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  4. Document 503

3611.1121/4–2147

The Ambassador in the Soviet Union ( Smith ) to the Secretary of State

confidential
No. 1154
Moscow , April 21, 1947.

The Ambassador has the honor to refer to a Transmittal Slip dated March 18, 1947, from the Special Projects Division, File No. 361.1121/3–347, concerning Isaiah Oggins.1 The Embassy has repeatedly requested the Foreign Office to give it information on the welfare of Mr. Oggins. In 1946 the Embassy addressed five third-person notes to the Ministry besides two personal letters from the Chargé d’Affaires to the Chief of the American Division of the Foreign Office on this case. In addition, the matter has been taken up by personal calls to the Foreign Office, but no information whatever has been vouchsafed by the Foreign Office on this case.2 The last reminder to the Foreign Office was on January 28, 1947.

In view of the continued refusal of the Foreign Office to give any information on Mr. Oggins, the Embassy feels that he may be dead or seriously ill. Another attempt is being made, however, to ascertain from the Foreign Office information on his welfare. Any developments will be immediately reported to the Department.3

  1. Not printed. Mrs. Nerma Oggins had inquired once more on March 3 for information about her imprisoned husband, Isaiah Oggins, in a letter to Secretary of State George C. Marshall. A note from the 15 year old son, Robin S., had been enclosed for his father.↩
  2. See Foreign Relations, 1946, vol. vi, p. 762. For the origin of this case, see ibid., 1942, vol. iii, pp. 765–771 passim.↩
  3. The content of this despatch was sent to Mrs. Oggins in a letter dated May 16 from Donald W. Corrick, acting assistant chief of the Special Projects Division, with the reassurance that she would be communicated with if the latest effort undertaken by the Embassy in the Soviet Union should succeed. In airgram A–354 to Moscow on October 13, not printed, the Department inquired whether there had been any developments in this case subsequent to the Embassy’s intercession. The matter of the whereabouts of Mr. Oggins was one of the items taken up in the conversation held on November 10 between Oscar C. Holder, chief of the Consular Section of the Embassy, and Izmail Bedreddinovich Konzhukov, the deputy chief of Consular Administration of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, reported in a memorandum enclosed in despatch 1831 on November 13, not printed.↩