Interview with Jacob "Chic" Hecht, May 11, 2004

Nevada Test Site Oral History Project University of Nevada, Las Vegas Interview with Jacob (Chic) Hecht May 11, 2004 Las Vegas, Nevada Interview Conducted By Mary Palevsky © 2007 by UNLV Libraries Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews conducted by an interviewer/ researcher with an interviewee/ narrator who possesses firsthand knowledge of historically significant events. The goal is to create an archive which adds relevant material to the existing historical record. Oral history recordings and transcripts are primary source material and do not represent the final, verified, or complete narrative of the events under discussion. Rather, oral history is a spoken remembrance or dialogue, reflecting the interviewee’s memories, points of view and personal opinions about events in response to the interviewer’s specific questions. Oral history interviews document each interviewee’s personal engagement with the history in question. They are unique records, reflecting the particular meaning the interviewee draws from her/ his individual life experience. Produced by: The Nevada Test Site Oral History Project Departments of History and Sociology University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 89154- 5020 Director and Editor Mary Palevsky Principal Investigators Robert Futrell, Dept. of Sociology Andrew Kirk, Dept. of History The material in the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project archive is based upon work supported by the U. S. Dept. of Energy under award number DEFG52- 03NV99203 and the U. S. Dept. of Education under award number P116Z040093. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in these recordings and transcripts are those of project participants— oral history interviewees and/ or oral history interviewers— and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U. S. Department of Energy or the U. S. Department of Education. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Jacob ( Chic) Hecht May 11, 2004 Conducted by Mary Palevsky Table of Contents Introduction: Mr. Hecht recalls his childhood, college education, and military experience. After serving in the Army during the Korean War, he was sent to Europe for training as an intelligence agent. 1 As a military intelligence agent in Berlin during the Cold War, Mr. Hecht employed a variety of sources and methods to monitor Soviet military and nuclear capabilities. 4 Mr. Hecht shares memories of witnessing nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site. 7 Mr. Hecht describes life in Cold War Berlin, working as an intelligence agent, and being identified as an American spy. 8 The death of Stalin eased fears of a Third World War against the Soviet Union, but monitoring uranium production remained the top priority for American intelligence. 16 Mr. Hecht returned to the United States, opened a women’s clothing store in downtown Las Vegas, and won a seat in the Nevada state senate in 1966. 17 Howard Hughes’ opposition to nuclear testing in Nevada marked an anti- nuclear shift in public opinion. 19 Mr. Hecht describes 1960s Las Vegas as a friendly small town that was overwhelmingly supportive of the nuclear testing program. 22 In 1982, Mr. Hecht was elected to the United States Senate and serves on the Energy Committee. He comments on the prevailing anti- nuclear sentiment in Washington. 26 Nuclear physicist Edward Teller advised Mr. Hecht on issues regarding nuclear war, atomic energy, and the storage of hazardous waste. The two became professional allies and developed a close friendship. 28 Anti- nuclear sentiment became more and more prevalent during the late Cold War. 30 After losing his bid for re- election to the senate, Mr. Hecht was appointed ambassador to the Bahamas. 34 Conclusion: Mr. Hecht discusses the role of the Nevada Test Site in creating a successful deterrent and winning the Cold War for the United States. 36 UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Jacob ( Chic) Hecht May 11, 2004 in Las Vegas, NV Conducted by Mary Palevsky [ 00: 00: 00] Begin Track 2, Disk 1. Chic Hecht: We’re right on time, 9: 30. Mary Palevsky: OK, perfect, 9: 30. So as I said, maybe you could just begin by telling me your full name, date of birth, place of birth, and a little bit of early life history. My name is Jacob Hecht. I was born November 30, 1928 in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. I grew up in Cape Girardeau, graduated college from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. I graduated in 1949. My father had moved to Las Vegas to retire about 1946, and I used to visit him in the summers and then go back to college. Well, when I graduated I came out, and he was in the clothing business and I went to work for him, and that was in 1949 and 1950. The Korean War broke out about that time, and I worked for him less than a year and got drafted in the Army for the Korean War. I was put into infantry basic training, then they gave us a series of tests, and after my basic training was over, I was sent to Army intelligence school at Fort Hollabird, Maryland. I went through an intensive three- month course on Army intelligence, every aspect of it, and then I was sent to Europe. When I was starting out in college, I was a pre- med and in those days you had to study German in order to get your degree because so much was still written by German doctors. Wonderful information. So when I went through all my tests and they gave me the language test, it showed that I had knowledge of German, certainly not a great speaking ability but reading and other aspects of it. I was sent to Army intelligence school. After three months of intensive and I UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 2 say intensive training I was sent to Europe to further my language skills at Oberammergau in Germany, which was the Army language school. Just about that time, serious problems were going in the Cold War. If I may take you back in history, Stalin was ruling Russia, one of the cruelest, most sadistic leaders of a country that ever was. And I was sent behind the Iron Curtain as an American intelligence agent. I served in Eastern Europe for eighteen months behind the lines and I’m very proud of this. I’m in the Army Intelligence Hall of Fame because of my work behind the Iron Curtain. Now, let’s take a little minute to talk about this because this is interesting to me. You go behind enemy lines, which must mean you’re not known to be an American. How does that work? I worked out of Berlin, which was a hundred and twenty kilometers behind the Iron Curtain. And Berlin was the thriving capital of Germany and intelligence agents from all countries were there, and I worked out of Berlin. Now, I have a lot of questions about this. First of all, does this mean your German was good enough that they thought you were a German native, or—? No. You weren’t sort of passing as a German native, then, in that sense. No, but my German became very fast, very good. You never lose your accent. OK. Yes, I can imagine that’s true. But it was very important to be able to communicate to different people in sensitive positions to work for us because we were at war during the Korean War. Now, I just know this from seeing movies and reading John Le Carré so bear with me. Did you have like a cover position that you were pretending to be and you were an intelligence agent? What was your job? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 3 [ 00: 05: 00] In those days intelligence agents could have cover as a newsperson, a correspondent. So I had several different identities: as a newsman, as a member of the West German government in East Germany. And whatever it was you could manufacture an identity card. But an interesting note on that. You asked about my fluency. I was there just a short time, a matter of days or weeks, and I was called in the middle of the night by another agent who’s an American to come down and help him on an interrogation and to be a translator. So I went down there and I said, Why did you call me? You are a native born German. You came to America, became an American citizen, and you want me to be an interpreter for you. He said, Because these people won’t talk to me. They think I’m a German and they don’t trust a fellow German, so they want to talk to an American. So I asked the two individuals that I was interrogating, Why won’t you talk to him? He’s an American. He said, No, he isn’t. He’s a German. So this more or less explained why you are more effective with an American accent than with a German accent. Interesting. Does that explain to you? Yes, that answers my question. I think that’s true of intelligence right now. In our war in Iraq we’re short on people who can speak the language. Yes. But when you’re risking your life to help someone you have to trust that person, and the East Germans and the Russians did not trust the West Germans. Interesting. So they would trust an American more. They didn’t trust the others at all. They would only trust an American. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 4 Interesting. And what kind of information in a story like this where you’ve got this communication going on, this question, what kinds of things were they telling you? Well, now that it’s over fifty years I can certainly discuss it. We were very worried after the Second World War that Russia was building up and they had an atomic bomb. Many of us thought World War III was soon going to be there. Berlin was an island a hundred and twenty kilometers behind the Iron Curtain. In order for World War III to start it was surmised by the top leaders that the Russians would come through Germany into Europe. So I was a part of a select group to notify government and the top people at all times what the buildup of the Soviet military was doing. In other words every Soviet barracks— they called them kaserne in Germany— in eastern Germany which was a place for the soldiers to be, every air field, every naval [ base], which I did not work on but we had people doing that, and we kept a twenty- four- hour surveillance on all military camps. We checked how much gasoline they had, how much ammunition they had, how many troops they had, how many tanks they had, because if they were coming over the line they had to have a lot of troops, they had to have a lot of ammunition, they had to have a lot of tanks, and in those days we did not have the satellites to do it and so how did we check? We had people working in the kasernes for us that would tell us when the buildup was coming, and then the Russians would go on maneuvers from time to time and bring [ 00: 10: 00] a million, two million people to eastern Germany and we would alert our commanders to be preparing for a war if they did come. One time John Foster Dulles in his memoirs said we were at the brink of war, and I was very much involved in that brink- of- war time because the Russians had I think close to two million people on the borders, a lot of tanks, a lot of planes, but nothing happened and they went back to Russia and they were just on maneuvers. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 5 Wow. Just a general sense of what year that might have been. Nineteen fifty- one to nineteen fifty- three. OK. Did I explain it? Yes, you’re explaining it really well. Now, as I say we did not have satellites so how did we get the information? We recruited people working in these different military installations. How did we do it? For money. Why else do people do it? So as much as you can walk me through. Do you have an idea, a lead, that someone might be willing or—? Yes, that’s a very good question. At that time the Berlin Wall was not up so people could walk back and forth from east to west. Every day about a thousand or fifteen hundred people were fleeing eastern Germany. They did not want to live under communism so they would go to a refugee center. We had people working in the refugee centers that would contact us if they were from a certain city, say Dresden— Dresden had a military installation— and they had a friend or someone working there, they would contact us immediately. We would go out, we’d interrogate the people, and try and send them back to see their friends and make contact to meet with us. So it was a constant, constant source of information for us, and it was so lucrative intelligence- wise that it was surmised that that was a reason they built the Berlin Wall. Really. Because I have to tell you, when you first started talking, not clear on my history I was assuming that the Berlin Wall was already there, but no, so there was a free flow back and forth across from East Berlin to West Berlin. That’s right. That is correct. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 6 Interesting. And so you would literally talk to people and then say, Rather than staying here and being a refugee, go back and work for us, is that what you’re saying? Go back, or go back and get a friend to work for us. They might have a friend who worked in the army camp. OK. And then how would— I’m so curious about this— how would that information actually be passed back to you? Was it verbal, was it written, when someone had something to tell you about troop buildups, et cetera? Oh, it would be verbal or written, both ways. Both ways. One of my spies working for me was a cleaning woman for a Russian general and she would bring me books and pamphlets on new military equipment. I would set her down in a certain place, a safe house we called it, I would run over and get a photograph, sometimes hundreds of pages, then she would take it back and replace it in the general’s bedroom or office. Amazing. Now how would a woman like this even be recruited? I mean do we assume that she was an anticommunist like you say or—? Yes, but she knew that she had access to valuable information, she came to us with the information, and we recruited her and paid her off, and each time she would come we would reimburse her financially. Wow. Does that answer all your questions? Well, I think— Let’s go on to the atomic— We will, but I think why this is useful to the project historically is that the broad reach of the [ 00: 15: 00] Cold War and the various ways the Cold War atmosphere and the fighting of the UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 7 Cold War manifest themselves are all directly related to the test site, especially when you say, We were worried about atomic war. OK, you’re absolutely right, and let me continue then. Part of our targets for me as a spy to get information was parts of East Germany they had uranium, and whenever we would find someone from a city close to a uranium mine, that was a prime target. When I would pick up someone like that, or through the refugee camp, I would immediately call another agent who I wouldn’t know and he would come and immediately talk to that person because that was a top, top priority. And Russia during the time I was there had the atomic bomb and we were very worried about it. I did not talk to anyone on nuclear matters because I did not have the background and I would not know whether people were telling me the truth or whether they were fabricating stories. So in order to get that we had to get other people who had a background and knew what they were talking about. Now I lived by myself in a house with a housekeeper and only a handful of people knew who I was and where I was, and we did that purposely because if we were picked up by the Russians they would torture you and get information from you and so we did not want anyone to— fellow Americans, I would not know who they were, they would not know who I was, and that was the purpose. Yes. But you had a limited number of contacts, then, you’re saying, so that— Yes, I had contacts and I would contact someone else who would contact someone else. And as far as the nuclear, that was the top priority, and in those days, 1951, I didn’t know much about nuclear, although being in Las Vegas I did watch several nuclear tests. In those days at two in the morning or three in the morning people used to go outside and the bars would be open and we’d watch the bombs go off. They were in the atmosphere then so you could watch them. Later they got smart and put them underground, but in the early shots they were all over, all atmospheric, so you could see it. It was like daylight at two in the morning. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 8 Right. So when you arrived in Las Vegas and then what, you learned that that’s something that people do and then—? What did you think when the first one you saw and it was like daylight at night? Well, it was a thrill to see it. It was just a thrill to see it. It’s the end of World War II, our nuclear tests, our nuclear bombs, and everyone was very nuclear at the time. Everyone was pro- nuclear, and a big part of the economy of Las Vegas was from the jobs at the nuclear test site, so there was no antinuclear feeling. Interesting. And then you go to Germany and you actually probably, unlike most people there, have some sort of first- hand knowledge of what an A- bomb looks like, I guess. No, I would have no idea. No idea, and I knew nothing more than I had my targets and you worked on your targets. Right. No, I was just saying, most people hadn’t even seen an atomic explosion. Very few people. Very few people. Right. Till this day, very few people. So you’re in Germany, you said, 1951 to 1953, is that right? Yes. But you’re still a fairly young man then, if you were born in 1928. [ 00: 20: 00] Age is relative. I’m seventy- five. When I was a young boy, a man fifty was an old, old man. So everything is relative. That’s true. But by my calculations you’re in your early twenties when you’re doing this. Yes, early twenties, that is correct. And an interesting aspect, it was a very select group of people and no married men were in the group. This was long before women were allowed in intelligence, but no married person. Because it was very dangerous and they felt if a man is married and has children he might be more defensive, so we were all young and unmarried. You UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 9 look at things different if you have a wife and children. I just threw that in because I thought you might find it interesting. No, it is interesting, and it leads me to another question about what was life like for a young unmarried spy in the early fifties in Berlin? In other words, did you have a social life? Did you just basically work? I suppose you had to socialize somewhat in looking for contacts. I don’t know. You have to tell me. I’m just wondering. Did you go out? Was there entertainment? You know, things like that. You stayed to yourself pretty much, and we’d go out, by yourself or sometimes with another agent, although we tried never to be together like that because if you’re picked up it’s no good. And you work out a social life, and because of my language I could converse with everyone. And it was important also to meet secretaries of the East German politburo who would have meetings, and in those days we used carbon paper and they would type the minutes of the meetings and give you an extra carbon. Everyone who had information that was very relevant to our preventing a third world war was a good target. Yes. And so you get this material and then you have ways to get it back to or to send reports to your higher- ups about what you’re— That is correct. That is correct. And they’re sort of putting everything together. Definitely they put it together. As a matter of fact, when I became a U. S. senator I tracked down one of my operations officers who I kept in contact with. I never met him because he was in the American zone and was not behind the lines. And he was Secretary Weinberger’s top intelligence person. Secretary Weinberger was secretary of defense. And he took me to the Pentagon one Saturday afternoon for several hours and laid out everything. And at that time I UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 10 found out how little I knew because when you’re an agent you’re only given enough information to do your task and absolutely nothing more. So I learned more about my task when I got out than when I was in because you were not told the broad picture. I was an agent. Right. That’s interesting that you had the opportunity to eventually get that broad picture. I got the broad picture. But in intelligence you want as many sources as you can possibly get: people like myself in Berlin, people in Russia, people in the other satellite countries, and then the analysts put everything together. Right, right. Yes, just as a note, one of the physicists I interviewed that worked on the Manhattan Project said how difficult intelligence was during the war from here because they’d get reports, say, from prisoners of war and this kind of business. From what he saw, he was sure that the [ 00: 25: 00] Germans had the A- bomb, which they didn’t. But he used that as an example to say what you’re saying, you have lots and lots of different sources verifying things or else you can make incorrect conclusions, was his thing from all of that. I was never an analyst but I surmise that they knew how to put everything together. Right, right. Interesting. So you’re there for two years because that’s the length of the stint or how does that work? That was the length of the stint and also I got compromised, and in intelligence there’s a cardinal rule: You never pick up someone that you know is a spy. You watch them twenty- four hours a day to get their contacts. One day I saw a little boy outside of my house, who was the son of a known Communist, taking license numbers, and I went over to him and I said, Why are you taking these license numbers? He said, My father wanted me to do it. So we checked his father and found out he was a known Communist and it was evident that they knew UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 11 who I was and what I was doing. So that was about, oh, four or five weeks before my time was up and so basically I no longer could be very effective. So let me understand this a little bit. The fact that they were taking license numbers near your house meant that they suspected you? They knew. Oh, that they knew. They knew. OK, and so they were seeing who else was talking to you, by the license numbers. That is correct. Ah, OK. Who was coming to my house and everything. I understand, yes. So they had found out. And one night I came home and a car was waiting for me and I yelled and screamed at him in German to my friends who were not there to come and help me and they got scared and took off. Then I had to be careful after that though. That’s scary. So you get home and there’s a car there. Yes. I guess that’s why they have young men do these jobs. Yes, yes, because when you’re young you don’t have any fear. Yes. So that’s how you look back at yourself. I mean that’s just amazing to me that you’re so young and you’re doing that stuff. But I guess it’s a kind of soldier. Well, yes. Well, I was in civilian clothes. However, I did keep a uniform because if the Russians came over, any American in civilian clothes would be interrogated and shot. So I had a UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 12 corporal’s uniform. If you’re not an officer the Russians didn’t pay any attention to you, so I was going to just put on my uniform and fall in with the rest of the soldiers, hoping to save my life, but not worrying too much. Right. And if you were in uniform, I guess this question comes up because of what’s going on now, would some prisoner of war— well, we weren’t really in a declared war but would any of those things have come in if you’d been captured in a uniform? Would you have been treated differently by the Russians? Life and death, of course, in the uniform, the Geneva protocols were in effect then, but in civilian clothes you’re shot. Fact of the matter is we were required to carry a gun with us all the time. However, I didn’t do it because that was a sure giveaway: What’s a newsman doing with a gun? And the talk was that we only needed a gun if we got captured— to kill ourselves— because they [ 00: 30: 00] would torture you, then kill you, so why not just save yourself the torture? Right. Right. Wow. But you’re in the Army, so you do have a real rank. Yes. What was your rank when you were doing that? A corporal. You were a corporal. But that was because I went to school and everyone in intelligence, the counterintelligence course, CIC was what we’re a part of, and they used to phrase it “ Corps of Indignant Corporals” because the military was very envious. I lived in a nice home and I had a maid and cook. And you were never promoted. And you were in civilian clothes, so to other people you could be a major, a colonel, a captain, or a civilian, so by wearing civilian clothes you overcome the lack of rank. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 13 That’s very interesting. That’s very interesting. I should also add, I was in the group of intelligence, the OSS [ Office of Strategic Services] was being phased out, the CIA [ Central Intelligence Agency] was being phased in, and I was in the group in the interim and our work was later taken over by the CIA, and in fact they wanted me to stay with them. I didn’t know what the CIA was at the time because it was all new and very secretive, but they wanted to know if we wanted to stay. And I enjoyed the work very, very much and I would’ve liked to have stayed. But my mother passed away, my father was by himself, and so my father wanted me to come home. And when I thought about it I felt in some ways I was lucky to be alive and maybe not tempt fate. Yes. Yes. Well, whenever you make a decision like that, I think you must wonder what would’ve been if you had stayed. Do you ever think that way or—? I’d have been a career intelligence person. I’d have been with the CIA and a career man. You would’ve been. Yes. Yes. Before we get back to the States, I wanted to ask you a question I’m curious about, about what Berlin was like. This is six years after the end of the war, six and seven years. Was Berlin being rebuilt? Could you still see evidence of World War II when you were there? What was it like? In Berlin there’s a German term, ausgebomb, “ completely bombed.” The work to rebuild it was barely started. It was chaos. We had the airlift. We were feeding the people in Berlin. The planes would come every three minutes and if they couldn’t land at Tempelh of Airport somehow they would have to go back in the air and go get in formation from Frankfurt and try and land again. It was the greatest mass feeding program ever, ever. It’s just miraculous. The mood of Berlin and UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 14 the people was very “ live today for tomorrow we will die,” and everyone had that feeling. There were very few men left in Berlin. Everyone was a soldier, but most people were physically— lost a limb or something from the war. And so you were single and the mood of the German women was that you were in one piece where the rest of the [ 00: 35: 00] people were maimed from the war. So you could have a good social life, because there was an attitude completely, Live today, tomorrow the war starts. But at that time the rebuilding had not really taken off. So you’re really living in the remnants of World War II, then, day to day. Definitely. Absolutely, absolutely. Living in the remnants of World War II, waiting for World War III, which thank God never came. Again I’m going to mention John Foster Dulles and his Brink of War. Yes. And I’ll read it, so thank you for that. Now, the one other question that arises from what you said about Berlin is what the Nazis did is now known, so do you have any particular feelings toward German people when you’re there? The question has far more relevance than you probably thought when you asked the question. I’m Jewish, so what the Nazis did to the Jews was horrible. I mean just unthinkable, horrible, nothing like it in history. And here I was, an American working to save the German people. We were risking our life to save the German people. I was first of all a soldier, so I did my job. [ Pause] Oftentimes it was emotional, when I was talking to Nazis, and oftentimes some of my agents were Nazis and I knew it. I don’t know if they knew that I was Jewish or not. It never came up. But I knew they were a Nazi and they were working for me, and ten years earlier they’d have killed me. So it was quite a paradox. Wow. And you knew they were Nazis— this sounds really ignorant but how would you know they were Nazis? I mean they would—? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 15 They would give us some type of a bio before they started working for us. And if they were a major or a captain, they had to be a Nazi. So it was an emotional time. So this wasn’t lost on you, as young as you were, you had a clear understanding of— Of course. But many of the Nazis were working with the Russians, and they were in sensitive positions because they knew what to do, so we worked with them. Wow. “ Wow” is right. “ Wow” is right. Now, being Jewish did you have family in the old country that you knew had been lost in the Holocaust, or had most of your family in the States? My mother was an immigrant. From—? Russia. So obviously I had a lot of family that didn’t make it. But did I know them? No. But you ask a good question because when I was taking my test to go to intelligence school, that was one problem that I had, but I overcame it, that my mother was an immigrant, because that was a way the Russians got people to work. They would come and say, If you don’t work and cooperate with us, we’re going to kill your aunts and uncles and cousins. But since I had no known relatives and my mother came here when she was a small child, it didn’t stand in my way of getting into intelligence. [ 00: 40: 00] Interesting. Well, we could move on to when you come back to the States, but before we do, if there’s any other thing that’s coming to mind from that era that you’d like to let me know about, that’s great. Let me re- emphasize our number one target, uranium mining, and how important that was to the Russians at that particular time, and how important it was to Stalin. Now when I say I lived and UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 16 worked under Stalin, at the time of Stalin, to a young boy that’s like saying Benjamin Franklin. It was so far back in history. But to me it was not. Right. Right. Let me throw this in. The people that I spoke to that were knowledgeable at that time working, we thought World War III was coming. There was no question in our mind, World War III was coming. And then Stalin got sick, and when Stalin died no one knows. His death was very mysterious, and I remember it so vividly, Russia was a primitive country and because his blood was bad they said they put bloodsuckers on his body to take his bad blood out, and it was just a very mysterious death, so who killed Stalin? Did he die? I don’t know anyone that could tell you that answer. But when he died things seemed to be better and it was not such a push on for a war, so I assume people around him killed him. That’s just a personal assumption, because everything was so mysterious at the time. And when he died was very mysterious. It could’ve been over a period of any time in a two- or- three- year span. Really. I don’t know very much about this. I know nothing about it. And the two or three years we’re looking at are—? That might be too much, two or three years, but it could be sometime within a year. Very mysterious time. And when is he officially supposed to have died? I think 1953. OK. So when this is going on, are you home yet or are you still—? No, I’m still behind the Iron Curtain. You’re still there. And so you experience some sort of change while you’re there, as far as your own fear or is it in retrospect, do you think? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 17 Well, I hate to say this, but everyone was happy that he died. He was ruthless. And I think there was an easing of tensions after that. Yes. Well, at least it sounds like from the American point of