Word: khrushchevism
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When the Air Force reported the plane lost, the Russians piously joined in the search. For ten days, until Khrushchev returned from a junket to Austria, they remained silent about the attack. Then they announced that they had shot the plane down over Soviet waters near the Kola Peninsula. Olmstead and McKone, the only survivors, were in prison. They would, cried Nikita, be tried as spies, "under the full rigor of Soviet law." Such vehemence seemed only natural after the loud propaganda that followed the capture of U-2 Pilot Powers and Khrushchev's intransigence in Paris...
Enough Blame. For Gail Olmstead and Connie McKone, the toughest job of all was to follow Air Force advice to remain calm and quiet, not to make personal appeals to Khrushchev, not to complain to the press. It seemed to the two women that very little was being done for their husbands. Regularly, every two weeks, the U.S. State Department sent notes to the Soviet Foreign Office and asked that the two officers be released. Regularly, the notes drew evasive replies...
Home Free. The two prisoners themselves had reason to doubt that much was being done for them. Even last week, while Ambassador Tommy Thompson bargained for their freedom with Premier Khrushchev, there was no break in their prison routine. Then, suddenly one morning, their guards gave them Russian suits, heavy wool overcoats and felt hats. They were hustled into a car and driven across Moscow to the American embassy, where even the Marine guard did not recognize them (said one Marine later: "They looked like Russians"). They were handed over to U.S. officials; Ambassador Thompson briefed them on the cloak...
...reaction to the release of Olmstead and McKone was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. But a few warning voices were raised. Vermont's Republican Senator George Aiken charged that Khrushchev was merely "playing power politics." Cried New York's Republican Senator Jacob Javits: "There is no thaw in the cold war, and this doesn't change anything on critical matters like Berlin, Laos or the Congo...
This was indeed a danger: that the U.S., in its gratification at the return of its airmen, might be deluded into thinking that Khrushchev had really taken a basic step toward thawing out the cold war, that the issues so long and bitterly contested between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. have somehow changed. Such a surge of popular hope could pressure the Kennedy Administration into dealing with Khrushchev in ways it had determined to avoid...