Turning the pages back... November 12, 1985 (11/12/00)

Turning the pages back...

November 12, 1985

Fifteen years ago several days after a Soviet grain freighter with would-be defector Myroslav Medvid aboard left the Mississippi and U.S. waters, the Medvid case continued to make headlines as U.S. government officials and members of Congress continued to react to the incident.

During a November 12, 1985, briefing with Congressional leaders, President Ronald Reagan promised to quietly raise the Medvid case with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the U.S.-Soviet summit meeting on November 19-20. He said he would urge that the young Ukrainian sailor not be mistreated. The president's statement came in response to remarks by Rep. Mary Rose Oakar (D-Ohio), who brought up the "dismay" of the people over the handling of the Medvid case.

That same day the Senate Agriculture Committee chaired by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) went ahead with its hearing on the Medvid case without the star witness after Soviet officials refused to comply with the committee's subpoena of Mr. Medvid. Administration officials had allowed the Soviet freighter Marshal Koniev to leave the United States on November 9, 1985, despite a subpoena that required Mr. Medvid's presence at the congressional hearing.

During the hearing Sen. Helms strongly criticized the Reagan administration's handling of the incident and raised questions about whether there is a "secret agreement" between the United States and the Soviet Union regarding defectors.

The senator said that the Soviets near New Orleans acted as though the Marshal Koniev were a protected enclave similar to an embassy and that the State Department "acted in accord with that view." ...

Charging that the administration had abandoned the sailor in order to avoid a dispute on the eve of the U.S.-USSR summit, Sen. Helms said, "The State Department clearly decided it's more important to appease the Soviet Union than to allow a young man an unfettered chance for freedom." ...

Meanwhile, the Immigration and Naturalization Service announced that it had completed an internal investigation of the Medvid case. A report over 100 pages long had been given to the Justice Department as part of an inquiry ordered by Attorney General Edwin Meese.

INS Commissioner Alan C. Nelson said he expects disciplinary action to be taken against two Border Patrol officials who forcibly returned the Ukrainian sailor to his ship after he twice jumped overboard into the Mississippi.

The House of Representatives on November 12, 1985, voted 408-3 to adopt a resolution stating that President Reagan should have protected Mr. Medvid's rights, and that the sailor should have been given an additional interview on American soil in an atmosphere free of intimidation. The resolution was introduced by Rep. Don Ritter (R-Pa.).

Source: "Myroslav Medvid headed back to Soviet Union; Reactions to case continue in D.C.," The Ukrainian Weekly, November 17, 1985, Vol. LIII, No. 46.

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