University Daily Kansan / Tuesday, May 1, 1990
9
Soviets admit to losing plane in downing of U-2
The Associated Press
MOSCOW — The Soviet army newspaper disclosed for the first time Sunday that when the Russians shot down a U.S. spy plane 30 years ago they also destroyed one of their fighters that was pursuing the U.S.
The U.S. piloted by Francis Gary Powers, was shot down May 1, 1960, disrupting a summit meeting 19 days later in Paris between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita K. Shrushchev and forcing the cancellation of another summit planned for later that year.
Red Star, the Soviet army newspaper, reported that the Soviets lost a MIG-19 and its pilot in the operation.
The paper also disclosed for the first time that the Soviets sent up a new fighter plane and ordered its pilot to ram the U-2 in a suicide mission. The new fighter reached the U-2's altitude but failed to ram it.
The article, published three days before May Day festivities, may have been intended to remind Soviet readers that U.S. actions have damaged superpower ties in the past. In recent days, Soviet officials have warned that relations might suffer if the US invades Russia or Moscow in retaliation for its crackdown on the Baltic republic of Lithuania.
Red Star said that Khruschev was at lenin Le's Mausoleum on Red Square watching the May Day parade when he learned that a new model Soviet SA-2 surface-to-air missile had brought down the U-2.
The commander of the Soviet air defense forces, Marshal Sirgei Biryuzov, climbed the mausoleum "carrying happy news, that the plane
had been hit by the first rocket," the article stated. "And 'Krushevach, standing right there on the tribune, congratulated the marshal."
Khrushchev, in memorials smuggled to the West and published in 1974, wrote that diplomats watching the parade knew something big had happened because Biryuzov wore a duty uniform rather than the parade dress worn by the other military officers in Red Square.
Soviets hurrying to the May Day parade in the Ural Mountain city of Sverdlovsk saw a far different sight, what appeared to be fireworks high in the air, stated the article, signed by a Col. A. Dokuhayev.
The fiery debris was not fireworks, but a Soviet MIG-19 that was hit by the same type of missile that exploded behind Powers' U-2 and damaged it, Red Star reported in the media. The version of the Soviet military action.
Powers' mission began in Pakistan and was to have carried him over Sverdlovsk for a landing in Norway.
He used neither the automatic destruction device nor a poison pin he had been given in case the mission failed, and he was captured at a collective farm near Sverdlovsk. He was held for three years, his former employer, Sphyra spy Rudolph Abel. Powers published his memoirs in 1970.
The Soviet article disclosed for the first time that the Soviets had ordered a new model Sukho-9 fighter to pursue the U-2 in an unsuccessful ramming attempt. The Su-9 was unarmed but was able reach nearly to the 70,000 feet at which the U-2 operated, the report stated.
MIG-19's, which were not capable of flying that high. The pilot of one MIG-18, Boris Ivazyan, reported to ground control that the debris from the U-2 was actually that from an SA-2 that had missed the U-2, prompting the ground battery to fire another.
The next Soviet missile struck the MIG-19 flown by Sergei Safronov, 30, who was killed. He was one of 21 Soviets given medals for their role in bringing down Powers, and the Red Star article disclosed for the first time that he was honored posthumously.
The Soviets also scrambled two
Ivazyan survived and later married Safronov's widow.
U. S. accounts say that the decision to send Powers was controversial within the Eisenhower administration. The Soviets had failed to shoot down a U-2 over the same area April 9, and some within the administra- cured that sending another mission would seopardize U.S.-Soviet relations.
The U-2 incident ended a thaw in U.S.-Soviet relations and was followed by some of the worst moments of the Cold War: the Bay of Pigs landing of U.S.-backed forces in Cuba in January 1961, the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, and the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962.
U. S. author James Oberg, in his book, "Uncovering Soviet Dissasters," wrote that two unanswered questions of the U-2 incident were why a U.S. spy plane penetrated so deeply into Russia, and why the Soviets had their latest anti-aircraft missile 1,000 miles within their own borders, protecting Sverdlovsk.
Keith Thorpe/KANSAN
Weird science
David Dunshee or Ft. Scott, an employee for the Center for Drug Delivery Research, works with a rotary evaporator used for the distilling of solvents. As part of the pharmacology department, Dunshee worked yesterday with a process of purifying compounds for drug research.
Court provides leverage to break up mergers
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court gave state governments and consumers a potential pocket-book victory yesterday, saying they may use federal antitrust law to try to break up corporate
The unanimous decision allows California officials to challenge a $2.5 billion merger of the Lucky and Alba Beta supermarket chains.
If the state wins its lawsuit and splits up the business deal, officials said California consumers could save $444 million a year in grocery bills.
Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the court, said any attack on a merger, not just the federal government, had the right to sue to force divestiture of merged businesses.
The ruling, however, does not give states and
individuals the same sweeping power enjoyed by the federal government.
Stevens said federal officials could force divestiture merely by proving an antitrust violation but said, "A private litigant . . . must prove his claim of malfeasance to his own interests in order to obtain relief."
The decision sends the supermarket merger case back to lower courts where the state will try to reverse the decision.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, in a separate concurring opinion, said the California attorney general's office still faced some hurdles at trial. The state knew of the impending supermarket merger in early 1988 but waited months before it sued, he said.
Kennedy said the Federal Trade Commission
had permitted the merger and that the breakup would meet labor agreements and other matter
"These considerations should bear upon the ultimate disposition of the case." he said.
It was widely assumed before yesterday's decision that states and private citizens could prevent anti-competitive business combinations but could not interfere once such deals were completed.
But Stevens said the Clayton Act, passed in 1914 when Congress was preoccupied with trust-busting on a national scale, could be used as a weapon even against a completed merger.
Alpha Beta's parent company, American Stores, acquired Lucky in June 1988 to merge the two companies. Lucky has 1,500 stores in 40 states, and Lucky's operations are in seven Western and Midwestern states.
State Senate adopts resolution against flag, cross desecration
The Associated Press
TOPEKA — Without debate, the Senate adopted a resolution yesterday urging Congress to submit a constitutional amendment that would make the desecration of the U.S. flag or religious symbols a crime and now returns to the House for consideration of a Senate amendment.
The Senate took only a couple of minutes to consider the flag-cross desecration resolution, which has
no effect other than expressing the w i l l o f t h e Legislature, before approving it, 36-1.
The House took two hours last week to debate the resolution, triggering a heated discussion about whether the proposed amendment would unduly limit freedom of speech.
The Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee had amended it to add desecration of the cross.
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