800.01B11 Registration—Ovakimian, Gaik (Dr.)/19
Memorandum by the Assistant Chief of the Division of European Affairs (Henderson)
When I returned from lunch today I found that Mr. Fletcher Warren of FC49 had left word for me that Gaik Ovakimian, a Soviet engineer connected with Amtorg,50 had been taken into custody this morning by F. B. I.51 officials in New York City as a material witness.52 He was to go before the United States Commissioner during the course of the day on the matter of bond.53 In the meantime he had been permitted to communicate with the Soviet Consul General.54
About 3:30 o’clock in the afternoon I received a telephone call from the Soviet Ambassador. He said that he had been informed that Gaik Ovakimian, a Soviet member of Amtorg, was being detained in New York City. The Ambassador said that since his records showed that the Soviet Embassy had notified the Department in due course that Mr. Ovakimian was a Soviet employee of Amtorg and since Mr. Ovakimian had complied with Departmental requirements with regard to registration with the Department as a foreign official, he was inclined to believe that there was some mistake with regard to his arrest. The Ambassador asked that I look into the matter and give him a full explanation in the course of the afternoon.
I conveyed what the Ambassador had to say to Mr. Warren who [Page 956] told me that in the meantime he had obtained additional information with regard to the arrest. Mr. Warren said that according to information received by him from the Department of Justice, Mr. Ovakimian had been arrested in New York City at 12:25 p.m. today on a material witness warrant. Mr. Ovakimian at the time was in a taxicab. When he was ordered to accompany agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation he refused to do so and they were compelled to use force in bringing him in for questioning. He refused, however, to answer any questions until he had had an opportunity to talk with the Soviet Consul General. At 1:15 p.m. the Soviet Consul General was informed by telephone of the arrest of Mr. Ovakimian, and at 2:30 the Soviet Consul General and one of his Vice Consuls55 appeared at the place where Mr. Ovakimian was being detained.
According to Mr. Warren, the Consul General at once demanded the release of Mr. Ovakimian on the ground that his official position rendered him immune from giving testimony and from criminal processes. The Consul General based his claim to immunity on some informal agreement existing between the Soviet and American Governments rather than on any treaty. During the course of the conversation the Consul General in Russian repeatedly asked the Vice Consul to demand an explanation of this act of interference with a Soviet official. The Vice Consul, however, did not make such a demand. It was understood that Mr. Ovakimian would be arraigned before the United States Commissioner during the course of the afternoon. As a result of delays arising from conferences between the prisoner and the Soviet Consul General, Mr. Ovakimian had not as yet been arraigned. At the time of his arraignment the amount of bail would be established. The United States District Attorney of New York, Mr. Correa,56 had promised to keep the Department informed regarding developments.
I immediately called up the Soviet Ambassador by telephone and conveyed to him the information which had been given to me by Mr. Warren. The Ambassador said that in the meantime he had obtained further information regarding the arrest of Mr. Ovakimian. The Ambassador said that according to the information in his possession, Mr. Ovakimian was on the way to his office in his own car when suddenly he was stopped by a taxicab in which there were four men who asked him to accompany them. These men refused to answer his questions as to the reason for their demands, as to where they [Page 957] wanted him to go, and as to who they were. They did not show any documents or attempt to identify themselves as agents of the F. B. I. Mr. Ovakimian therefore refused to accompany them. In a most brutal manner, however, they put handcuffs on him and forced him to go with them. The bruises on the wrists and arms of the prisoner plainly showed the type of treatment which he received. The prisoner did not claim diplomatic immunity nor did the Consul General or the Vice Consul maintain that he was entitled to immunity from arrest. The Soviet Consul General merely stated that Mr. Ovakimian was a Soviet official registered with the Department of State and that he was due all the consideration to which an accredited foreign official in this country was entitled. The Consul General also insisted that Mr. Ovakimian be given all proper legal assistance, including legal counsel, before subjected to any examination or before being arraigned. The Ambassador asked particularly that the Department of State make sure that the prisoner should not be arraigned until he could consult legal counsel.57
After discussing the matter with Mr. Fletcher Warren I informed the Ambassador by telephone that it was my understanding that when a prisoner was called before a United States Commissioner for arraignment he was usually asked whether he had legal counsel. If the prisoner had no such counsel and desired a postponement until counsel could be obtained, such postponement was usually arranged.
The Ambassador said he was glad to hear this since he was certain that Mr. Ovakimian would not desire to be arraigned until he could be provided with legal counsel.
- Assistant Chief of the Division of Foreign Activity Correlation.↩
- Amtorg Trading Corporation, New York, N. Y., official purchasing and sales agency of the Soviet Union in the United States.↩
- Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice.↩
- Dr. Gaik Badalovich Ovakimian was arrested, after some resistance, as a material witness in an espionage investigation being conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, for questioning. After preliminary examination he was formally arraigned before the United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York, Murray Hulbert, on a complaint charging him with a violation of the Registration Act, requiring the registration of agents of foreign principals (approved June 8, 1938, 52 Stat. 631; as amended, approved August 7, 1939, 53 Stat. 1244). There is no record in Department files of his registration before April 1, 1941, although he was known to have been in this country since November 1936. The Soviet Embassy on May 20, 1941, exhibited a carbon copy of a registration form allegedly dated May 1, 1940, wherein Ovakimian was described as an “Engineer, People’s Commissariat of Chemical Industry,” with business address at the Amtorg Trading Corporation. Upon scrutiny, so much evidence of discrepancies left little doubt that the carbon copy had been fabricated for the purpose of providing false evidence. For some details of the espionage activities of Ovakimian in the United States, see House Report No. 1229, 82d Cong., 2d sess., The Shameful Years: Thirty Years of Soviet Espionage in the United States (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1952), pp. 13–19.↩
- Bond was set by Judge Hulbert at $25,000. After Ovakimian spent the night in the Federal House of Detention, this sum was supplied in cash, stated to belong to Ovakimian personally, and he was released on May 6, 1941.↩
- Victor Alexeyevich Fedyuchin.↩
- Dmitry Ivanovich Zaikin. Regarding Zaikin’s own difficulties in entering the United States in 1939, see Foreign Relations, The Soviet Union, 1933–1939, pp. 857–858, 862–864, and 867–868.↩
- Mathias F. Correa, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.↩
- Charles Recht, lawyer, New York, N. Y., and Donald R. Richberg, of Davies, Richberg, Bebe, Busick & Richardson, Washington, D. C, became attorneys for Ovakimian.↩