DIPLOMATIC TIT-FOR-TAT GAME MAY NEVER BE THE SAME

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000201100035-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 6, 2010
• Sequence Number: 35
• Publication Date: October 22, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/06: CIA-RDP90-00806R000201100035-9
~1RT1i:L~ pc cAo , BALTIMORE SUN
22 October 1986
Diplomatic tit-for-tat game
may never be the same
WASHINGTON - In the foreign
service, the term "PNG" is used as
both noun and verb: The State De-
partment yesterday declared five So-
viet diplomats PNG. In the vernacu-
lar, it PNG'd them.
PNG stands for persona non gra-
ta. It describes someone who is not
welcome in the host country. whose
diplomatic status will no longer be
recognized.
What the department did was
kick the Soviet officials out of this
country for conduct "incompatible
with their official status." In the ver-
nacular, they were spies.
The United States and the Soviet
Union have been playing the PNG
game for many years, sticking to
well understood rules. another rules
well
could be summed up
known neo-Latin phrase, tit for tat.
But now our side has torn up the
rules, and the game may never be
the same: Department
Yesterday. the State Depart
also told an additional 50 Soviet dip-
lomatic personnel to go home with-
out the formality of being declared
PNG. And that move came after yet
another 25 were sent home from
their jobs with the United Nations in
New York.
Seldom in the past has either side
ordered home diplomatic personnel
en masse unless they were tied to
some newly uncovered spy ring or
operation - a specific list of people
bounced for specific offenses.
I cannot get into this field without
retelling how in 1963,1 woke up one
day in Moscow to find that 10 of my
friends and acquaintances in the
Anglo-American community were
PNG'd at once.
The KGB had broken the Oleg
Penkovsky case, the most successful
known Western penetration of Mos-
cow's secrets since the Cold War be-
gan. Overnight, diplomats allegedly
linked to Penkovsky were sent
home.
Greville Wynne, the British busi-
nessman who was Penkovsky's
chief contact, had no diplomatic im-
munity, so he was tried and sent to
prison. Penkovsky himself, who had
passed data that enabled U.S. planes
to spot Soviet missiles being erected
in Cuba, was convicted and execut-
ed.
Among other things. Penkovsky
was accused of smuggling super-se-
cret microfilm by enclosing it in
chocolates he offered to the child of
my British neighbors. the Chis-
holms. He slipped it to the boy as he
played with his mother watching at
4 playground just around our corner.
For a while, our tight little West-
ern community was bemused by the
very idea that that nice Janet Chis-
holm and her husband. Rory, the
British consul, could have been a
key link in the Penkovsky chain. But
we knew very well that any man or
woman at the embassy might have
been doing such double duty.
So indeed we assume that most
Soviet citizens on official business
abroad are intelligence agents under
cover. Each side has tolerated these
facts of life while occasionally re-
sponding sharply when its adver-
sary gets too aggressive - or gets
caught.
In routine practice, each time ei-
ther side sends a spy or two home.
the other side responds the same
way. But through the years, this in-
formal rule grandfathered in a heavy
Soviet advantage, with many more
Soviet diplomats assigned to Wash-
ington than we were allowed in Mos-
cow. Not only that, but Moscow sent
a huge contingent to work at the
United Nations.
This imbalance has annoyed U.S.
officials through the whole post-
World War 11 era, but in the interest
of civil relations they never forced a
change. They went along playing tit
for tat, as with the PNG'd five sent
home yesterday. Those were in re-
sponse to five Americans sent home
from Moscow, which were in re-
sponse to the 25 Soviets sent home
from the United Nations.
Through all the earlier passing
salvos, the basic lopsidedness of the
equation remained: The Soviets had
about 50 more personnel here and
in their San Francisco consulate
than the United States has in Mos-
cow and its Leningrad consulate.
With yesterday's order, the adminis-
tration has moved to correct that sit-
uation in one sudden sweep.
ERNEST B. FURGURSON
CHEF OF THE SUN WASHVGTON BUREAU
Speculation about why it stepped
so boldly at this moment runs in
three directions:
1. Still working with disclosures
from defector-redefector Vitaly Yur-
chenko, U.S. authorities may indeed
have uncovered a major Soviet intel-
ligence operation, which will come to
light gradually.
2. More likely, the White House
wants to show the Kremlin that de-
spite rushing close to questionable
agreements in Iceland, it has not
softened its basic anti-Soviet stance.
That would buttress a tough U.S. ne-
gotiating posture as arms talks pro-
ceed at Geneva. Switzerland.
3. Still more likely, Mr. Reagan's
advisers have noted that opinion
polls since the Iceland meeting give
him high ratings for not backing
down on his Strategic Defense Initia-
tive. Strong anti-communist ges-
tures almost always play well with
the electorate, so with elections two
weeks away, the administration de-
cided to take this long-overdue step
at a time when it might boost Mr.
Reagan's efforts to hold control of
the Senate.
The only certainty is that though
the rules have been scrapped, the
game goes on. There will be more tit
for tat. Count on it.
STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/06: CIA-RDP90-00806R000201100035-9