"Nothing to Retract"

The two accused American newsmen passed up their own trial; a movie projector sat where defendants normally do in the seedy Moscow courtroom. While Craig Whitney of the New York Times and Harold Piper of the Baltimore Sun vacationed in the U.S. last week, Soviet Judge Lev Almazov ruled that they had disseminated "libelous information denigrating the honor" of Soviet TV employees. Specifically, they had quoted sources doubting the authenticity of a dissident's confession broadcast on Soviet TV.

The newsmen chose to protect their sources rather than respond in person to charges they dismissed as meritless. But the prosecutor used the trial to blast the "bourgeois" press for pouring "barrels of black paint on a foreign country." And the dissident in question, convicted Georgian Nationalist Zviad Gamsakhurdia, duly appeared in court, accompanied by two guards, viewed the film of his confession, and pronounced it undoctored.

The court ordered both papers to print retractions; both refused. Said Sun Publisher Donald H. Patterson: "There is simply nothing to retract." Each newsman was ordered to pay $1,647 in court costs; the Times was weighing its response, but the Sun decided to pay. Said Managing Editor Paul Banker: "We don't want to appear defiant of the Soviet judicial system, such as it is."

When Whitney and Piper return as planned within the next month, they may be subjected to Soviet harassment. Whether Moscow takes further action may depend on what Washington does. By way of not-so-veiled threat, the State Department summoned a Soviet diplomat to "discuss" the status of the San Francisco bureau of the Soviet press agency, Tass. But the Administration had not decided whether to make any retaliatory gestures beyond the moves that President Carter had made after Dissident Anatoli Shcharansky's conviction: he canceled the sale of a Sperry Univac computer to Tass and placed all American exports of oil technology to the Soviet Union under his personal control.

The Soviets clearly hoped that the Whitney-Piper episode might scare other Western newsmen off the dissidents story. But as U.S. Ambassador Malcolm Toon told some American reporters in Moscow: "Knowing you as I do, I can't think their action will have that effect on you."

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