361.1121/35: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Standley)
327. Your 538, June 16, 1 p.m.7 Please take up this case8 informally [Page 766] with the Soviet authorities and since Oggins is an American citizen request permission for an American Foreign Service Officer to visit him as provided for in the 1933 agreement, or that Oggins be allowed to appear at the Embassy.9
Without at this time giving emphasis to the failure of the Soviet authorities, from the standpoint of commitments of the Soviet Government, to notify the Embassy of Oggins’ arrest, you may, however, express some surprise at such failure and may mention that your Government hopes that steps will be taken to prevent failures of a similar nature from taking place in the future.
The Department is concerned as to the disposition made of Oggins’ passport.
- Not printed.↩
- Isaiah Oggins was born in Connecticut, on July 22, 1898. He had married on April 24, 1924, and one son was born in 1931 in France. Following residence in China (1935–1937) and France (1937–1938), Isaiah Oggins entered the Soviet Union on a false passport on June 1, 1938, and went to Moscow. He was arrested in February 1939, and was sentenced on January 5, 1940, to 8 years in prison for espionage. He had had no counsel at the interrogation which had constituted his trial. At the time when the American Embassy in the Soviet Union first had learned about him, Oggins was in the prison camp Norillag, at Norilsk, in poor physical condition.↩
- In telegram No. 173, April 15, 1942, the Department had indicated to the Embassy that “It is possible that he [Oggins] has been acting for years as an agent of a foreign power or of an international revolutionary organization. Nevertheless it is believed that in view of his American citizenship and of the Soviet agreement in 1933 to inform this Government of the arrest of American citizens, the failure to report his detention should not be ignored.” (361.1121/34)↩