The Press: Newsmen or Spies?

The representatives of Russia's Tass news agency make a great show of acting like reporters. But last week such members of the American Society of Newspaper Editors as Columnist David Lawrence and Scripps-Howard Editor Walker Stone thought it was time for a showdown on the question: Are Tassmen in the U.S. bona fide reporters or simply Russian agents gathering intelligence material for Russia's vast espionage system?

The editors demanded that the Washington correspondents' Standing Committee bar all Tassmen from the Capitol press galleries. In the Senate, Maryland's Herbert O'Conor went much further. He offered a resolution not only to bar Tass from the galleries, but to deport all non-American Tass representatives.

The Standing Committee made a halfhearted answer: it decided to issue no credentials to any new Tassmen in the future. But it shied away from barring Tass representatives already on the job, because it was afraid it might be construed as a limitation of press freedom in the U.S.

Special Passports. No newsman who has watched the workings of Tass's representatives around the globe would have much trouble defining their primary job. Tassmen do not travel as newsmen, but on special passports, enter the U.S. and other countries on special visas given only to foreign government officials. British courts have officially ruled that Tassmen have diplomatic immunity, since Tass is an agency of the Soviet state. Time after time, Tassmen have shown that they are not primarily interested in news, but in filing special intelligence reports or engaging in outright espionage. Examples: ¶Under the cover name of "Martin," Tass "Correspondent" Nicolai Zheivinov was a member of Canada's atomic spy ring, uncovered in 1945. He skipped home to Russia to avoid arrest. ¶In Tokyo, Tassman Evgeny Egorov has never been known to turn in a story for clearance by U.N. censors; he is presumed to send all of his material either by diplomatic pouch or by radio code from the Russian Embassy. ¶In Teheran, Tass's representative has never been seen to visit Radio Pahlevi, from which all other correspondents transmit their copy. He, too, is getting his reports out by diplomatic pouch. ¶In many countries, the Russians no longer make any pretense at maintaining Tass as a newsgathering agency. In Montevideo, for example, the Tassman does not even have a phone, gets messages only through the Soviet legation.