Moscow's Pen Pal

When a State Department spokesman charged Russia last week with "an astonishing lack of common international courtesy" in the Baltic plane incident (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), a 67-year-old correspondent listened impassively and scribbled notes. He wore a conservative suit, glasses and a brooding look; he might have been the correspondent for a Midwestern daily. But Larry Todd is reporting for no corn-belt readers. He is senior correspondent of the official Russian news agency Tass in Washington, D.C., and registered as such with the Department of Justice.

Larry Todd and Moscow have been pen pals for 27 years. The man on whom the Russians rely for exhaustively detailed daily reports on U.S. foreign policy and other matters, likes to call himself a "plain Yankee from Michigan." He was born in Nottawa, Mich., but there the plainness ends. Swayed by Edward Bellamy's Equality and a speech by Eugene V. Debs, young Todd joined the Socialist Party in 1904. At 29, he was a Washington correspondent, served United Press, International News Service and Federated Press in turn. He joined Tass in 1923 as a stringer, became a full-time Tassman in 1933. Todd insists he is not a Communist Party member, but makes clear his belief that Russia can do no wrong.

No Wavering. Long Moscow's only correspondent in Washington, Todd now shares the load with Mikhail Fedorov, 31, Tass's Ivan-come-lately Washington bureau chief (TIME, Nov. 21), who covers the White House, the Pentagon, Treasury and other agencies, and with Pittsburgh-born Jean Montgomery,*fortyish, who reports for Tass from Capitol Hill. To newsmen who wonder why Todd works for Russia, Todd has a carefully double-negative reply: he would not be working for the Russians if he did not believe they are for a peaceful world.

Despite his own pro-Russian opinions, Todd sends dispatches to Tass headquarters in New York (for relay to Moscow) that are as factual as any Associated Press report; the Russian dressing is added later. At least once a day, he also mails a fat envelope to Tass. Todd, who has visited Russia three times but cannot read Russian, professes not to know which of his stories are printed in Pravda and other Soviet newspapers, or what changes are made.

No Questions. At press conferences, Tassman Todd never questions Secretary of State Dean Acheson, though he does question State, Department press aides Mike McDermott and Lincoln White. He never goes "upstairs" (as do most correspondents) to consult State Department officials about specific problems or individual stories.

Though his presence at press conferences occasionally causes officials to clam up, most Washington newsmen bear him no ill will. They cheerfully fill him in when he misses a story. Gossiping colleagues and Government officials rarely edit their conversation just because Todd is around. He is still a member in good standing of the National Press Club, though no longer welcome at the Overseas Writers. (He also dropped out of a car pool after learning that the FBI was investigating his traveling companions.) Though he files several thousand words a day, Todd does not do much talking. Unlike the Secretaries of State whose every pronouncement he faithfully reports to Moscow, Larry Todd has a clause in his contract that forbids him to speak for publication.

*No kin to Washington Correspondent Ruth Montgomery of the New York Daily News, who last week was unanimously nominated president of the Women's National Press Club.

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