FOREIGN RELATIONS: What Sort of Precipitancy?

As crusty old Andrei Vishinsky put it, "There has been a strange haste about this affair ... a sort of precipitancy." When Soviet MIGs shot down a Navy Neptune patrol bomber in the Japan Sea (TIME, Sept. 13), the Navy quickly announced (after sketchy interviews with only part of the loman crew) that the Neptune had not returned the Russians' fire. Later it acknowledged that the turret gunner had fired a short burst after the MIGs began their attack. The first Navy announcement placed the attack some 100 miles southeast of Vladivostok,...