Savoring Sweet Liberty

By Richard Stengel

It was the final stage in his transition from a man who reports the news to one who makes it. At a Rose Garden reception at the White House last week for Nicholas Daniloff, the released U.S. News & World Report correspondent, some 75 of his journalist colleagues jostled behind velvet ropes to get a glimpse of the man of the hour. "I think this is a photo opportunity," said the host. But before he could finish, the reporter interrupted: "I would like to add one thing, if I may, and that is that this is a very complex situation, and if it hadn't been for President Reagan taking a very deep personal interest in my case, it would probably have been some years before I could stand in front of you and say, 'Thank you, Mr. President.' "

Daniloff was back home as part of a multilayered deal that could not be called a deal between the U.S. and the Soviets, which included the no-contest plea and departure of Soviet Spy Gennadi Zakharov, the imminent release of Soviet Dissident Yuri Orlov, and the softening of a U.S. order expelling 25 Soviet employees at the U.N. For 31 days, Daniloff had been the human symbol of the tense, complicated maneuverings between the superpowers. Yet throughout his publicized ordeal, he had not merely symbolized the difficult bargaining between Reagan and Gorbachev but had become a participant, publicly insisting that he not be traded as a spy, commenting on Soviet-American relations and urging that his personal situation not be allowed to torpedo talks between the two leaders. In a way that could hardly have been predicted, the dispute over his detention became part of a complex mechanism that resulted in the decision by the two leaders to meet in Reykjavik.

The beginning of the end of Daniloff's odyssey started on Monday. In Moscow at 5 p.m. Richard Combs, the charge d'affaires at the U.S. embassy, surprised Daniloff with the information that he was to leave the Soviet Union that day on the 7:15 p.m. flight from Sheremetyevo Airport. That knowledge only increased the poignancy of Daniloff's visit earlier that morning to the grave of his great-great-grandf ather, a Russian who took part in the 1825 Decembrist uprising against the Czar and was subsequently exiled to Siberia.

After less than an hour to pack, Daniloff, dressed in the same clothes he had been wearing when he was arrested, was driven to the airport. There he encountered several reporters standing at the departure gate. "I'm leaving more in sorrow than anger," said Daniloff, who proceeded to recite a more angry than sorrowful poem by the 19th century Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov about the "land of masters, land of knaves" (see ESSAY).

On a virtually empty Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, a relaxed, subdued Daniloff sipped champagne and talked with reporters. The next morning he boarded a flight for Washington. The movie on board was the felicitously titled Sweet Liberty. The crowd of newsmen that awaited him at Dulles Airport rivaled one that might have gathered for, say, a European head of state. Daniloff's daughter Miranda, 23, handed her parents a dozen yellow roses and a bottle of champagne. Then, her eyes welling up with tears, she pinned a single rose on her father's lapel. His son Caleb presented him with a T shirt originally emblazoned FREE NICK DANILOFF that had been amended to read FREED NICK DANILOFF!!!

Freed Nick Daniloff prefaced his remarks by saying it was not his "usual style" to speak into a forest of microphones. "I spent a great deal of time thinking," he said, "both when I was in the bowels of Lefortovo Prison and later when I was in the custody of the American embassy. I thought what a wonderful nation it is that will go all out for a single individual. It seems to me that's one of the distinctive things about this country -- that it is built on single individuals, each one a precious individual. And I couldn't tell you how grateful I am for that."

Daniloff's plane touched down about 40 minutes after a Soviet Aeroflot jet carrying Zakharov had left Washington for Moscow. On Tuesday the calm and dapperly dressed Zakharov had stood before Judge Joseph McLaughlin in Brooklyn's federal courthouse and changed his plea on charges of espionage from not guilty to no contest. The Soviets had agreed that if the first two espionage charges against him were dropped, Zakharov would be put on five years' probation for the third count, provided that he quit the U.S. within 24 hours. Zakharov, like Daniloff, seemed to relish his moment in the media sun. After he left the court, his convoy of cars was followed by a passel of press vehicles that caught up with him at a traffic light, and the reporters shoved microphones toward him through the car window. A smiling Zakharov said in accented but fluent English that he loved the American people and would someday like to return.

Daniloff, similarly, said that he would someday like to return to Moscow to lay flowers once again on the grave of his ancestor, about whom he is planning a book. But Daniloff insisted that, unlike Zakharov, he had come through the experience with his honor unsmudged. Yet was not the complex arrangement merely a fig leaf disguising the swap of Daniloff for a spy? "In my case," Daniloff responded, "the investigation into the charges against me was concluded. There was no trial, and I left as an ordinary free American citizen. In Zakharov's case, there was a trial, and he received a sentence. I do not believe that these two things are in any way equivalent."

In the days after his return, Daniloff seemed both to blossom in his celebrity and to shrink from it. At a reception for him at the offices of U.S. News & World Report, cameramen beseeched him to turn in their direction rather than face his cheering colleagues. He would not. "How can I turn from my friends?" he said. Instead of taking a holiday, he decided he would rather go to Iceland to cover this weekend's minisummit. On the day that he spoke in the Rose Garden, the name Nicholas Daniloff appeared on the sign-up sheet for the trip.

With reporting by David Aikman/Washington and Nancy Traver/Moscow