300.115 (39) City of Flint/145: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Steinhardt) to the Secretary of State
860. My 858, November 3, 5 p.m. In the course of my conversation with Potemkin yesterday afternoon with respect to the City of Flint he offered the following explanation:
He assured me that the Soviet Government had no knowledge of the vessel’s impending arrival; that the local authorities at the port of Murmansk, unfamiliar with international law, had arrested the German prize crew when they learned the vessel was American with its own crew on board; that the commander of the German prize crew had claimed machinery damage and the Soviet authorities in Moscow had thereupon ordered the release of the German prize crew and the immediate departure of the vessel. He was very vague as to whether the Soviet authorities at Murmansk had verified the alleged machinery damage and left me with the impression that they had not done so.
He stressed the difficulty of communicating with Murmansk in a half-hearted and unconvincing manner but was vehement in stating that the Tass communiqués were issued without his knowledge, pointing out that there could be no conceivable object in his withholding information from me which in one instance was broadcast to the world an hour later. He claimed that even yesterday he was without most of the details and that he could not tell me whether the local authorities had made any effort to have the American Captain brought ashore to answer my telephone calls or telegrams. He said he understood the examination of the cargo had been perfunctory. He added that he had not replied to my written request for permission to send a representative to Murmansk as he believed the vessel would sail before our representative could arrive, and that this had proven to be the case. He said that the entire incident was unfortunate.
Strange though [it] may seem, the only part of Potemkin’s explanation I believe is that he did not know of the impending issue of the [Page 1010] Tass communiqués or what they would contain. The Foreign Office of the Soviet Union is frequently neither consulted nor kept advised in respect of matters affecting foreign relations.
As the result of my talk with Potemkin I received the impression that a written explanation may yet be forthcoming.95