CHAPTER ONE "Mr. Brown" and the Start of a Diary: From Major Jordan's Diaries from archive.org

August 1, 1952 
CHAPTER ONE 

"Mr. Brown" and the Start of a Diary 

Late one day in May, 1942, several Russians burst into my office at Newark 
Airport, furious over an outrage that had just been committed against Soviet 
honor. They pushed me toward the window where I could see evidence of the 
crime with my own eyes. 

They were led by Colonel Anatoli N. Kotikov, the head of the Soviet mission 
at the airfield. He had become a Soviet hero in 1935 when he made the first 
seaplane flight from Moscow to Seattle alone the Polar cap; Soviet 
newspapers of that time called him the "Russian Lindbergh." He had also 
been an instructor of the first Soviet parachute troops, and he had 38 jumps to 
his credit. 

I had met Colonel Kotikov only a few days before, when I reported for duty 
on May 10, 1942. My orders gave the full title of the Newark base as "UNITED 
NATIONS DEPOT NO. 8, LEND-LEASE DIVISION, NEWARK AIRPORT, 
NEWARK, NEW JERSEY, INTERNATIONAL SECTION, AIR SERVICE 
COMMAND, AIR CORPS, U.S. ARMY." 

I was destined to know Colonel Kotikov very well, and not only at Newark. 
At that time he knew very little English, but he had the hardihood to rise at 
5:30 every morning for a two-hour lesson. Now he was pointing out the 
window, shaking his finger vehemently. 



There on the apron before the administration building was a medium 
bomber, an A-20 Douglas Havoc. It had been made in an American factory. It 
had been donated by American Lend-Lease, is was to be paid for by 
American taxes, and it stood on American soil. Now it was ready to bear the 
Red Star of the Soviet Air Force. As far as the Russians and Lend-Lease were 
concerned, it was a Russian plane. It had to leave the field shortly to be 
hoisted aboard one of the ships in a convoy that was forming to leave for 
Murmansk and Kandalaksha. On that day the Commanding Officer was 
absent and, as the acting Executive Director, I was in charge. 

I asked the interpreter what "outrage" had occurred. It seemed that a DC-3, 
a passenger plane, owned by American Airlines, had taxied from the runway 
and, in wheeling about on the concrete plaza to unload passengers, had 
brushed the Havoc's engine housing. I could easily see that the damage was 
not too serious and could be repaired. But that seemed to be beside the point. 
What infuriated the Russians was that it be tolerated for one minute that an 
American commercial liner should damage, even slightly, a Soviet warplane! 

The younger Russians huddled around Colonel Kotikov over their Russian- 
English dictionary, and showed me a word: "punish." In excited voices they 
demanded: "Pooneesh - peelote!" I asked what they wanted done to the 
offending pilot. One of them aimed an imaginary revolver at his temple and 
pulled the trigger. 

"You're in America," I told him. "We don't do things that way. The plane will 
be repaired and ready for the convoy." 

They came up with another word: "Baneesh!" They repeated this excitedly 
over and over again. Finally I understood that they wanted not only the pilot, 
but American Airlines, Inc., expelled from the Newark field. 



I asked the interpreter to explain that the U.S. Army has no jurisdiction over 
commercial companies. After all, the airlines had been using Newark airport 
long before the war and even before La Guardia Airport existed. I tried to calm 
down the Russians by explaining that our aircraft maintenance officer, Captain 
Roy B. Gardner, would have the bomber ready for its convey even if it meant 
a special crew working all night to finish the job. 

I remembered what General Koenig had said about the Russians when I 
went to Washington shortly after Pearl Harbor. He knew that in 1917 I had 
served in the Flying Machine Section, U.S. Signal Corps, and that I had been 
in combat overseas. When he told me there was an assignment open for a 
Lend-Lease liaison officer with the Red Army Air Force, I was eager to hear 
more about it. 

"It's a job, Jordan, that calls for an infinite amount of tact to get along with 
the Russians," the General said. "They're tough people to work with, but I 
think you can do it." 

Thus I had been assigned to Newark for the express purpose of expediting 
the Lend-Lease program. I was determined to perform my duty to the best of 
my ability. I was a "re-tread" as they called us veterans of World War I and a 
mere Captain by the age of 44 - but I had a job to do and I knew I could do it. 
The first days had gone reasonably well and I rather liked Kotikov. But there 
was no denying it, the Russians were tough people to work with. 

As my remarks about repairing the bomber on time were being translated, I 
noticed that Colonel Kotikov was fidgeting scornfully. When I finished, he 
made an abrupt gesture with his hand. "I call Mr. Hopkins," he announced. 

It was the first time I had heard him use this name. It seemed such an idle 
threat, and a silly one. What did Harry Hopkins have to do with Newark 
Airport? Assuming that Kotikov carried out his threat, what good would it do? 



Commercial planes, after all, were under the jurisdiction of the Civil 
Aeronautics Board. 

"Mr. Hopkins fix," Colonel Kotikov asserted. He looked at me and I could 
see now that he was amused, in a grim kind of way. "Mr. Brown will see Mr. 
Hopkins - no?" he said smiling. 

The mention of "Mr. Brown" puzzled me, but before I had time to explore 
this any further, Kotikov was barking at the interpreter that he wanted to call 
the Soviet Embassy in Washington. All Russian long-distance calls had to be 
cleared through my office, and I always made sure that the Colonel's, which 
could be extraordinarily long at times, were put through "collect." I told the 
operator to get the Soviet Embassy, and I handed the receiver to Kotikov. 

By this time the other Russians had been waved out of the office, and I was 
sitting at my desk. Colonel Kotikov began a long harangue over the phone in 
Russian, interrupted by several trips to the window. The only words I 
understood were "American Airlines," "Hopkins," and the serial number on the 
tail which he read out painfully in English. When the call was completed, the 
Colonel left without a word. I shrugged my shoulders and went to see about 
the damaged Havoc. As promised, it was repaired and ready for hoisting on 
shipboard when the convoy sailed. 

That, I felt sure, was the end of the affair. 

I was wrong. On June 12th the order came from Washington not only 
ordering American Airlines off the field, but directing every aviation company 
to cease activities at Newark forthwith. The order was not for a day or a week. 
It held for the duration of the war, though they called it a "Temporary 
Suspension." 



I was flabbergasted. It was the sort of thing one cannot quite believe, and 
certainly cannot forget. Would we have to jump whenever Colonel Kotikov 
cracked the whip? For me, it was going to be a hard lesson to learn. 

Captain Gardner, who had been at Newark longer than I, and who was 
better versed in what he called the "push-button system," told me afterwards 
that he did not waste a second after I informed him that Colonel Kotikov had 
threatened to "call Mr. Hopkins." He dashed for the best corner in the terminal 
building, which was occupied by commercial airlines people, and staked out a 
claim by fixing his card on the door. A few days later the space was his. 

I was dazed by the speed with which the expulsion proceedings had taken 
place. First, the CAB inspector had arrived. Someone in Washington, he said, 
had set off a grenade under the Civil Aeronautics Board. He spent several 
days in the control tower, and put our staff through a severe quiz about the 
amount of commercial traffic and whether it was interfering with Soviet 
operations. The word spread around the field that there was going to be hell to 
pay. Several days later, the order of expulsion arrived. A copy of the order is 
reproduced in chapter nine of this edition, a masterpiece of bureaucratic 
language. 

I had to pinch myself to make sure that we Americans, and not the 
Russians, were the donors of Lend-Lease. "After all, Jordan," I told myself, 
"you don't know the details of the whole operation; this is only one part of it. 
You're a soldier, and besides you were warned that this would be a tough 
assignment." At the same time, however, I decided to start a diary, and to 
collect records of one kind and another, and to make notes and memos of 
everything that occurred. This was a more important decision than I realized. 

Keeping a record wasn't exactly a revolutionary idea in the Army. I can still 
see Sergeant Cook, at Kelly Field, Texas, in 1917, with his sandy thatch and 



ruddy face, as he addressed me, a 19-year-old corporal, from the infinite 
superiority of a master sergeant in the regular Army: "Jordan, if you want to 
get along, keep your eyes and your ears open, keep your big mouth shut, and 
keep a copy of everything!" 

Now I felt a foreboding that one day there would be a thorough 
investigation of Russian Lend-Lease. I was the only one cog in the machinery. 
Yet because of the fact that I couldn't know the details of high-level strategy, I 
began the Jordan diaries. 

These diaries consist of many components. The first was started at 
Newark, and later grew into two heavy binders stuffed with an exhaustive 
documentation of Army orders, reports, correspondence, and names of 
American military persons. It covers the Soviet Lend-Lease movement by ship 
from Newark, and by air from Great Falls and Fairbanks from early in 1942 to 
the summer of 1944. 

The record is not only verbal but pictorial. Among many photographs there 
are eight which commemorate the visit to Great Falls of the most famous 
member of any World War I outfit - Captain "Eddie" Rickenbacker. A sort of 
annex, or overflow, contains oddments like a file of Tail Winds, newspaper of 
the 7th Ferrying Group. 

The second section, also begun in Newark, is a small book with black 
leather covers. In this I entered the name, rank and function of every Russian 
who came to my knowledge as operating anywhere in the United States. The 
catalogue identifies 418 individuals not a few of whom were unknown to the 
FBI. Mr. Hoover's men were interested enough to Photostat every page of this 
book. 

The list proved to be of value, I was told, in tracing Communist espionage 
in America during the war. Incidentally, this ledger opens with what authorities 



have praised is a very complete roster of Soviet airbases - 21 in all, with 
mileages -from Bering Strait across Siberia to Moscow. 

The third part, a sizable date-book in maroon linen, is the only one that 
follows the dictionary definition of a diary as "a record or register of daily 
duties and events." It is a consecutive notation of happenings, personal and 
official during nine months of 1944. But we are two years ahead of ourselves, 
and we shall come to that period later. 

An official explanation of the expulsion of the airlines from Newark Airport 
was necessary for public consumption, but the one given could hardly have 
been more preposterous. The CAB press release stated: "All airtransport 
service at the Newark, N.J. airport was ordered suspended immediately by the 
Civil Aeronautics Board today . . . The Board attributed the suspension to the 
reduced number of airplanes available and the necessity for reducing stops as 
a conservative move." 

We at the airport were told there was too much commercial airplane traffic; 
the public was told that the ban was imposed because there were now fewer 
planes! And the idea that "conservation" resulted from the ban was absurd: 
the planes now stopped at La Guardia, which they hadn't before, instead of at 
Newark! 

On June 12th, the day of the ban, the identity of the "Mr. Brown" mentioned 
by Colonel Kotikov was revealed. His name was Molotov. 

Front pages revealed that he was the President's overnight guest at the 
White House. The newspapermen all knew that Molotov had been in 
Washington from May 29th to June 4th, traveling incognito as "Mr. Brown." 
(One reporter asked Stephen Early, "Why didn't you call him 'Mr. Red'?") 

At Early's request they had imposed a voluntary censorship on themselves 
and the visit was called the "best kept secret of the war." At one point during 



this period, Molotov visited New York. Though I don't know whether Colonel 
Kotikov saw him then, he obviously knew all about Molotov's movements. 

Late in the evening of Molotov's first day at the White House, Harry 
Hopkins made an entry in his diary. I think it is shocking. Hopkins wrote: 

"I suggested that Molotov might like to rest [Hopkins wrote]. 

Litivinov acted extremely bored and cynical throughout the 
conference. He made every effort to get Molotov to stay at the 
Blair House tonight but Molotov obviously wanted to stay at the 
White House at least one night, so he is put up in the room across 
the way [across from Hopkins', that is]. 

I went in for a moment to talk to him after the conference and he 
asked that one of the girls he brought over as secretaries be 
permitted to come, and that has been arranged." [1] 

Ten days after the Molotov story broke, Harry Hopkins came to New York 
to address a Russian Red Rally at Madison Square Gardens. He cried: 

"A second front? 

"Yes, and if necessary, a third and a fourth front . . . The American 
people are bound to the people of the Soviet Union in the great 
alliance of the United Nations. They know that in the past year 
you have in your heroic combat against our common foe 
performed for us and for all humanity a service that can never be 
repaid. 

"We are determined that nothing shall stop us from sharing with you all 
that we have and are in this conflict, and we look forward to sharing with 
you the fruits of victory and peace." 



Mr. Hopkins concluded: 

"Generations unborn will owe a great measure of their freedom to the 
unconquerable power of the Soviet people."[2] 

SOURCES 

CHAPTER ONE 

"Mr. Brown" And the Start of a Diary 

1. Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History, Robert E. Sherwood, (Harper, 
1948), p. 560. 

2. Ibid, p. 588.