Odd Man Out

Until recently the Americanization of Wolf Ladejinsky was a copybook success story. An immigrant, he won an education and renown as a U.S. agricultural expert who helped to stymie the Communists in the Far East. Last week, after 19 years in federal service, he lost his $11,800-a-year job as U.S. agricultural attache in Tokyo. "Mr. Wolf Ladejinsky," the Agriculture Department announced, "does not meet technical standards and security requirements . . ." Ladejinsky, 55, a short, intense, scholarly man who puffs a curved pipe, said quietly: "I came to America when I was 22, with no money, no friends and not knowing the language. I developed to the point where I could represent the United States in Asia, and one of my most effective anti-Communist arguments with Asians has been that my success in the U.S. is a very natural thing to happen in our country. What will I tell them now?" Superior Service. The son of a prosperous rural miller, Wolf Ladejinsky fled his native Ukraine when the Bolsheviks took over. On a dark winter night, he ran across the frozen Dniester River into Rumania, worked for two years saving enough money to emigrate to the U.S.

In New York he washed windows, peddled papers, made shirts, buttonholes and mattresses, became a citizen. In 1930, he says, he worked for about a year as an interpreter at the Soviet trading agency, Amtorg.

All the while he studied. In 1934 he won his M.A. in agricultural economics at Columbia, then landed a federal job at $2,000 a year, slowly worked up. Sent to Japan in 1945 to handle farm policy under General Douglas MacArthur, he engineered one of the occupation's great achievements: the sweeping land reform that gave land on easy terms to nearly 4,000,000 peasants. To learn their problems, he waded into paddyfields and lived in their huts (because of a weak stomach, he avoided peasant fare, ate mostly eggs).

Ladejinsky has given advice on land redistribution in India and on Formosa, where he became a staunch friend of Chiang Kaishek. He venerated MacArthur, who awarded him a Certificate of Achievement. The Japanese government gave him a plaque for his "great and lasting services," and the U.S. Agriculture Department gave him its "Superior Service Award." He pushed U.S. agricultural sales to Japan, amounting last year to $480 million, about one-fourth of all American farm exports.

Security Risk. Ladejinsky lost his job with no warning or explanation. He was in Washington for a temporary mission on Nov. 1 when, under a new law, all U.S. agricultural attaches abroad were transferred from the State Department to the Agriculture Department's jurisdiction.

The Agriculture Department, it turned out, did not want him in its service in Tokyo. Last week the department explained in a stiff public statement attacking Ladejinsky for two reasons: 1) he had never "been close to American farming operations and problems," and 2) he was a security risk.

Ladejinsky, the statement charged, had "required clearance from the Communist Party" to work for Amtorg in 1930. "He may be subject to coercion," because of three sisters living in Soviet Russia. "His trip to the U.S.S.R. in 1939 as a tourist [and] his membership in two Communist-front organizations, as well as information contained in classified reports, [prevent] the necessary security clearance required for the position of attache."

Ladejinsky, whose published anti-Communist writings date back to 1934, answered quietly. He had visited Russia with official U.S. approval, he said, had not heard from his sisters for seven years and had never been "a Communist or followed the Communist line." He had, moreover, been checked and cleared for security several times, most recently last spring. The State Department's rigid security chief, Scott McLeod, had evaluated and dismissed the same charges for which, without any inquiry or questioning, he was blackballed publicly by the Agriculture Department.

His ouster stirred up a storm. From Tokyo U.S. Ambassador John Allison cabled a protest. Author James Michener (Tales of the South Pacific, Sayonara) wrote in a letter to the New York Times: "It is precisely as if Richard Nixon and Adlai Stevenson were to be charged with subversion. Mr. Ladejinsky is known throughout Asia as Communism's most implacable foe and about the only American who has accomplished much in actually stopping the drift of all Asian farmers to Communism. To fire him for security reasons is truly incredible."

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