An Author's Forbidden Passage

Yes, the ebullient and combative author Farley Mowat, 63, is a strident Canadian patriot who has been known to criticize the U.S. Indeed, the nature writer, who has produced more than 25 books, including Never Cry Wolf, once said he would pop his .22-cal. rifle at American military planes because they were carrying nuclear bombs over his beloved country. But is Farley Mowat really a threat to U.S. security? For a while it seemed as if the Reagan Administration thought he might be.

Mowat was at Toronto International Airport last week, waiting to board a flight to Los Angeles for a tour to promote his latest book, Sea of Slaughter, when an immigration agent told him he could not enter the U.S.

Mowat, who has not visited the U.S. since 1968, had been listed in something called the Lookout Book, a register of some 50,000 people who have been declared inadmissible to the U.S. Agents offered to discuss the matter with Mowat on neutral ground at Peace Bridge, which joins Canada and the U.S. at Buffalo. Said Mowat: "I told them, as any red-blooded Canadian would, to stuff it."

A spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Washington said the reasons for the inclusion of Mowat's name in the Lookout Book are confidential but they had to do with the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act. Sections of that law bar admission of individuals who might commit acts that would "endanger the welfare, safety or security of the U.S." or who have been listed as Communists, anarchists or spies. Mowat may enjoy voicing his opinions rather loudly, but, says one friend, "plants and animals are what he feels strongly about."

"There has been a significant increase under this Administration of overtly political exclusions," says Wade Henderson of the American Civil Liberties Union. Last week, for example, officials delayed granting a visa to Nicaragua's Minister of Culture, Ernesto Cardenal Martinez, a poet and Roman Catholic priest, who was scheduled to speak at the University of Kentucky. Democratic Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts has proposed a bill that would end exclusions for purely ideological reasons. Under Frank's bill, the Government would have to prove charges rather than simply assert them.

INS officials argue that the law is being applied no differently under Reagan. Tens of thousands of potential visitors have been turned away from the U.S. during the past two decades. They include luminaries such as Carlos Fuentes, the Mexican writer, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian novelist and Nobel laureate. According to one INS official, even former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau was once listed in the Lookout Book.

Mowat was characteristically cantankerous about the episode. Said he: "I want a letter of apology from Reagan delivered on Air Force One. And then I want Air Force One to fly me to Los Angeles. Otherwise, the hell with them." Savoring the situation, he laughed and offered a conciliatory gesture. "Actually, being a good Canadian, I'm prepared to compromise. I'll settle for a letter from the Vice President and a Learjet." In the end, the Reagan Administration offered neither, but it did finally grant a temporary "parole" of the exclusion; Mowat, objecting to the restrictions he would still face under the offer, said he "would not touch that with a ten-foot pole."