Cards Called

Among the 750 Washington reporters who hold White House press cards, two are correspondents for the Russian official news agency, Tass, and one is a correspondent for Manhattan's Communist Daily Worker. Three weeks ago, to illustrate an article titled "Where Russians Can Go in the U.S.," weekly U.S. News & World Report printed an almost full-sized picture of the White House card along with the cards for the congressional press galleries, the State Department and the White House Correspondents Association. * Last week presidential Press Secretary James C. Hagerty announced that reproduction of the cards in the magazine was a breach of security. As a result, said Hagerty, the cards will be called in and altered. Hagerty's order, urged by the Secret Service, was not aimed primarily at preventing Communists from forging the cards, since they already are legally entitled to three of the four. The Secret Service was afraid that crackpots, confidence men, or would-be assassins could easily forge the cards from the picture, thus use them to gain entrance to the White House or to open doors elsewhere.

* U.S. News was wrong: no Russians hold State Department press cards.

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