David Goldfarb; Resisted KGB on Framing Journalist

Soviet “refusenik” David Goldfarb, who successfully resisted KGB pressure to frame a U.S. journalist as a spy but then was allowed to emigrate to the United States in 1986, died Saturday of heart failure at age 71, his son said Monday.

Goldfarb died of heart failure at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington but had lived in New York City.

Frail and in ill health before he was allowed to leave the Soviet Union after the intervention of American industrialist Armand Hammer, Goldfarb was a biologist who had tried to emigrate to Israel in 1984. That was after he exposed what he said was an attempt by the secret police to help them frame American journalist Nicholas Daniloff.

Hammer, chairman of Occidental Petroleum Corp., has often acted as an intermediary in U.S.-Soviet affairs.

Goldfarb was a pioneer in molecular genetics who said he had been told by the KGB that he and his family could fly to Israel if he agreed to hand Daniloff incriminating documents. After he refused, his visa was revoked and he was accused of seeking to smuggle national security material out of the country. That accusation was later dropped but Goldfarb still was denied permission to leave.

Daniloff, a U.S. News & World Report correspondent, confirmed that scenario after Goldfarb was safely on U.S. soil and praised the white-haired geneticist, who suffered from diabetes and heart problems and had had his left leg removed, as “one of the most admirable men I have ever known.”

Most recently Goldfarb had been a visiting scholar at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.