Unreasoned Reason

Without letting the word get out, the U.S. State Department last February expelled two Soviet diplomats for "espionage and improper activities." Sent packing were Commander Igor Amosov, assistant naval attachee, and Alexander Kovalyov, second secretary of the U.N. delegation. In May, under equally secret circumstances, the U.S. threw out another Soviet diplomat, Lieut. Colonel Leonid Pivnev, assistant air attachee. The State

Department's unreasoned reason for the secrecy: it hoped that hushing up the expulsions would prevent Russian retaliation.

Last week the men of State learned how naive they had been. In Moscow the Russian government announced that it was expelling two assistant U.S. attachees, Lieut. Colonel Howard Felchlin (Army) and Major Walter McKinney (Air), for "espionage work." The Soviet newspaper Trud had accused them of spying on a train trip across Siberia eleven months ago. After the Moscow announcement, State Department officials rushed forward to announce that they had done the first expelling, albeit secretly, and that Moscow's action was obviously retaliation.

Still a closely guarded secret: details of the Soviet diplomats' "espionage and improper activities." Moscow, with its usual flimflamming approach, had given details on the American officers' "espionage work" --notes and photos of such things as airfields and gasoline dumps. The U.S.

State Department held to the position that it would not tell what the expelled Russians were up to, although the FBI obviously had watched them carefully outside the walls of the Russian embassy.

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