800.01B11 Registration—Ovakimian, Gaik (Dr.)/18
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador of the Soviet Union (Umansky)
The Secretary of State presents his compliments to His Excellency the Ambassador of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and has the honor to refer to conversations which took place on May 12 and May 20, 1941 between the Ambassador and members of the Department of State relative to the arrest in New York of Mr. Gaik Ovakimian, a Soviet citizen who is charged with failure to give prior notification to the Department of his activities as an agent of a foreign government, as required under Title 22, Section 233 of the United States Code.
There is no evidence in the files of the Department of the receipt, prior to April 1, 1941, of a notification form from Mr. Ovakimian or from the Soviet Embassy, concerning his activities in the United [Page 967] States as the agent of a foreign government. With respect to the statement made by the Ambassador on May 20, 1941 to the effect that a notification form relative to Mr. Ovakimian was one of the ninety-eight enclosures to a note addressed to the Secretary of State on May 8, 1940 by the Embassy of the U. S. S. R., there is attached hereto a list67 of the names of the ninety-eight Soviet citizens whose notification forms were forwarded to the Department under the cover of that note. It will be observed that the name of Mr. Ovakimian is not included on this list.
Since the decision as to whether Mr. Ovakimian has been engaged in activities in the United States as an agent of a foreign government without prior notification to the Secretary of State is now a matter for the determination of the appropriate courts of this country and in view of the absence of any evidence in the Department that it had been notified before April 1, 1941 of the nature of Mr. Ovakimian’s activities in the United States, the Department is not in a position at the present time to intervene on behalf of Mr. Ovakimian. The substance of the statements which the Ambassador has made informally to members of the Department relating to the case of Mr. Ovakimian has, however, been communicated to the appropriate authorities of this Government.
- Not attached to file copy.↩