Disgraced US Air Force Officers Were Set Up, Stasi Documents Show Decades Later

For nearly 40 years, Bill Burhans has steadfastly maintained he wasn’t drunk when, as an Air Force lieutenant colonel driving fellow U.S. military liaisons home from a holiday party with their Soviet counterparts in East Germany, he lost control of the car, careened up an embankment and slammed into a bus.

Matthew M. Burke and Marcus Kloeckner report: When the car came to a stop on Dec. 29, 1979, Air Force Lt. Col. James Tonge, his passenger, called to him to move the car to the shoulder. But Burhans sat frozen, except for his trembling hands.

It was as if he’d been “hit in the head with an ax at the slaughterhouse,” Tonge would later tell U.S. investigators in a sworn statement.

A copy of retired U.S. Air Force Col. James Tonge’s USMLM credentials. Never-before-seen Stasi documents indicate that Tonge, then a lieutenant colonel, and another U.S. Air Force officer, Lt. Col. Bill Burhans, were subject to a “targeted measure to discredit” them in Germany on Dec. 29, 1979 by the Soviets. Photo Courtesy of James Tonge

“He didn’t respond at all,” Tonge said of Burhans, who at the time was set to replace him as deputy of the U.S. Military Liaison Mission.

Based in Potsdam, near Berlin, the USMLM’s official mission was to serve as a liaison between the U.S. military command and its Soviet counterpart in post-war Germany, but its personnel also gathered intelligence, monitored Soviet forces and reported on readiness throughout the Cold War era. French, British and Soviet liaison missions did similar work.

After helping Burhans into the back seat, Tonge moved the car himself.

Retired U.S. Air Force Col. James Tonge, then a lieutenant colonel, far left, is seen here talking to his Soviet counterparts during a USMLM reception. Photo Courtesy of James Tonge

Police arrived in minutes. Read the rest of this entry »