The Press: Newsmen or Spies?

(2 of 2)

Crossword Puzzler. In the U.S., where Tass admits to spending $25,000 a month on its coverage, the main headquarters is in Manhattan's A.P. Building in Rockefeller Center. It is bossed by a poker-faced Russian, Ivan Beglov, 47, who came here a year ago, describes himself as a "historical science specialist." Second in command is affable, Brooklyn-born Harry Freeman, for 20 years a Tass news-deskman and its No. 1 American staffer. Of Tass's 22 U.S. editorial staffers, eight are Russians, one a Briton and one a Canadian. The other twelve are U.S. citizens who have all been vouched for as "reliable" by the National Cadre and Review Commission of the U.S. Communist Party. Privately, Tass's American workers are on close terms with U.S. Communists (e.g., Washington Tasser Euphemia Virden, daughter of a Cleveland capitalist, married the Daily Worker's correspondent, Bob Hall). But publicly, Tassmen take care to avoid contact with U.S. Communists or with Manhattan's Communist Daily Worker. If they write for it, they use assumed names.

A typical Tassman on the U.S. scene is 32-year-old Mikhail Fedorov, aeronautical engineer by education, by calling, chief of Tass's Washington bureau. Washington newsmen quickly awoke to the fact that puppy-friendly Fedorov, obviously no trained reporter, had a strange way of covering stories. During the Gubitchev-Coplon spy trial, he spent most of his time working crossword puzzles and taking no notes. But when the testimony got round to the slips by which the spies betrayed themselves, Fedorov scribbled busily. Newsmen guess he also sends some of his material by diplomatic pouch.

Fedorov, like all Tassmen, can count on traditional U.S. freedoms to give him press privileges rigorously denied to the few Western newsmen still on the job in Russia or its satellites. And he can always count on sincere Americans to defend his right to these privileges. In last week's furore, the good grey New York Times soberly warned against any retaliations against Tass because of Russia's restrictions on Western newsmen and the jailing of A.P. Reporter William Oatis by Czechoslovakia. Said the Times: "Our cause cannot be served by police-state restrictions [on the press]." The Washington Star agreed. Neither the Times nor the Star seemed to get the point at which Columnist Lawrence and Scripps-Howard's Stone were driving. If Tassmen are Russian intelligence agents and not bona fide correspondents, then they are not entitled to the privileges of the working press.