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Then Khrushchev returned and fired off an abrupt note informing the U.S. that a Soviet fighter plane had shot down the RB-47 near the Kola Peninsula, committing "a gross violation of the Soviet Union's frontier." A Soviet vessel, the note said, had rescued two of the six airmen, and the Soviet government was holding them for "trial under the full rigor of Soviet law."
The U.S. replied with a bristling note rejecting as a "willful misinterpretation and misstatement of fact" Khrushchev's assertion that the U.S. plane had been shot down inside Soviet airspace. "At no time was the plane closer to Soviet land territory than about 30 miles," said the U.S. But Nikita Khrushchev did not wait for any facts. He called a press conference. Some 300 correspondents, photographers and TV and newsreel cameramen jammed the Kremlin's newly air-conditioned Sverdlov Hall for the show. But this time Khrushchev's spy-plane story did not stand up.
Busted Penny. Almost as if his heart were not quite in it, Nikita monotoned through his prepared statement about the RB-47. "This new act of American perfidy shows that the assurances of President Eisenhower in Paris last May on the discontinuation of spy flights over the Soviet Union are not worth a busted penny." He stressed that this time "the intrusion" had been cut short "in the very beginning" —a point obviously intended to register among Soviet citizens who have been wondering why their vaunted armed forces let the U-2 fly 1,400 miles into the Russian heartland before downing it last May. But Khrushchev was unwilling to give details of the RB-47's course. He was extremely evasive about whether the U.S. flyers admitted making a "spy flight." Most unconvincing of all was his explanation of why Russia had for days gone through the motions of searching for the missing plane. "We trapped them on May 1, we wanted to trap them again on July 1—and to a degree we succeeded." Whose Right? Nikita was obviously intent on belaboring the West. But he acted like a man who wished he had a better club. When someone asked him about Cuba, he seized on the question with obvious relief. "The U.S. President said the U.S. would not let" Communism take over the country, he roared. "Will not let? Who gave it such a right? What right has the U.S. to dispose of the destinies of other countries and other peoples?" Thundered Khrushchev: "We consider that the Monroe Doctrine has outlived its time, has outlived itself, has died, so to say, a natural death. Now the remains of the doctrine should be buried as every dead body is buried, so that it should not poison the air by its decay."
Next, Khrushchev's rhetorical indignation was trained on the Congo. "It is not only Belgium, it is NATO," he shouted, "that is dispatching troops to suppress the people of the Congo by force, on the pretext of alleged disorder. This is an attempt to reduce them to colonial status again."