USSR/U.S. DEFECTOR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000605790001-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 24, 2010
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: July 8, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/24: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605790001-5
NBC NIGHTLY NEWS
8 July 1984
USSR/U.S. PALMER: A reminder tonight of an ear
DEFECTOR country first became concerned about a possible nuclear
confrontation with the Soviet Union. It's much like the
plot of spy novel. The scenerio? Espionage, panic, a
man's flight from the United States to Russia, where he
remained until his death in 1979. Bill Brown has a report
BROWN: In 1950, this couple, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
were arrested for espionage, giving secrets of the atomic
bomb to the Soviet Union. Three years later, they were
executed for that crime. At the same time, the FBI was
investigating dozens of others who were also possibly
involved with spying for the Russians. JACK\O'TOOLE
(retired FBI agent): After the Rosenbergs were picked up,
and many people were interviewed in connection with that,
after a period of time, people started vanishing in the
sense that we would find later that they had gone through
Mexico, many of them, and gone behind the Iron Curtain,
and some gone to the Soviet Union.
BROWN: Jack O'Toole, a retired FBI agent, worked on the
Rosenberg case. O'TOOLE: It was more or less, I would
say, a pattern of panic that caused them to do these
things.
BROWN: Alfred Sarant, seen in this FBI mug shot, was an
engineer, a close friend of the Rosenbergs. Interrogated
by the FBI, he was never charged with a crime, but he fled
the United States and was last spotted in Mexico. For 30
years, no one, not even the FBI, knew the whereabouts of
Alfred Sarrant, and for 30 years, no one, not even his
family, ever heard from him. They own this Cadillac
agency in Farmingdale, L.I. Dr. Mark *Cuchman, an emigre
Russian teacher at Harvard University, is a student of
Soviet scientific history. Interviewing one Soviet emigre
scientist, he made a very strange discovery.
DR.\MARK\CUCHMAN: The fact that his boss in the Soviet
Union was an American-educated engineer, whose name in the!
Soviet Union was *Phillipe Gigorivich Styros.
BROWN: Dr. Cuchman learned that Styros helped develop the
first computers for Russia; computers used by the Soviets
for missile guidance systems. Intrigued, this professor
turned detective, began searching Russian periodicals for
information about Styros, an American with Greek origins.
Just by chance, Cuchman read a book about the Rosenberg
case, and he came across the name of Alfred Sarant,
another Greek American. What if the disappeared American
engineer wanted by the FBI and the famous Soviet military
designer were one and the same. CUCHMAN: I got a
photograph of American engineer, electrical engineer,
Alfred Sarant, who was a friend of Julius Rosenberg, and I
showed this photograph, first to his American colleagues,
and he looked at the photograph and said, 'Oh yes, that's
Alfred Sarant, my next door neighbor. I remember him
quite well.' And then I showed the same photograph to a
Soviet emigre. 'Oh, that's Phillipe Gregorivich Styros,
my Soviet boss.'
Continued
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/24: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605790001-5
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/24: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605790001-5
BROWN: What was his life like in the Soviet Union?
CUCHMAN: Very unhappy and very difficult on the personal
and ideological level. I believe that his ideal of
socialism suffered a very severe blow when he came face to
face with Soviet social-reality, but it was too late. Thei
sin was already irreversible after he crossed the border.
BROWN: Bill Brown, NBC News, Farmindale, L.I.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/24: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605790001-5