THE MOSCOW SUMMIT : Reporter’s Notebook From Helsinki : Visitors Get to Try Finns’ ‘Ordeal by Steam’

Vice President George Bush once appeared “naked and unashamed” on the shores of the Baltic Sea during a 1983 visit to the capital of Finland.

It was hardly scandalous, however, since Bush was in the buff only while he was sampling a traditional Finnish sauna, according to a document proudly displayed here.

The diploma issued to VIP visitors such as Bush certified he was a “clean-living friend” who was duly “washed in all thoroughness by a lady of the bath.”

“True sauna will be in my memory until I die,” Bush wrote in a thank you note to the head of the Sauna Society.

A traditional Finnish sauna begins with a relaxing interlude seated on a wooden bench in the dry heat of the sauna itself, during which the skin is gently beaten and stimulated with bundles of birch tree branches. Then a “lady of the bath” scrubs the guest from head to toe, often using a coarse-textured sponge mitten. Finally, the “saunateer” rushes outside and plunges into a nearby lake or, in this case, the chill waters of the Baltic.

‘Knight of the Sauna’

The vice president was preceded as a “knight of the sauna” by such royal visitors as Prince Phillip of Britain and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands.

Correspondents accompanying President Reagan on a pre-summit visit to Helsinki discovered Bush’s “ordeal by steam” when they were taken to the same public sauna.

According to the White House, Reagan, spending most of his Helsinki visit at a government guest house on the outskirts of the city, restricted his sampling of this northernmost capital’s delights to a stroll with First Lady Nancy Reagan along an inlet of the Gulf of Finland. But his quarters contain a private sauna. It was not immediately disclosed whether the Reagans used it.

The importance of the sauna in the daily life of Finland cannot be overlooked. In this country of 5 million, people, there are 1.5 million saunas, and the average Finn spends three hours a week enjoying them.

Saunas aside, Helsinki offered a fitting locale for the President to make his final preparations for the first visit to the Soviet Union by an American President in 14 years and his first such journey.

Finland, independent since 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution, has spent the post-World War II era living and prospering as a neutral nation on the Soviet Union’s western border. Leningrad is only 175 miles away, and Moscow is only 90 minutes by jetliner.

But Helsinki’s proximity to the Soviet Union also posed unique problems to the White House planners who preceded Reagan here--namely, concerns about protecting the extremely sensitive information being discussed in last-minute meetings between President Reagan and Secretary of State George P. Shultz, National Security Adviser Colin L. Powell and others before the summit begins Sunday inside the Kremlin.

“All the things you have to worry about in Moscow, you have to be more careful about in Helsinki,” a White House official said, referring specifically, if diplomatically, to electronic spying.

This, he said, was because there is a psychological tendency for Westerners to talk more freely outside the Iron Curtain if their next destination is such a city as Moscow, where electronic eavesdropping devices are considered more-than-likely companions to any conversation.

So, the official said, “we’ve established a location for the President to do briefings in a secure atmosphere.”

A “secure tank” was built on the grounds of Reagan’s guest house for particularly sensitive conversations. The single room, said to be large enough to seat about a dozen people, is shielded to guard against electronic eavesdropping from hidden electronic bugs planted inside and from extremely sensitive antennas aimed at its walls from anywhere on the outside.

A similar structure drew attention in early 1987 in Moscow, after it was disclosed that Soviet agents had penetrated the U.S. Embassy there and planted listening devices.

Here in Helsinki, U.S. communications officials apparently also went to considerable pains to protect the guest house itself from internal bugs--to the reported delight of Finland’s profit-minded telephone company.

Reagan and his senior aides are routinely provided with U.S. telephones, hooked up to a White House switchboard run by the U.S. Army Signal Corps, whenever they travel. They provide instantaneous communications with Washington and preclude the possibility that an electronic bug, deposited in existing equipment in advance, will pick up telephone conversations.

In Helsinki, such a communications hookup was installed before Reagan arrived. But the U.S. Signal Corps took the additional step of removing the entire network of Finnish telephones from the guest house, presumably to provide one additional measure of security against telephone-implanted eavesdropping devices that can pick up even whispered conversations in a room, sources said.

The Finnish telephone company is being paid not only for removing the old telephone lines but for reinstalling the new ones.

Reagan’s preparations for the summit have included weeks of briefings, a review of top secret position papers, round-table discussions with Soviet experts from the government and academia, and Gorbachev’s own writing.

Topping all that off, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater disclosed that Reagan completed reading Gorbachev’s book, “Perestroika,” before setting out for the summit. Fitzwater said Reagan began reading the book late last year and had gotten halfway through it by the time Gorbachev visited Washington in December.

Fitzwater said he had no specific comment or reaction to the book from Reagan, whose tastes in recreational reading favor the western novels of Louis L’Amour. “Perestroika” outlines the Soviet leader’s ideas for restructuring and invigorating the stagnant Soviet economy.

While American journalists have spent much of their time pursuing White House officials for scraps of news during the Helsinki stop, Finnish reporters have turned their attention to American journalists--particularly such widely recognized figures as ABC News correspondent Sam Donaldson.

Donaldson, in an interview printed in the newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet and dutifully reported in the U.S. Embassy news summary Friday, declared, “Reagan is like a child, but we love him.”

The news summary noted dryly: “Donaldson assures that neither he nor his colleagues dislike President Reagan--because it would be impossible to do so--even though they don’t always like his decisions.”

On Thursday, scheduled as a day of rest for Reagan after his nearly eight-hour transatlantic journey, collecting news about the President’s first day in Finland came down to this: a strolling news conference by spokesman Fitzwater, who was desperately trying to escape from reporters.

He was spotted leaving his offices on the third floor of the Hotel Inter-Continental in downtown Helsinki, and by the time an elevator arrived, he was being questioned about whether one of the five meetings scheduled between Reagan and Gorbachev had been canceled. (It was).

Even the thick, long cigar that Fitzwater carried like a magic wand in the elevator failed to ward off the questioning, and the pack of reporters who followed him through the lobby was joined by two American television network camera crews.

He headed out into the parking lot as the questioning turned to the possibility that Reagan would be forced to cancel a visit he plans to make to the Danilov Monastery in Moscow to draw attention to his aim of encouraging increased human rights--and in particular greater religious freedom--in the Soviet Union. (So far, the monastery visit remains on the schedule.)

But the car and chauffeur that were supposed to be waiting for Fitzwater--in this case, his getaway car--were nowhere in sight.

As one of his deputies, Roman Popadiuk, searched in vain for any vehicle that would extricate the President’s spokesman, and Fitzwater reversed his path from one end of the parking lot to the other, the questions turned to reports that Soviet dissidents invited to meet with Reagan in Moscow were being detained by Soviet officials. (Fitzwater said he was unaware of the reports.)

Eventually, the missing car and driver came into view and Fitzwater, smiling at the comedy of his strolling news conference, made his escape.