Out of court

GERALD BROOKE TIBOR SZAMUELY

Mr Wilson has returned, as usual, empty- handed from his regular visit to Moscow. This

was only to be expected: it is impossible to think of a single international problem of any consequence that could be resolved—even given the best of will—at a cosy chat between British and Russian politicians. With one exception: British lecturer is left to serve more than two years in a Soviet prison camp for.doing some- thing which is perfectly legal in every civilised country—and to face the even more terrifying prospect of a new trial on cooked-up charges of espionage. Soviet Russia being what it is, the authorities can certainly get him convicted on any charge they choose and for any term they decide.

The British press has protested strongly against the disgraceful and totally illegal Soviet threat to re-try Brooke. But this attitude has not been unanimous. Curiously enough, the only note of dissent has been struck not by some far- out left-wing organ of opinion but by the Sunday Times, still widely (if erroneously) re- garded as a Conservative newspaper. In its issue of 31 December the paper carried an article by Messrs Edmund Stevens and Colin Chap- man under the title 'How big a fish is Gerald Brooke?' While refraining from a direct answer to this question, the article clearly implied that Brooke was actually a much bigger fish than we had been led to believe, and that the new Soviet charges were far from unjustified.

Indeed, the article goes even beyond what the Russians are saying: whereas the now notorious /zvestia article of 28 December at- tempts to buttress its accusations of espionage by reference to proofs that had hitherto never been mentioned (a notebook containing espion- age material in code, and unspecified 'certain other things), the Sunday Times asserts that there is no real need for additional proof, and that the original trial had already contained sufficient evidence to convict Brooke of espion- age. How careless of the KGB and the judges not to have noticed this at the time!

'The Foreign Office,' sags the paper, 'scoff at the suggestion' of Brooke being a genuine spy and thus a fair exchange for the Krogers. 'But,' it continues chillingly, 'examination of the trial record printed in Russian seems to confirm that the Soviet court trying Brooke could have pinned espionage charges on him and made them stick.' Of course they could—after all, Soviet courts have pinned espionage charges, and made them stick, on to hundreds of thou- sands of people, from Trotsky, Bukharin and Marshal Tukhachevsky downwards. True, quite a few of the charges have since been 'unpinned' —a fact that might induce certain reservations about accepting such charges at face value. Yet not even in the days of the infamous Moscow Trials were there western correspondents so trustful as to actually believe that a Soviet court had been too lenient towards the accused.

But the Sunday Times's allegations do not even correspond to the facts. The words `printed in Russian' might convey—to some readers— an impenetrably esoteric connotation, but the Russian language is not really a secret shared exclusively by correspondents of the Sunday Times. According to the paper, Brooke was said to have been loaded with espionage parapher-

nalia concealed in false bottoms and in an album of coloured views of London.' Official Soviet reports listed all these objects: type for an illegal printing-press, lists of addresses, plates for printing leaflets, instructions for re- ceiving coded radiograms, anti-Soviet pamph-

lets and 'emblems.' Unlike the Sunday Times,

the Russians did not regard this as 'espionage paraphernalia.' Not because they were less vigilant—one must be fair to the KGB! —but

because, as the newspaper Trud put it (25 July 1965), this contraband was 'more loathsome than bombs, currency and narcotics,' as it was . . . 'anti-Soviet literature'! The Soviet rulers know very well that subversive literature is far more dangerous to them than any espionage. The prosecutor made this eminently clear when he charged Brooke with having 'brought from Britain and attempted to disseminate hostile literature, containing slanderous material libel- ling the Soviet political and social system' (Pravda, 25 July 1965).

Another quote from the Sunday Times: 'Perhaps the most incriminating angle impli- cating Brooke directly [my italics] in espionage was his testimony that, had he been unable to contact Konstantinov (his Russian contact- man, actually a KGB agent provocateur), he was to take the picture album to the British Embassy in Moscow, to deliver it to the Second Secre- tary, Antony Bishop.' Aha! —we prick up our ears—bad, very bad. But this is how Pravda described the same episode: 'Brooke was told to establish contact with Bishop and to deliver to him those hostile anti-Soviet materials which he might be unable to distribute among Soviet citizens, and which Bishop would then tend back to Britain via the diplomatic bag.' Where then, one wonders, is 'the direct implication in espionage'? The Sunday Times is, of course, free to equate the publication and dissemination of anti-communist literature with espionage— but it should at least make these highly original terms of reference clear to its readers.

I do not usually write letters to the editors of national newspapers regarding the contents of their publications. This case, however, I felt, warranted such an action. Whereupon I wrote -to the editor of the Sunday Times, setting forth the points made above, and drawing his atten- tion to the unfortunate coincidence that the very first mention anywhere of Mr Brooke having actually been a spy appeared in his paper on 17 December, eleven days before the lzvestia trticle, in an interview with the traitor Philby. I also recalled that it was Mr Edmund Stevens, their Moscow correspondent and a co-author of the article in question, who had, shortly after the arrest of Sinyavsky and Daniel, sent a re- assuring dispatch saying that they had already been released—later modified to the equally fantastic assertion that they had only been paroled for the 7 November holiday. Finally, I specifically requested the editor to print my letter.

A few days later I received a courteous reply from Mr Colin Chapman, the paper's Foreign News Editor (and co-author of the Brooke article). Without going into any of the points I had raised, Mr Chapman simply assured me that the article did not contain a justification of the Soviet threat, but 'merely reported what the Russians themselves are saying—that the charges against Brooke, as mentioned in the offi- cial court indictment, were in their view serious enough to warrant a much longer prison sen- tence.' It is certainly nice to know this—but

what the paper had printed was something very different : an unequivocal reference not to what the Russians are now saying about the court indictment, but to an 'examination of the trial record' which 'seems to confirm' these charges.

And, to put me finally at my ease, Mr Chap- man informed me that they had in the past pub- lished several leading articles 'all urging the early release of Gerald Brooke, and criticising the Soviet government for their harshness to- wards him.' He kindly enclosed one such article as illustration. Alas, so far from urging Brooke's release, it actually makes the point that there is no `sure ground for complaint' about the sen- tence, however harsh it may seem to us. The real grievance, it says, is the Russians' inhumane treatment of Brooke in confinement.

The Sunday Times did not print my letter. This is the editor's inalienable right. It is also the paper's right to publish any story it likes. Gerald Brooke is a lonely little man and he has no rights. The Sunday Times can protect its correspondents from criticism, whether justified or not. There is nobody to protect Gerald Brooke, whose life is in jeopardy. And let there

be no mistake: his position is made even worse by the extraordinary zeal with which a British

newspaper supports and even embellishes the false charges of the Russian secret police. The Russians know how to use these things. They have a large experience of political trials—much larger than that of the Sunday Times.