ESPIONAGE Russian at the Back Door
A widespread U.S. suspicion that the U.N. is used as a convenient back door by spies and other subversive characters was strengthened last week. ¶The U.S. delegation to the U.N. announced that it had requested the dismissal of a high Russian staff member for attempted espionage. The accused: Nikolai Skvortsov, 39, special assistant to U.N.'s Assistant Secretary General for Security Council Affairs, Constantin Zinchenko. Skvortsov never seemed to do much work; he just spent an unusual amount of time chatting with non-Russians. The State Department learned a year ago that Skvortsov was engaged in espionage. While Skvortsov was visiting Moscow last summer, the U.S. told Secretary General Trygve Lie that it hoped he would not be allowed to return. ¶The McCarran Committee learned from State Department officials that since 1949 the Department has told the U.N. that 40 of the 1,794 Americans on the U.N.'s staff were bad security risks. Twenty-six had been fired by Lie. Fourteen others were still on the U.N. payroll because, said Lie, the State Department had not given him any evidence supporting the charges. Senator Alexander Wiley, a member of the U.S. delegation, accused State of "willful blindness" in the matter, chided Lie for not looking into the employees' record on his own, and said that the U.S. might withhold money for U.N. unless a sound U.N. security plan is devised.