Arrest of Daniloff Parallels Times Reporter’s Own Run-in With KGB

The staged arrest and interrogation of American correspondent Nicholas Daniloff in Moscow by Soviet secret police on alleged spy charges have many of the earmarks of my own experience there nine years ago.

His arrest, like mine, occurred on Saturday, as if the Soviets believe U.S. official and unofficial reaction is muted by a weekend. Daniloff was within a week of ending a long tour in Moscow for U.S. News & World Report, much as I had been for the Los Angeles Times. We each were handed documents by Soviets and immediately seized by KGB officers, to be later accused of accepting secrets. In his case, it was maps; in mine, parapsychology research.

But Daniloff is being treated more harshly than I was. He is being kept overnight in the KGB’s Lefortovo prison, while I could return to my family. His interrogation began immediately, while mine was delayed until several days after my initial arrest.

Moving faster may mean the Soviets intend to release Daniloff soon, before U.S. government machinery and Congress can crank up angrier protests and consider retaliation against Soviet journalists once the Labor Day weekend is over. But it could also mean that he is in for much more severe treatment.

Similarly, Daniloff may have been seized, as his wife has suggested, in retaliation for the arrest of a Soviet official, Gennady F. Zakharov, who is a U.N. employee, for alleged espionage in New York last month. If true, it attests to the journalist’s innocence and could mean his early release, well short of a trial--provided that U.S. authorities decide to cooperate in some kind of an exchange.

But the Soviets would be thereby embarking on a new and ominous tactic of equating Soviet officials with U.S. reporters, which would add a new dimension of risk for U.S. correspondents serving in Moscow whenever any Soviet spy is caught in the West.

So far, the major difference from my case is that my arrest for receiving alleged secrets on parapsychology quickly turned out to be a transparent ploy to force me to answer questions about a leading Soviet dissident, Anatoly Shcharansky, who was spokesman for the Helsinki human rights movement, which included Jewish emigration activists. There are no signs yet that Daniloff’s arrest is a ruse for going after another target.

Shcharansky, now in Israel after almost nine years in Soviet prison, had introduced me to a biophysicist named Valery G. Petukhov in 1976, about a year before our arrests. Petukhov claimed he had discovered the theoretical basis of extrasensory perception, or ESP. But his explanation, while novel, included no proof.

I wrote nothing about his claims, but suggested that if he ever proved his theory, I’d be happy to write a news story since it would be one of the amazing discoveries of the century.

A week before our scheduled departure from Moscow in June, 1977, Petukhov phoned to say he had proved his theory. I suggested we meet the following Monday, two days later. He countered that he was already across the street from our apartment complex, in front of the puppet theater on the main boulevard where we correspondents regularly and openly met with dissidents.

So I went across the street to meet him, expecting a short talk en route to a shop to buy some sour cream. I took along a glass jar to hold the sour cream which Russian groceries dispense by ladle.

But as soon as Petukhov had handed me papers, which he claimed contained his ESP experimental results, a small car raced up. Four plainclothesmen leaped out, pinned my arms and thrust me--holding the sour cream glass jar as well as the documents--into the rear seat for a breakneck ride to a police station. There, a man claiming to represent the Soviet Academy of Sciences pronounced the documents--which I had no chance to read--”state secrets.”

Petukhov was later commended in a semi-public fashion--a notice on the bulletin board of his health institute and warm introductions to visiting U.S. scientists by the institute’s chief--for having “unmasked” me as a spy.

But meanwhile, after several hours of questioning at the police station, the Soviets finally phoned the U.S. Embassy, and within an hour, a U.S. diplomat arrived to escort me home. We waited three days for the next shoe to drop.

The following Tuesday, the Soviet government sent a note to the embassy accusing me of “activities incompatible with his status as a journalist”--the euphemism for espionage. Soviet authorities said Daniloff was caught while “engaging in an act of espionage.” The Soviets also said I could not leave the country until the matter was investigated, and I was immediately ordered to report for interrogation to Lefortovo.

Inside Lefortovo, where Daniloff is jailed, your eyes as well as ears told you it is a prison. Heavy wire mesh stretched up stairwells where normally only railings separated stairways, and an oppressive silence pervaded the huge stone building despite its thousands of occupants.

I was not mistreated physically, and even kept notes of the questions and answers to the annoyance of the two KGB interrogators. “This is not a press conference, Mr. Toth!” one exploded angrily, but the level of the vocal abuse got no worse. Trips to the toilet and requests for drinking water were granted, in time and grudgingly, but nonetheless granted.

The initial session dealt with parapsychology and other science-related stories I’d written during three years in Moscow. Then the questioning turned to Shcharansky, who had been arrested four months earlier and charged with anti-Soviet propaganda and espionage, according to Soviet newspapers.

Since all of my relations with Shcharansky were open, I answered all questions openly, and signed an account of the question-and-answer sessions. Besides being told I had no choice--”you do not carry a diplomatic passport,” as my interrogators repeated several times--my hope was that the Soviets would recognize that Shcharansky might be guilty of anti-Soviet propaganda but not of espionage, which carried much more severe penalties. Shcharansky’s role as spokesman for the Helsinki group and for Jewish refuseniks had made anti-Soviet propaganda an obvious charge against him for at least the previous two years.

But in the end, after 16 months of incarceration before his trial, Shcharansky was convicted on both counts, and got 10 years for spying and three years for propaganda. After his release last February, he said the signed accounts of my interrogation were accurate and had played no significant role in his trial.

But Shcharansky’s tragic ordeal in prisons and labor camps was still ahead in mid-June, 1977, while mine was largely over. After three sessions at Lefortovo which lasted a total of 13 hours, our passports were returned by the Soviets, and we were told we were free to leave the Soviet Union, which we promptly did. I was not expelled, and in fact have returned once to Moscow on a reporting assignment.

In retrospect, the most frightening single episode was the careening car ride with the KGB arresting officers. It is standard part of such arrests, I was later told, perhaps deliberately intended to frighten the victim. It did me. All I saw was oncoming trucks and trolley cars as we raced the wrong way down one-way streets and ran red lights at full speed.

Later, when U.S. officials said I might face a jail term of two months to two years, I certainly was anxious about my situation. But it was not the same physical fear as in the car with four large, sweaty KGB agents whose adrenalin had presumably been elevated in anticipation of the arrest.

In retrospect, too, I was furious at the Soviets for arresting me and putting me and my family--our children were 7 through 13 years old then--through the trauma of that final week in Moscow.

The use of such a flimsy pretext as parapsychology to seize me seemed particularly insulting, but at the same time, I was consoled that no one could possibly believe I had been a U.S. spy stealing ESP secrets. No one did, except maybe for the few who believe in parapsychology.

But from the mail I received, and in a few articles, particularly in left-wing publications, the Soviet charge that I had been a spy took brief but disturbing root. And even in more credible publications, the seed planted by the Soviets sprouted and expanded with innuendoes that made me want to sue--until I recognized that it is almost impossible for me as a “public figure” to successfully sue for libel.

I hope that Nick Daniloff’s recollections of his final days in Moscow will be as relatively benign as mine are now, and that Americans will accept, when the Soviets produce no proof to the contrary, that the Kremlin needs no kernel of truth to make espionage charges that serve its political ends.