Soviet Defector at Radio Liberty Returns Home : Defector Calls Radio Liberty Front for Spies

Oleg Tumanov, who defected to the West more than 20 years ago and became a top editor at Radio Liberty, resurfaced in Moscow today to denounce the U.S.-financed station as a front for American spies and propaganda.

Unlike other recent Soviet defectors whose return has been announced by state-run media in a blaze of publicity, Tumanov, 41, appeared nervous at his news conference, attended by hundreds of Soviet and Western reporters.

He did not explain why he had come back to his homeland after so much time abroad.

He sharply criticized Radio Liberty and another Munich, West Germany-based radio station, Radio Free Europe, that also broadcasts to the Eastern Bloc in the region’s languages.

Front for Covert Acts

In his opening statement, Tumanov called the stations “a branch of U.S. secret services, a convenient front for covert operations against the U.S.S.R. and other socialist countries.”

“The visible tip of the iceberg are the so-called propaganda activities aiming to implant such ideas in the minds of Soviet people as would serve the secret services’ ends,” he said.

Tumanov refused during the 100-minute news conference to say when and how he returned home, or to indicate what he believes awaits him in the country he left after jumping ship as a Soviet navy sailor in November, 1965.

According to Radio Liberty spokesman Bill Mahoney in Munich, Tumanov swam to the Libyan coast after jumping ship, then went to Britain where he married a Russian-born emigre. He began work with Radio Liberty in 1966.

Made No Policy

“As acting chief editor of the Russian language service, the largest of 13 services, Tumanov read and edited scripts in Russian,” Mahoney said. “He did not make policy.”

Tumanov and his wife, who had one child, divorced last fall, Mahoney said. At the time of his disappearance on Feb. 25, when he called in sick to work, Tumanov was living with a 43-year-old woman.

“He would have no secrets to take back to the Soviet Union with him,” Mahoney said. “This place is an open shop. It’s a radio station.”