe to the Communists.

  These great events were immediately felt in Austria. The American command in Vienna hastily moved to Salzburg, in case the Russians decided to isolate the capital of Austria as they had Berlin. The Western powers, led by the United States, were starting an airlift to keep that city alive, and, if the same operation were needed in Austria, it was obviously essential that the operational commanders of the American forces there and all their support staff should be located in the American zone, not isolated and at the Soviets' mercy in Vienna under siege. The commanding general, General Geoffrey Keyes, his chief of staff, General Thomas Hickey, and a select few remained in Vienna: they could always be flown out in an afternoon. The political staff, those concerned with monitoring Austrian political developments, and the members of the various quadripartite commissions that administered Austria also remained. But the bulk of the headquarters staff moved to Salzburg. In the event, Stalin left Vienna alone, concentrating his efforts on Berlin. But in the summer and autumn of 1948, tensions were rising to fever pitch, and the pressures on the intelligence services to provide the most up-to-date information were at a peak.

  The telephone lines from Milano's offices in Salzburg to army headquarters in Vienna ran through the Soviet zone, and it was quite certain that every call was monitored by the KGB. Urgent messages, therefore, had to be sent in code by telegraph, a lengthy, laborious process in those days-or a more creative approach could be used. On a warm day in October, 1948, Milano called General Hickey's aide-de-camp, Captain William Williams, on the open line with the following message:

  "Bill, I am alerting you to a situation. The message will not be repeated. The message is 'Horace Greeley/Amelia Earhart."' Then he hung up.

  He thus announced one of the most dramatic public episodes of the intelligence battles of the early cold war. It was dubbed Operation Backfire by the intelligence agencies. Colonel Williams had no difficulty in understanding Milano's message, which must have remained unintelligible to the listening Soviet agents. Greeley was the man who advised "Go west, young man, go west" and Amelia Earhart was the famous pilot who had crashed in the Pacific. Williams informed the chief of staff immediately that a Soviet plane had fled the East and landed at an American base in Austria. The news was sent at once to U.S. Air Force Headquarters in Weisbaden, Germany, and to the Pentagon, and all three headquarters scrambled to prepare themselves. The new arrival was a Tu-21 medium bomber with a crew of three. It had flown eight hundred miles from western Russia, evading the Soviet air force and ground stations, and had landed at Horshing Air Force Base, a former Luftwaffe facility near Wels in western Austria. The pilot, copilot, and gunner had immediately been taken into custody by the local CIC, and the plane had hastily been towed into a hangar, out of sight of inquisitive agents.

  The defection could not be kept secret. It would have to be announced, and then the Soviet Union would demand the return of the plane and its crew. But Milano's impromptu code gave his colleagues a head start of a day or two to prepare themselves for the inevitable confrontation. This was the second air defection that year. In the spring, a fighter pilot had flown his MiG to a Western base in Turkey. The Soviet government then announced that the sentence for desertion with an aircraft was twenty-five years in the gulag. If the pilot did not return, his family would pay the penalty.

  Milano and his staff had no need to make long-term preparations, with safe houses in the mountains and secret interrogations for the defectors, let alone to send them down the Rat Line to South America. These men were quite different from the deserters who were seduced by Milano's agents or who made their surreptitious way across the lines to an American post in Austria and had to be hidden and protected until they could be smuggled to safety. The aircrew's arrival would be formally announced, with much fanfare, and they would be treated as heroes. Unlike the others, they would be allowed to settle in the United States and to make new lives for themselves under their own names, or at any rate with only minimal concealment. This was at the height of the Berlin Airlift and was a major news story and a propaganda coup; it was to be played out for all it was worth. Furthermore, from an intelligence point of view, the three men were all of the greatest interest. They could report on the state of morale of the Soviet air force and describe conditions in bases and among units far from the front lines in Central Europe. It was not often that Army Intelligence found a direct window into the heart of Soviet forces, and the defectors could give concrete evidence as to whether or not the Soviets were preparing an onslaught against th
e West.

  The crew were first kept in a safe house in Linz. They were guarded around the clock and left to themselves while the American commands in Vienna and Germany prepared themselves and awaited orders from Washington. Milano discussed the situation with the head of the CIC station in Linz, Tom Lucid. Milano told him he would stay clear of the area, which would be crawling with KGB agents. He had no wish to be recognized. On the other hand, he needed to be kept constantly informed, on a daily or even hourly basis, of what was happening to the three Russians. Over the next few days Lucid's people reported that the three men were constantly quarreling, drinking heavily, and frightened that they were going to be returned to the Soviet Union. The two pilots had been overheard discussing committing suicide if that happened. When these reports were brought to him, Milano had the men moved to a more congenial house. He had the use of the country estate at Steyr belonging to the founder of the automobile company of that name. It was a big house surrounded by a beautiful park, where the defectors could walk and enjoy themselves until their fate was decided. It was a far better place for them than the claustrophobic atmosphere of a small, heavily guarded house in a suburb of Linz.

  A week after their spectacular defection, orders came from Vienna that the three men were to be interviewed by an AmericanSoviet commission that would convene the next day at the air base where they had landed. The three would be asked whether they wished to remain in the West or return to the Soviet Union. It would be a formal occasion, and they were all told in advance what to expect. They were assured that if they wanted to stay, they would be resettled in the United States, a promise that comforted them greatly. On the day of the meeting, they were taken from their estate in the country to Horshing Air Force Base, accompanied by a CIC escort, including one who spoke fluent Russian. They then had to wait more than two hours while the Americans and Russians on the commission argued over the arrangements: How would the two delegations sit, how would the three men appear, what sort of questions could they be asked?

  After prolonged argument, it was decided that the commission should consist of an American colonel, a Russian major, two secretaries, and two interpreters. The Russians sat at a small table on one side of the room, the Americans at another table opposite them. Each member of the air crew was to be put in turn on a chair in front of them. The Russian major wore the uniform of an infantry regiment, but he was much smoother and more sophisticated than the usual Soviet officer. It was quite apparent that he was in the KGB.

  When these matters were at last decided, the three airmen were brought in, one at a time, beginning with the copilot. The American colonel assured him that his choice would be respected: if he wanted to return to the Soviet Union, he could leave immediately and freely. If he decided to remain, the American government would settle him in the United States. The Russian then began his interrogation. He asked the man how he had come to fly to Austria. Might it not be that he had been lost, that bad weather conditions or faulty instruments had misled him and that his so-called defection had, in fact, been a trivial mistake? The copilot assured the commission that flying eight hundred miles due west from his air base had been no mistake: he and the pilot had decided to defect and had flown to Austria deliberately.

  The Russian major, not the least put off by this, opened a second line of attack. He said that often soldiers and airmen get depressed. They become disturbed by transitory, unimportant difficulties with their comrades and superiors. In this case, the major insisted, if the copilot returned, the incident would be overlooked, and indeed the Soviet Motherland would be grateful and happy to receive her errant son back with open arms. The copilot flatly refused. He repeated that his decision was final and that he wanted to stay in the West. The discussion lasted forty minutes or more, until the American colonel declared that further argument would serve no useful purpose. The man was told that he could leave. He was escorted back through the waiting room, where he had time to whisper to the pilot to watch out for the Russian: "The bastard's definitely from the KGB."

  Then it was the turn of the gunner, a sergeant. The American colonel once again laid out the conditions: The gunner could return or stay. It was his choice. The man announced at once that he wanted to return. He had not been aware of the pilots' decision to defect. He had been isolated from them in the gun turret and had known nothing of their destination until the bomber was surrounded by American troops when it landed. Nothing that had happened to him since he had involuntarily arrived in Austria inclined him to stay in the West: he just wanted to go home. The KGB major was all smiles. The young Russian saluted the Americans smartly and was taken away by Soviet military police. History does not record what became of him, but this was Stalin's time and the height of the cold war, and it is only too probable that he was arrested immediately. Paranoia reigned, and anyone suspected of contact with the West was automatically condemned. Tens of thousands of Soviet prisoners captured by the Germans during the war had been shipped to Siberia immediately upon their liberation. The gunner was likely to be suspected of being a potential defector or, even worse, an American spy. Perhaps he was lucky and was released in one of the general amnesties that followed the mad dictator's death in 1953. Perhaps he was shot.

  Finally the pilot, Lieutenant Pyotr Pirogov, the leader of the defection, was brought into the room. Once again the American officer explained his options, and then the KGB major turned on him. He made no effort to smooth-talk the man, as he had with the copilot. Presumably he had already concluded that the task was hopeless and he was making the case for the record. The major demanded to know how he had dared betray his trust, leading two other men on such a dangerous adventure. Not only had he deserted the Soviet Union, Mother Russia, which had nurtured him and trained him, and whose armed forces had defeated German fascism in the most terrible struggle in recorded history and were still standing guard against all the dangers of Western imperialism and aggression; he had betrayed his friends, his comrades, and his family. The Soviet Union was stern but just. If he agreed to return, he would be treated leniently. Pirogov was not impressed. He vigorously defended himself and his friend, the copilot. They had discussed deserting for months before the occasion offered itself. They had decided to escape from a country where all freedom was suppressed and the regime ruled by fear alone. He had no intention of returning. He was committed to the West and to freedom and gratefully accepted the American offer to let him remain.

  There were more rather heated exchanges between the two Russians, and then the American colonel formally asked Pirogov if he were determined to remain in the West. The pilot replied emphatically that he was, and then he, too, was allowed to leave. As he was getting up, the Russian interrogator remarked pleasantly that if he should ever change his mind, the Soviet consul would be delighted to help him. Then he escaped, to be greeted with backslaps and cheers by the Americans waiting for him outside and the embraces of his copilot.

  The Russians had another request. They wanted their plane back. It was still on the base: one reason the commission had not convened for a week had been to allow American mechanics to examine it closely. It was not a new model-indeed it was the standard Russian bomber used in World War II-but the experts of Air Force Intelligence always had something to learn. They could study the condition of the plane, measure the efficacy of the Soviet air force's maintenance schedules, and check on the standard of navigation equipment to be found on Soviet planes. They had taken the Tu-21 apart most carefully, ostensibly to prepare it for its return, and in the process had learned everything there was to know about it. Then they had put it together again. Its wings had been removed, and it was ready to be loaded into a trailer to be towed back to the nearest Soviet base.

  The two pilots were then presented to the international press in a press conference at the air base. They did well for themselves under an intensive grilling from Western and Communist reporters alike. They explained why they had defected and described the long, anguished months of planning
and their escape. They recounted their apparently routine departure, their flight across Soviet territory, their terror that they might be detected and shot down, their arrival in Austria. They vehemently denounced the Soviet system and gave many details of its cruelty and injustice.

  From a Western propaganda point of view, the press conference was a great success. The defection and the pilots' accounts of conditions in the Soviet Union were broadcast around the world, confirming Western determination to resist Soviet aggression.

  The two pilots spent several weeks in the care of the CIC, undergoing the careful debriefings that all Soviets were subjected to. Then they were sent off to their new lives in the United States. Three years later, Pirogov published his memoirs, Why I Escaped.

  The West did not win every battle. Another incident at that time was a serious setback to the operations staff. A young Ukrainian officer, Nicholas Borosky, paymaster to a Soviet army unit based on the Danube in the Soviet zone, defected with his Austrian girlfriend, Karen Klaus, who had been employed as a secretary in his office. They were young and personable and had soon become friends. She was a devout Catholic and offered him a different set of values from the militant atheism he had learned at home. Finally, she persuaded him to attend an Easter-morning Mass in her local church. The fol lowing day, he told her that he wanted to defect and wanted her to go with him. She agreed, even though it would mean leaving her parents to the tender mercies of the Soviet occupation authorities.