Press attache in Moscow.

AuthorRichmond, Yale

Editor's Note: A former Cold Warrior provides us with another glimpse into the world of diplomacy in a bi-polar world. -Ed.

When our Press Attache in Moscow completed his tour of duty in summer 1968, and the embassy's Press and Cultural Section was cut one position in the worldwide so-called BALPA (Balance of Payments Program), the global reduction of US personnel abroad, I assumed his duties. They included maintaining liaison with the twenty-six US correspondents accredited to Moscow, and acting as embassy spokesman.

The US correspondents were a colorful crowd. Among them were such Moscow veterans as Henry Shapiro of UPI who had arrived in Moscow as a law student in 1933 and worked there as a correspondent, with a few interruptions, from 1934 until his retirement in 1973. Another veteran was Edmund Stevens, a stringer for the London Sunday Times, who had won a Pulitzer Prize in 1950 for his coverage of the Soviet Union for the Christian Science Monitor. Through the American correspondents it was possible to meet many interesting personalities, Russian and American.

Stevens and his Russian wife, who dealt in underground art, would throw big parties at their palatial home where it was possible to meet prominent people from the cultural scene. At one such evening, I offered a ride home to a couple from the Moscow film studio who lived in one of the big apartment buildings reserved for the favored few. When they invited my wife and me up for a drink, we accepted and had a most illuminating insider overview of the Russian film industry.

It was the spokesman's job to respond to inquiries from the press and to ensure that the embassy spoke with one voice on matters of fact and policy. That required handling inquiries from US correspondents, determining the embassy position, and passing it to the press. The press attache was also responsible for the weekly Friday afternoon background briefings that Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson held for the US press corps. Always well attended, they served to give US correspondents an insider's view of embassy and Washington thinking on US-Soviet relations.

However, there were times when information had to be withheld. Such instances arose, for example, when Soviet authorities had detained a US citizen, and the embassy was working to obtain his release and get him out of the Soviet Union without creating an incident that could escalate to a confrontation between the two superpowers. And therein lies an amusing...

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