Defectors: High-Wire Acts

Ever since he dodged FBI surveillance in New Mexico last September, the ex-CIA officer and suspected spy Edward Lee Howard was expected to turn up in the Soviet Union. Last week he did just that, in print anyway, when a Soviet newspaper reported that Howard had been given political asylum. Said a Justice Department official tersely: "There's really not much we can say. We screwed up and he got away."

Howard wasn't the only defector last week. While the Soviets gained a spy, the U.S. took in a husband-and-wife high-wire duo from the prestigious Moscow Circus. Bertalina Kazakova and Nikolai Nikolsky walked into the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires last week and are now in Miami, where they may soon be hearing from Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.