Our last cold war casualty … and a hero of the age

National Review, April 5, 2004 by John J. Miller

ON New Year's Eve in 1984, a small group of U.S. soldiers decided to exploit the Soviet weakness for drunken revelry to get as close as they could to a T-80 tank in East Germany. The men weren't out on their own inebriated lark--they were part of a top-secret mission behind the Iron Curtain. A reporter once claimed that an Army major, Arthur Nicholson, was among them, though former colleagues insist he wasn't. It hardly matters. The result was an intelligence coup for the U.S., as one of the soldiers not only observed the Soviet tank but also sneaked inside and photographed its interior. Nicholson certainly knew about the operation, even if he wasn't directly involved. Within three months, however, he would be dead--very possibly as the victim of Soviet retaliation.

The name of the first man to die in the Cold War is well known, for better or worse. John Morrison Birch of Georgia was a Baptist missionary in China who assisted Lt. Col. James Doolittle after his daring bomber raid on Japan in 1942. Birch later enlisted as an intelligence officer; Chinese Communists executed him within days of Japan's surrender. In 1958, he became the namesake of the John Birch Society, a fringe group that saw Red everywhere it looked.

Arthur D. Nicholson was the last American to die in the Cold War, but he is hardly a household name. His killing in 1985 made headlines everywhere and led to weeks of finger-pointing between the U.S. and the USSR--before it was efficiently whisked away as an unfortunate incident that could not be allowed to disrupt delicate superpower relations. Yet those who knew him well did not forget. Every spring since Nicholson was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery--in a place of high honor near the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and close to the grave of Joe Louis--a group of former comrades have gathered to remember a fallen hero of freedom. Much of Nicholson's work remains classified, yet a number of public documents as well as candid conversations with veterans who knew him make it possible to glimpse at his activities and those of his unit--and to learn untold stories of brave men who ventured everything to fight Communism.

IN THE HEART OF THE ENEMY

Nicholson was part of a unique organization called the U.S. Military Liaison Mission. Technically assigned to liaise with the commander-in-chief of Soviet forces in East Germany, the USMLM was a relic of the Potsdam conference, which determined the fate of postwar Germany. The Allied powers had assigned representatives to one another in their various zones of occupation. The idea was to coordinate efforts and keep tabs on German disarmament and demilitarization. As the Cold War split East from West, the liaison officers continued keeping tabs--not on the Germans, but on each other. This odd arrangement remained in place throughout the Cold War, with each side valuing the information its men retrieved. In practice, it meant that for 44 years the U.S. was able to send a handful of military officers into East Germany on a daily basis to gather data on Soviet deployments, equipment, and personnel.

These licensed spies weren't allowed to go anywhere they pleased. Large sections of East Germany were designated off-limits. Because of their diplomatic immunity, however, they could behave in ways that would have gotten anybody else arrested for espionage. And with some 400,000 Soviet troops stationed in an area smaller than Tennessee--the largest contingent of Soviet forces outside the USSR--the USMLM enjoyed a target-rich environment for learning about Soviet capabilities and intentions.

Six months after the U.S. and the USSR agreed to establish these liaison missions in 1947, Arthur Nicholson was born in Mt. Vernon, Wash. The tall and ambitious son of a career naval officer, Nicholson entered the Army in 1969. Nick--as everybody called him--eventually enrolled in Russian-training programs. His fluency developed to the point where he qualified for the USMLM, which he joined in 1982. Perhaps more than any other officer at the mission, he enjoyed his forays into East Germany. When his commander reassigned him to a desk job, he complained for months until he was sent back into the field. At a memorial service in 1985, after a special act of Congress posthumously promoted Nick to lieutenant colonel, secretary of defense Caspar Weinberger described him as "consistently the most productive officer" in the USMLM.

More than a hundred times, Nick entered East Germany on a USMLM "tour," as the operations were called. In the early days of the USMLM, the group's chief function was to watch Soviet movements and warn of possible attacks on Western Europe. As air and space surveillance improved, this role diminished and the liaison officers focused their efforts on studying the Soviet order of battle and making close-hand observations of military hardware. They followed convoys, watched rail yards, and monitored river crossings. They carried no weapons, but an array of binoculars, cameras, and notebooks. "I never doubted that the Soviets would use tactical nuclear weapons in an actual conflict because I saw with my own eyes that tactical nuclear weapons were part of their training," says John A. Fahey, who served with the USMLM in the 1960s. "I could follow Soviet war-game maneuvers by looking for the little mushroom puffs that were meant to simulate detonations."