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Though the Justice Department had a strong case against the Russians, the decision to prosecute them (rather than hustle them out of the country) was made by the White House. "The Soviets were agitated, really ripped off," one State Department official said. "They accused us of changing the rules of the game." Indeed, the U.S. had deliberately violated an informal understanding between Soviet and American intelligence services that each other's spies will be discreetly ferreted out of the country when they are caught. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko complained angrily to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance about the indictment of the spies, threatening that "two can play this game."
In addition to brandishing Peterson's transgressions, the Soviets have coolly demanded indemnification for damage done to their equipment by American security officers who had discovered KGB devices bugging the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Furious about the U.S. discovery of the eavesdropping equipment and subsequent news stories about it, the Soviets countered by declaring that the Americans had actually been using the apparatus to spy on the Russians.
The spy war intensified last week when the Soviets arrested F. Jay Crawford, 37, a Moscow representative of the International Harvester Co., and accused him of selling foreign currency to Soviet citizens at speculative prices—a charge that could cost him eight years in a forced-labor camp plus a five-year term of exile in the U.S.S.R. Crawford, a genial Alabaman, was driving to a cocktail party with his fiancée, U.S. Embassy Secretary Virginia Olbrish, when policemen accosted him at a traffic light and dragged him from his car. When his fiancée resisted the cops, she was bruised in the scuffle. Late last week, U.S. Consul Clifford Gross was allowed to visit Crawford at Moscow's Lefortovo Prison. Crawford appeared to be in good health but was distraught. U.S. officials insist that the Soviet allegations are trumped up. "There is no indication that he was into anything that wasn't completely aboveboard," said a senior State Department official.
Crawford's arrest worried American businessmen in Moscow. Many fear that another representative of a U.S. firm will be arrested by the KGB so that they can have two Americans on hand to trade for the two Soviet spies held in the U.S. Washington has been adamant in advance about rejecting such a trade. Meanwhile, American firms doing business with the U.S.S.R. were reassessing the pros and cons of U.S.-Soviet trade.
Many were alarmed by the fact that the Russians picked on International Harvester, which has sold the Soviets more than $300 million worth of much needed heavy construction equipment and gas turbines. Moreover, Harvester's board chairman, Brooks McCormick, has been one of the U.S.'s most active boosters of trade between the two countries. Declared a White House aide: "Crawford's arrest is not the kind of move designed to inspire confidence in the American business community."