U.S. Defector Tells of Political Role, Threats

An American scientist said Friday that he and his family sought asylum in the Soviet Union because his commitment to socialism caused them to be harassed and threatened with death in the United States.

Arnold Lockshin, 47, a cancer researcher from Houston, Tex., told a news conference he once was a Communist Party organizer and twice took time out from his scientific career for full-time political activity.

“In Texas, to stay alive, we didn’t broadcast that,” he said. “Both my wife and I have been for socialism all of our adult lives.”

He said the family chose to move to the Soviet Union because his wife and his Russian-speaking Jewish mother visited the Soviet Union on separate trips in the 1970s and liked what they saw.

Lockshin’s appearance with his wife, Lauren, and their three children came on a day of varied Soviet moves apparently designed to deflate Western criticism of Moscow’s human rights policies at the superpower summit in Iceland.

Americans Criticized

The official Tass news agency said that an Estonian woman who joined her husband in the United States 18 months ago had returned to the Soviet Union and criticized Americans as preoccupied with money.

A Soviet newspaper reported on Ukrainians returning to their homeland from the West, and Tass published Kremlin allegations of anti-Semitism in the United States.

Lockshin reiterated claims publicized by Soviet media that he was harassed by the FBI and CIA for his political beliefs.

He said the harassment went on “for many years, but this year was a bad year.”

“There were harassments and physical threats. Complete strangers would drive across blocks and threaten to beat me up,” he said. “Death threats were given to us in the mail; our home was broken into.”

‘Obscene’ Phone Calls

Lockshin’s wife “repeatedly received disgusting, obscene, provocative and life-threatening phone calls,” he said. “She was accosted by an individual identifying himself as an ex-Green Beret . . . with an armed weapon.”

He did not say when the alleged threats were made. He contended the harassment must have been organized by the FBI, but offered no proof.

The State Department has called Lockshin’s allegations of official harassment absurd. They said he was free to live where he chose.

His wife sat beside him but rarely spoke. Their three children, Jennifer, 15, Jeffrey, 11, and Michael, 5, also attended but did not speak.

The family had just come from a Kremlin meeting with President Andrei A. Gromyko. Lockshin said Gromyko assured him he can continue his scientific work in Moscow.

‘Now Among Friends’

Tass said Gromyko told the Lockshins they “are now among friends,” and that “those in the U.S.S.R. fully understand the attitudes and thoughts of the Lockshins.”

Lockshin said his employers at St. Joseph Hospital in Houston told him not to campaign against the “Star Wars” program of researching a space-based missile defense.

He said he and his wife went to the Soviet U.N. mission in New York on Aug. 13 to ask about moving to the Soviet Union, and were told to approach the Soviet Consulate in Washington.

Upon returning to his Houston laboratory the next day, he found “that every single experiment that I had going against cancer was destroyed,” and he was fired, he said.

The hospital has said he was fired because of his performance, not his political views.

Request for Asylum

Lockshin said officials at the Soviet Consulate in Washington were “rather disbelieving at first” when he requested political asylum. The request was granted Sunday and the family arrived in Moscow on Wednesday, he said.

He said he did not know where they would live and whether they would seek Soviet citizenship.

Tass reported from Tallinn, Estonia, that a Soviet woman who left for the United States 18 months ago returned on a visit and decided to stay. It quoted Irene Leisberg as saying that Americans talk “the whole time about money, at breakfast, at lunch, on the weekend.”