Biography
Craig W. Anderson was one of the Intrepid Four, four enlisted U.S. Navy sailors who refused to return to the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid during shore leave in Japan on October 23, 1967. Anderson, then 20 and from San Jose, California, joined John Barilla, Richard Bailey and Michael Lindner in declaring that their desertion was a protest against the Vietnam War. Japanese antiwar organizers hid the men and moved them aboard the Soviet liner Baikal on November 11. They spent about a month in the Soviet Union, where they made public antiwar statements, and reached Sweden in December 1967. Anderson’s Soviet stay was a transit stage in a longer exile in Sweden.
Dated exile-route milestone
The NIS historical account Operation Gold Filling reports that the Intrepid Four arrived at Arlanda Airport, Stockholm on December 29, 1967 and received asylum. This refines the route milestone previously described only as December. It marks arrival in Sweden after Soviet transit, not the end of exile from U.S. military authority, a U.S. custody release, or a new imprisonment. No prisoner admission or release field is changed. The later unnamed deserter detained in the operation cannot be identified as one of these four from the account.
