121.5561/48: Telegram
The Acting Secretary of State to the Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Steinhardt)
884. Your 1296, July 5, 6 p.m. Since we have consistently declined to permit attachés to diplomatic missions in Washington to reside elsewhere than at the capital except in cases of few financial and commercial attachés in New York, and since we consider it highly undesirable to set any precedents whereby foreign naval or military attachés might be stationed at or near American naval or military reservations, please make it clear to Lozovski on the next appropriate occasion that we do not wish to send a naval Attaché to Vladivostok but that we would like to have a naval observer resident in that City if agreeable to the Soviet authorities.
For your information the naval observer would not have diplomatic status or the prerogatives of a naval Attaché.