THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS 98 Friday, April 11, 1986 BACKGROUND Soviet Tells Reporter: Anatoly Was Framed BY NEIL REISNER Special to The Jewish News REMEMBER TO BUY AND USE BREDE HORSERADISH ... for Passover. The only Horseradish made fresh in Detroit. Don't accept substitutes. Look for the BREDE name on the label . Fresh Ground CONTAINS ONLY HORSERADIS H F resh Ground (Ai Y HORSERAD ISH ROM vINE GAR AND SALT: "TA1Ns HOOTS. VINEGAR AND SALT. KEEP 1 ►1110.11ATIO . KEEP IIEFRIGIRATED NET WT. 81/2 OZ. NET WT. 81/2 OZ. 8 $TED. RITT DETROIT MICH 48223 mot Fresh Grotinti rrt4PAt, t KOSHER , "UT HORABON IP, ,, OTS I MICHIGAN GA,4 SAi KEEP IIEVEIGEKATEIP n'TFOT rq.111011 MiCH 48 223 KOSHER moErziT monAeoum • MICHIGAN NET INT. 8 1 /2 0 tTRoq mica 40 _KosH ER (JONI Pi "c4 rz; r H 014 A 0 MR ,H 8900. Zi • BREDE, INC. 19000 Glendale Ave. Detroit, Michigan Dist. by DETROIT CITY DAIRY, INC. 868-5511 Available in pure white or- beet flavor, Passover Kosher. . Anatoly Shcharansky was given a physical exam by Dr. Mervyn Gotsman at Hadassah Hospital after Shcharansky's release from Russia. Shcharansky was found to have a slight heart defect, a trembling hand and dental problems. Soviet officials knew Anatoly Shcharansky never spied for the CIA, but "cold-bloodedly" con- victed him as a message to other dissidents, according to the re- porter accused by the KGB of being his CIA contact. Robert Toth, Moscow bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times from August 1974 to June 1977, was arrested by the KGB six days before he was to depart for the U.S. and about three months after Shcharansky's arrest. Toth, 57, writes on national se- curity for the Times from Wash- ington. He returned to the Soviet Union for the first time last No- vember to cover preparations for the Reagan-Gorbachev summit meeting. In a telephone interview, Toth said a Soviet official whom he would not identify, conceded that Shcharansky's conviction was a sham. "That they let me back in said something about how serious they were about charging me with es- pionage," Toth said. "I talked to someone there, and I said what made me angry was that they had done it so cold-bloodedly, knowing he was not guilty. And this person said, 'It was time to punish some- one.' I think it was as simple and as tragic as that, and it was as brutal as that, too." Toth, who was friendly with Shcharansky in Russia, was one of two newspaper reporters to interview the dissident in the days immediately following his release in February after serving nine years of a 13-year sentence. Shcharansky had served as a spokesman for. Jewish emigration activists and for democratic Soviet dissidents working to re- form the Soviet system. Toth in 1977 'was interrogated by the KGB about his contacts with Shcharansky for 13 hours over the three days following his arrest. He was permitted to leave the USSR with his family a few days later. While in Russia, Toth wrote an article pointing to a contradiction in Soviet policy. Based partially on information supplied 'by Shcharansky, the ,article said Soviet officials claimed certain institutions were doing "secret" research and refusenicks working at them thus could not leave the country. When purchasing American technology, however, some of the same institutions said they were not conducting secret work. The article implied that if the institutions' work was secret, they should not receive American know-how, and that if the work was open, the refusenicks did not possess state secrets. Along with Toth's interrogation, the article was used as evidence during Shcharansky's trial. Toth said he does not believe his articles were responsible for Shcharansky's trial and impris- onment. "The Soviets said I was the CIA agent who ran Shcharansky. 'If it was not me, they would have named someone else as the CIA agent. I think I feel responsible for having written a story several years before which dealt with secrets, but I am con- vinced that there was nothing in retrospect that I could have done or not done that would have af- fected him." Toth discussed the article and his subsequent interrogation when he met Shcharansky in Is- rael in February. He said Shcharansky had been allowed to read accounts of the interrogation while preparing for the trial. "There was a whole character reference among the documents that Shcharansky received about me," Toth said, including allega- tions that he and other correspon- dents were Jewish. "That's not correct, but, as he (Shcharansky) said, they had to make everybody in the plot Jewish in order to sustain it. I