Ruble Rumble

Convicted as planned

One Soviet witness swore she made contact with Defendant Francis Jay Crawford in Room 1821 of Moscow's Intourist Hotel to arrange illegal ruble-dollar exchanges; in fact, Crawford was staying seven floors away in Room 1120. Another Soviet insisted that similar transactions occurred last December, even though Crawford was in the U.S. at the time. Other defendants, meanwhile, urged Crawford to change his plea and admit guilt along with them.

Normally, against such a half-cocked prosecution, even a fledgling Perry Mason ought to be able to spring his client in a fair trial. But Crawford, 37, a service representative for International Harvester, was being tried in a dingy Moscow courtroom on obviously trumped-up charges that he had violated Soviet law by exchanging $8,500 for 20,000 rubles with Soviet black marketeers over a 14-month period. (At the official exchange rate, $8,500 buys 5,903 rubles.) Despite Crawford's protestations of innocence, along with what Western court observers called an unusually spirited defense by his Soviet lawyer, the defendant was found guilty and given a five-year suspended sentence. No less a court observer than Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev had predicted as much in a recent Moscow conversation with visiting California Oilman Armand Hammer.

Presumably the Soviets, by going easy on Crawford and allowing him to leave the country immediately, have paved the way for a possible prisoner swap involving two Soviet U.N. employees who will go on trial in Newark on espionage charges Sept. 27. The Soviets were picked up just three weeks before Crawford's arrest. .

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