Spite Fence

During the Christmas holiday season several years ago, Soviet Russia held up the entry visas for diplomatic couriers bringing mail pouches to the U.S. embassy in Moscow. As a result, the Christmas mail came in weeks late. The next time Soviet couriers were to be dispatched, the U.S. was equally slow about their visas. Thereafter there was no more trouble about American couriers entering Moscow.

Last summer the U.S. decided to try the same treatment on the travel restrictions long imposed upon Americans in Moscow (currently: 125 embassy people, five newsmen, one Roman Catholic priest). State, Justice and Defense Department officials worked up the reprisal that, with White House approval, was put into effect last week--a sort of spite fence around some 400 Soviet citizens in the U.S.

In a note to the Soviet embassy, Secretary Dulles barred Soviet travelers from 27% of the U.S., including a 15-mile band along most of the Mexican border and the shores of the Great Lakes. It was no coincidence that Americans are barred from about 30% of the Soviet Union--including a 15-mile band along much of the Soviet border and the shores of the Caspian Sea.

The closed 27% of the U.S. covers a lot of ground: four states, 865 counties, and such unlikely places as North Dakota's Billings County (at last count 380 farms, one general store, one gas station, no military installations and no industry--defense or otherwise). All of New York City was left open except Brooklyn, which was closed. "Brooklyn," said a man at the Turf Club bar on Flatbush Avenue, "is a very strategic place."

Within 24 hours, more than 100 messages reached the State Department from local officials and newspapers contending that their areas were strategic enough to be closed, too. Radio and TV commentators had a field day in the antic hay, pointing out inconsistencies.

Actually, it hardly mattered; the ban was intended less to tighten U.S. internal security than to loosen Soviet restrictions. The U.S. note promised: "This Government would in turn be disposed to reconsider in the same spirit."

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