THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973and other localities, where some were said to serve as a “brain trust” for countering US
technolog y and training personnel for service in English-speaking environments.^14
Some of this was confirmed by a defecting Soviet fighter pilot.^15
The US delegation proceeded to confront Zolotarev with his own publication at the
USRJC’s Fourth Meeting of Principals in Moscow on 12 November 2001. He declined
immediate response and returned the next day with an unsigned reply on plain paper,
stating that “the fact concerning the transfer to Moscow of Israeli pilot Sh. Hetz and his
aircraft to the territory of the former USSR cannot be supported. The ultimate fate of
the pilot is unknown.”^16 Zolotarev was then dismissed as co-chairman of the joint
commission. Later, as the US side reported, “the Russians disbanded their side of the
commission in 2006 and as a result, suspended archival access.”^17
In both the Institute and the USRJC, Zolotarev had succeeded Dmitry
Volkogonov. Up to his death in 1995, Gen. Volkogonov had reported finding no
trace of American Cold War POWs in the USSR. In his posthumously published
memoirs, he admitted: “We ... helped the Americans to clarify the fate of their com-
patriots during the Korea and Vietnam wars. ... But I am not sure we have found out
everything. I know that not a few documents were destroyed.” Most significantly, he
revealed a KGB directive that was issued shortly before Hetz’s disappearance:
One sensational document was preserved, and a copy is in my possession. Its essence: in
the late 1960’s the KGB, the First Directorate for foreign intelligence, was tasked “to bring
informed Americans to the USSR for intelligence purposes.” When I discovered this sen-
sational paper in the “special file,” I immediately went to E.M. Primakov (head of foreign
intelligence). He called in his men. They brought a copy of this plan ... [but] I was told:
the directive was not implemented. What actually happened? The regime then was such
that the wildest versions can be assumed. The answer to this question remained a secret,
which I never managed to penetrate.^18Volkogonov’s claim was also denied by Russian officialdom. However, this KGB
policy in respect of “informed Americans” is confirmed by a Middle Eastern case
detailed in the Mitrokhin Archive: a few weeks before the Hetz affair, then-KGB
Chairman Andropov sought and obtained Brezhnev’s approval for tasking Palestinian
proxies with abducting a CIA operative in Beirut for transfer to the USSR.^19 The
repeated description of Hetz as American thus gains special resonance.
Our voluminous dossier on the Hetz case has produced a series of tantalizing leads,
none of which has yet developed into evidence solid enough to publish. The most
recent example, however, merits cautious mention. Dudchenko’s “novel” Kanal
includes a detailed account of the 18 July engagement, and focuses on the capture of
the Phantom pilot “Sha’ul Katz.” It offers an explanation of how Katz/Hetz wound
up in Soviet custody while his WSO was captured and kept by the Eg yptians: “Katz”
pretends to be Russian in an attempt to escape lynching by the Eg yptian soldiers who
surround him.^20 If true, his fear was not unfounded: one of Hetz’s subordinates was
murdered barely two weeks later.^21