The Wolves

With hundreds of key operators working under diplomatic immunity in foreign embassies, the Soviet MVD's foreign-intelligence section has long been the world's biggest and busiest espionage organization. But allied counter-espionage agencies are beginning to box in the Russians. Since 1950 the U.S. has declared 13 Soviet diplomatic employees persona non grata. The practice has spread to Holland, Denmark and Sweden, which have recently demanded the withdrawal of suspected Soviet embassy spies. Last month the FBI, arresting Jacob Albam and Myra and Jack Soble on charges of being Soviet agents (TIME, Feb. 4), hinted that it had evidence of a vast spy network "involving Soviet officials."

No one expected Russia's MVD to take this kind of treatment lying down. In December the Soviet U.N. delegate laid the basis for a counterattack by charging that the U.S. was using subversive tactics in the satellite nations and Russia. While the U.N. deferred the debate, the MVD planned other reprisals. A fortnight ago the Soviet Foreign Office ordered the expulsion of two U.S. assistant Army attaches from the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Last week it followed this up by demanding the withdrawal of two U.S. assistant naval attaches. To substantiate its clumsy charge that the naval aides were spies, the MVD had arranged for them to be assaulted by a civilian mob in an open Leningrad street, under pretense that they had been caught red-handed in subversive activity against the Soviet regime.

The MVD's biggest surprise reprisal was strictly a TV spectacular. Called to Moscow's House of Journalists one morning last week, 200 foreign and Communist correspondents found batteries of kleig lights and TV cameras focused on four pale men surrounded by a curious array of pistols, explosives, maps. Soviet currency, miniature radio transmitters, parachutes and poison pills. Soviet Foreign Ministry Press Chief Leonid Ilyichev identified the four men as Russian refugees, recruited as spies by the U.S. and parachuted into the Soviet Union in 1954 and 1955.

As the TV cameras bore down on their white faces, each man in turn told his fantastic tale. Said one: "In order to turn us into obedient servants and make us forget our love for our mother country, the Americans encouraged drinking, gambling and bad language among us and even took us to Munich to visit immoral houses to enjoy ourselves." Beetle-browed Press Chief Ilyichev tied the show to the Soviet maneuver in the U.N. with a long commercial charging the U.S. with waging a "secret war" of subversion and espionage against the peace-loving Soviet Union. Said Ilyichev: "When you live with wolves, you must be a wolf."

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