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- WORLD, Page 61World NotesESPIONAGEYeah? Well, Take That!
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- In tit-for-tat expulsions that left officials on both sides
- of the superpower divide grumbling, the Soviets and the
- Americans each ousted a military attache on charges of
- espionage. The first blow was struck by the U.S. two weeks ago,
- when it expelled Lieut. Colonel Yuri Pakhtusov from the Soviet
- embassy in Washington. State Department and FBI officials
- accused Pakhtusov of having received classified information
- about computer-security programs. Pakhtusov allegedly got the
- documents from an American employee of a U.S. company that does
- business with the Government.
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- Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov
- denounced the expulsion as a "provocation" and "not in line with
- the spirit of peaceful cooperation." Five days later the Soviets
- responded in kind, ordering U.S. embassy employee Lieut. Colonel
- Daniel Van Gundy to leave Moscow. The charge: attempting to
- enter a closed area and take pictures of military facilities.
- As denials flew on both sides and the threat of further
- expulsions loomed, a Western envoy in Moscow predicted:
- "Relations aren't permanently hurt by this. It's just a shoving
- match."
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