The Soviets' arrest of U.S. News & World Report correspondent Nicholas Daniloff in Moscow came at a time when the Reagan administration had lowered its voice concerning what President Reagan once called an "evil empire."
Clearly, the administration - and Reagan himself - was eager for a second summit meeting and for a new arms control agreement, perhaps because the president now felt that it was possible for him to enter the history books as a "peacemaker," rather than as one who had presided over an escalation of the arms race and a heating up of the Cold War.
Officials at the White House have pointed out that Reagan's understanding of Soviet behavior changed since his meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva in November 1985. After consulting writer Suzanne Massie, a student of the Soviet Union, Reagan, it was reported, had come to realize the depth of Soviet mistrust of the United States. He also came to appreciate, the reports said, that Gorbachev does not wield absolute power but must contend with differing factions.
Even in the days of his vigorously anti-communist rhetoric, Reagan acted cautiously with regard to the Soviet Union. When he campaigned for the presidency in 1980, he declared that the United States would not sit at the table for arms talks with Moscow as long as Soviet troops remained in Afghanistan, but he slowly altered that view. Now, of course, the United States participates in arms negotiations while Moscow continues to pursue its often-brutal policy of control and repression in Afghanistan.
Jimmy Carter, suddenly understanding something of Moscow's international goals as the invasion of Afghanistan proceeded, placed a grain embargo against Moscow. It was Reagan who, upon taking office, removed it. When a South Korean airliner was shot down, the United States responded with heated rhetoric, but nothing more. From Moscow's viewpoint, it might be argued, U.S. rhetoric had changed dramatically, but U.S. policy remained very much the same.
It's happened before
Moscow's seizure of Daniloff shocked both the Reagan administration and the American people, although such an action was hardly without precedent. Moscow had every reason to believe that, in the end, the United States would trade a real Soviet spy -Gennady F. Zakharov - for an innocent American. After all, it has happened before.
In 1963, for example, Igor A. Ivanov was arrested on espionage charges. Within a few days, Professor Frederic C. Barghoorn, a Yale University scholar on a visit to Moscow, was arrested in a staged encounter similar to that which occurred to Daniloff. A Soviet citizen thrust papers into his hand - which, Moscow declared, were "secrets" and which, as a result, made Barghoorn "a spy." A few days later, Barghoorn was released in response to what was called a "personal appeal from President John F. Kennedy." Shortly thereafter, Ivanov was convicted, sentenced to 20 years in prison, and eventually permitted to return to Moscow. The Soviet Union had achieved its goal.
In 1978, two Soviet employees of the United Nations - Maldik Enger and Rudolf Chernayev - were arrested as spies. The KGB immediately seized a visiting American
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