Biography
Michael A. Lindner, who later used the name Michael Sutherland, was one of the Intrepid Four. The four enlisted U.S. Navy sailors refused to return to the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid during shore leave in Japan on October 23, 1967 in opposition to the Vietnam War. Lindner was 19 and from Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania. 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 publicly described their antiwar motives, before reaching Sweden in December 1967. Lindner later wrote that seeing the scale of the carrier’s bombing operations had changed how he understood the war.
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.
