Soviet Hit List?

Western newsmen are hassled

Since his arrival in Moscow 2 1/2 years ago, U.S. News & World Report Correspondent Robin Knight has been regularly denounced by the official news agency Tass and a number of daily newspapers, especially for his articles on racism in the U.S.S.R. The weekly Soviet New Times called Knight "a boot-level journalist," and a Soviet journalism review included him in a "gallery of rogues."

According to Knight, his hosts ultimately were unable to confine their hostility to the printed page. While visiting the city of Tashkent, 1,800 miles southeast of Moscow, Knight and his wife Jean went to a tearoom to help celebrate their Intourist guide's 29th birthday. Robin Knight was given a drink that, he says, made him feel "very ill and out of control." He staggered outside and passed out. Meantime, Knight later said, one of the four Soviet men present told Jean that her husband had "sold" her to them, and another began to paw her. She broke loose and managed to get Robin back to their hotel, where police threatened to arrest him and tried to get Jean to sign a statement accusing her husband of drunken and disorderly conduct. She refused, and the couple eventually were allowed to return to their room. Robin was unconscious for much of the night, trembling violently and vomiting. The next day he was well enough to travel, and the couple returned to Moscow.

Last week a U.S. embassy represenative delivered a "strong protest" to the Soviet Foreign Ministry over the incident. (He did so on behalf of U.S. News, since the Knights are both British subjects.) The

Soviets rejected the protest and, according to Tass, charged that Knight started a drunken brawl and later concocted the story about his wife being molested. The Soviets, meanwhile, lodged a protest of their own, accusing Peter Harm, Moscow correspondent of Business Week, of vandalizing his hotel room in Ashkhabad two months ago. Hann denied the charge.

Western analysts were surprised by the timing of the harassment of the Knights and Hann. It came during a delicate phase of the SALT negotiations, a record rate of Jewish emigration and a visit to Moscow by a group of U.S. Congressmen that ended last week, and just before the dramatic spy-dissidents swap. But foreign correspondents in Moscow have long been the targets of petty, and occasionally serious, persecution. Some have been roughed up by police, subjected to threatening interrogation, and accused of working for the CIA. Others have been targets of whispered charges of debauchery and homosexuality. Last summer the New York Times's Craig Whitney and the Baltimore Sun's Harold Piper were tried for "slander and defamation" for quoting a dissident's family as saying they thought his televised confession looked fake. After the reporters refused to publish retractions, they were each fined $72.50 plus court costs of $1,647.

In many cases, correspondents are harassed toward the end of their tours, apparently as a warning to their replacements--and to their remaining colleagues--not to make trouble. Says Knight, who is scheduled for transfer to South Africa early this summer: "We all know the risks when we come here, but involving my wife is inexcusable." Half a dozen American correspondents will be leaving Moscow this summer, and many are wondering if they, or their families, may be next on the Soviets' hit list.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.