ONE STEP ACROSS THE WHITE LINE AND SMILING SHCHARANSKY IS FREE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000606090006-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 27, 2010
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: February 12, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/27: CIA-RDP90-00552R000606090006-6
STAT
ARTICLE APPEA
ON PAGE
WASHINGTON TI:IES
1[ February 1986
One step across the white line
and smiling Shcharansky is free
By Bob Haeger
SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
WEST BERLIN - A little man in a big
fur hat and a wide smile stepped across
a white line painted across the middle of
the Glienicke Bridge, the only "spy" who
wasn't in an East-West prisoner ex-
change yesterday.
Anatoly Shcharansky, 38, the
Ukranian-born Jewish computer scien-
tist who has spent nine years in Soviet
jails and camps because of his defiant
agitation on human rights, was carefully
separated from others involved in the spy
swap.
U.S. officials insisted that he come
first because they reject Soviet asser-
tions that he was an American spy. Three
others fresh from East European prisons
followed in his footsteps, then five jailed
in the West on spy charges stepped over
the line from West Berlin to communist
East Germany.
Six nations - the U.S, the Soviet
Union, East and West Germany,
Czechoslovakia and Poland were in-
volved in the trade.
Mr. Shcharansky was one of the unin-
tended victims of the disintegration of
1970s superpower detente.
Born to a Ukrainian Communist Party
member, he became involved in Jewish
affairs during his college years. In 1970,
a year after graduation, he applied to
emigrate but was refused on the grounds
he possessed state secrets because he
worked for an oil and gas company. The
company immediately fired him.
In 1976 he became a founding member
of the unofficial Moscow group that
monitored Soviet observance of the hu-
man rights clauses of the Helsinki
Agreement. But two years later he was
convicted by the Russians of spying for
the United States and sentenced to 13
years in prison and labor camps.
His first year in prison saw Jewish
emigration reach a peak of 51,000. But
Mr. Shcharansky became a symbol to So-
viet "refuseniks;" those Jews denied per-
mission to leave.
When his family last heard from him
in January, the 38-year-old mathemati-
cian and computer expert was in a re-
mote detention camp at Perm, S00 miles
east of Moscow.
He reportedly suffers from recurring
heart, blood circulation and vision prob-
lems resulting from his incarceration
and repeated hunger strikes.
On the last steps of his journey Jo the
West, Mr. Shcharansky was accorded
personal attention by two American am-
bassadors, both of whom towered over
him. The U.S. envoy in East Berlin, Fran-
cis Meehan, met him on the GDR side of
the stripe, then escorted him to Richard
Burt, the ambassador to West Germany.
American officials. made a special
point of separating the human-rights ac-
tivist from the accused espionage agents
released with him. They argue that Mr.
Shcharansky is not and never was a spy
for the U.S. although the Soviets insisted
that he was and have treated him as such.
Fifteen minutes after Mr. Burt arrived at
the bridge, he and Mr. Shcharansky
drove off in the ambassador's Mercedes.
The three others released by the East had
to wait another half hour and traveled by
bus.
The five prisoners freed by the West
were embraced by communist officials
on the bridge and driven away toward
Potsdam.
A U.S. official said the other prisoners
released by the West were:
? Jerzy Kaczmarek, 33, an officer in
the Polish secret service, held in West
Germany since his arrest in March 1985
in connection with spying in the Bremen
area. -
? Yevgeni Semliakov, 39, a Soviet com-
puter specialist who worked at his coun-
try's trade mission in Cologne, West Ger-
many, was sentenced in September 1985
to three years in prison for trying to ob-
tain high technology that is banned for
export to the East bloc.
? Detlef Scharfenort, East German
state security agent, serving a four-year
prison sentence in West Germany since
last June for recruiting students to sp
for his country.
? Karl F Koecher, 52, a native Czec
awaiting trial in the United States o
charges of passing U.S. Central Intelli-
gence Agency documents to the
Czechoslovakian, government while he
worked for the agency in the 1970s.
? Hana Koecher, 42, wife of Karl Koec-
her, arrested along with her husband as
a material witness. An affidavit filed in
court described her as a courier for the
Czechoslovakian intelligence service
from 1975 to 1983, though she has never
been charged with committing a crime.
In addition to Mr. Shcharansky, prison-
ers released by the East bloc were:
? Wolf George Frohn, 41, an East German
sentenced in his country to life imprison-
ment in 1981 after being convicted of spy-
ing for the CIA.
? Jaroslav Jaworski, a Czech sen-
tenced in 1981 to 12 years in prison for
helping East Germans flee to the West.
? Dietrich Nistroy, 50, a West German
sentenced in East Germany in 1982 to life
imprisonment on a conviction of spying
for West Germany's intelligence service.
Bonn government officials said the
three prisoners released to the West were
taken to a U.S. military plane to Munich
for questioning by West German intel-
ligence officers.
Mr. Shcharansky and Ambassador
Burt flew from Berlin's Tempelhof Air-
port to Frankfurt, the first leg of the dis-
sident's journey to Israel, where his wife
has lived for the past dozen years.
This story is based in part on wire service
reports.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/27: CIA-RDP90-00552R000606090006-6