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, but on successive days, the Navy changed the distance to 123 and then 145 miles. Nevertheless, Henry Cabot Lodge, chief U.S. delegate to the U.N., persisted in his plan to bring the incident before the Security Council. As the council met last week, Vishinsky moved to knock the U.S. complaint off the agenda. He was outvoted, 10 to 1.

Lodge admitted the U.S. mistakes, pointed out they had been publicly corrected. In any case, they were irrelevant. The Soviet fighters had fired first at a U.S. plane flying at least 40 miles from the Siberian coast. Lodge challenged the U.S.S.R. to submit the case to the International Court of Justice.

Lawyer Vishinsky's answer crackled with sarcasm. The periodic patrol flights along the Siberian coast were "peeping into other people's gardens." He denounced the "very stupid carelessness" of the first Navy reports. Said Vishinsky: "Accordingly, I say that this entire fairy tale about a poor Neptune being shot down . . . will certainly not hold water." Of U.S. reports that the plane was on weather and submarine patrol, he said: "It appears . . . this means practice in testing the radar strength and the radar installations [on the Siberian coast]."

Seven other members of the Security Council were willing to agree with Vishinsky that there had been a sort of precipitancy. One by one they rose to deplore the hasty--and criminal--Soviet attack. Said Britain's Sir Pierson Dixon: "Trigger-happy." Snapped an angry Andrei : the Security Council had no business discussing the case, and he would veto any attempt to pursue it further.

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