Embarrassing Exiles

Adding some of the zing to the stones that bounced off U.S. Vice President Nixon's limousine in Caracas a fortnight ago was Venezuelan anger at the U.S. for sheltering ousted Dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez and his tough Security Police boss, Pedro Estrada. Nixon sensibly pointed out that the Venezuelans can have Perez Jimenez back any time they can make out a sound legal case for extraditing him. Last week the U.S. took official action of its own; the Immigration and Naturalization Service instructed its agents to bar Estrada, who left the U.S. a fortnight ago for Europe without first obtaining a re-entry permit. And Immigration planned hearings to decide whether Perez Jimenez should be permitted to stay.

Technically, both Perez Jimenez and Estrada were admitted to the U.S. as "parolees," required to renew their visas every 30 days. Under the letter of the law there was no way to bar their entry, for neither had ever belonged to an organization unfriendly to the U.S., as specified in the McCarran Act. As political refugees, they had merely requested the same asylum that had been previously granted to other Venezuelan politicians, many of whom are now back in their own country. Perez Jimenez stayed close to his floodlighted Miami Beach hideaway (TIME, April 21), broke his seclusion for the first time last week to blame Nixon's violent reception in Caracas on the Communists, and to say that it could never have happened under his regime. "The fact that I was in the U.S. at the time had nothing to do with it," he said. "If I had been in another country they would still have attacked him."

To send Perez Jimenez on his travels will most likely require a formal extradition petition from the Venezuelan government. And despite public anger over the ex-dictator's U.S. refuge, Venezuelan authorities seemed in no hurry to present such a petition.

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