78-11-B4
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Prisoner Exchange
TranscriptThere's talk of prisoner exchange with the Soviet Union. It sounds easy, but there are a few complications. I'll be right back. Anatoly Sharansky has been sentenced. He will now disappear into the Soviet Union's gulag archipelago for 13 years of labor on a starvation diet plus whatever additional tortures come to his jailer's minds. Free people all over the world are outraged at this further example of Soviet hypocrisy. From Moscow has come the accusation that Sharansky is an American spy. Our president has of course denied this. There have been hints that the Soviets might be willing to free Sharansky in exchange for a couple of known Soviet spies we have in jail. On first hearing most of us would probably say, 'Why not? We caught the spies. They can't do any more damage. Send them back.' in return a man who had the courage to stand up to Russia's slave masters would be free to tell the world what life is like behind the Iron Curtain just as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and others have done. Unfortunately things aren't that simple in the world of international diplomacy. If we made such an exchange the Soviets would have a great propaganda victory. They would challenge the president's credibility. Hadn't he been willing to exchange their spies for ours. Now, however, Alexander Yanov, exiled from Russia four years ago, a distinguished professor of slavic languages, has suggested a way to get Sharansky out of Russia and the slave labor camp. Some weeks ago on one of these commentaries, I told of the great Soviet propaganda campaign concerning a prisoner on death row in Alabama. The Soviet press and television have made this man, John Harris, a national hero to the Russians. They've told their people he's being executed for simply expressing his views. The truth is Harris is a convicted robber, rapist and murderer. He's not a political prisoner. In fact, he committed murder while serving a life sentence for other crimes. Yanov has made a brilliant suggestion. We say Sharansky is a political prisoner, the Russians say he's a common criminal. They say Harris is a political prisoner, and we say he is a common criminal. Why not trade them, Harris for Sharansky? After all their build-up and propaganda about Harris in their own land, they'd look pretty silly if they refused to save him from the electric chair when they could bring him to the Soviet Union for a ticker tape parade. Come to think of it we'd have to send them the ticker tape too. Yanov has suggested that Ambassador Andrew Young, in view of his charge that our prisons house hundreds, maybe thousands, of political prisoners, is the logical one to propose the Harris-Sharansky trade. He could follow up and free scores more of those Harris-type political prisoners he says we have, by exchanging them for Piatlius, Ginsburg, Yuriorlov, Kovalev, Slipack and other inhabitants of gulag. Yanoff has another suggestion. If any of our prisoners refuse to leave their jail cells in America for freedom in Russia, let Brezhnev explain such a puzzling phenomenon to the world. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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