Casey at the Bat

Squat, rumpled Mikhail Fedorov, 32, boss of the four-man Washington staff of Russia's Tass, is an aeronautical engineer, and worked at his profession in the U.S.S.R. When he came to Washington three years ago, Fedorov insisted that he also had some training with Tass in Moscow. But most Washington newsmen have come to the conclusion that he knows little of the newspaper business, though they concede that his engineering training is handy for the kind of intelligence reports done by Tass for Russian officials.

Last week Alexander F. ("Casey") Jones, president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and executive editor of the Syracuse (N.Y.) Herald-Journal, raised a question: Just what is Fedorov up to in Washington?

At a foreign policy conference at Colgate University, Casey Jones charged: "Fedorov is not a newspaperman at all . . . He was sent to Washington from Moscow . . . not for his knowledge of America or his journalistic skill, but because of his Politburo training . . . I ask [an] investigation of Fedorov."

What did Fedorov think of such attacks? "It stinks," he said. "Up to now I thought that the American reporters had treated me very well."

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