Word: crawford
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Soviet witness swore she made contact with Defendant Francis Jay Crawford in Room 1821 of Moscow's Intourist Hotel to arrange illegal ruble-dollar exchanges; in fact, Crawford was staying seven floors away in Room 1120. Another Soviet insisted that similar transactions occurred last December, even though Crawford was in the U.S. at the time. Other defendants, meanwhile, urged Crawford to change his plea and admit guilt along with them...
Normally, against such a half-cocked prosecution, even a fledgling Perry Mason ought to be able to spring his client in a fair trial. But Crawford, 37, a service representative for International Harvester, was being tried in a dingy Moscow courtroom on obviously trumped-up charges that he had violated Soviet law by exchanging $8,500 for 20,000 rubles with Soviet black marketeers over a 14-month period. (At the official exchange rate, $8,500 buys 5,903 rubles.) Despite Crawford's protestations of innocence, along with what Western court observers called an unusually spirited defense...
Presumably the Soviets, by going easy on Crawford and allowing him to leave the country immediately, have paved the way for a possible prisoner swap involving two Soviet U.N. employees who will go on trial in Newark on espionage charges Sept. 27. The Soviets were picked up just three weeks before Crawford's arrest...
...group of men and women also called on Republican Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania. He was not in the office, so the visitors replied that they would wait until he returned. When a male aide tried to soothe them, Barbara Evans-Crawford, president of the Pittsburgh Council for Women's Rights, shot back: "Don't you dare tell me you know how I feel. You were born with rights I have been working for for ten years." Schweiker did not show up, and the group finally left...
...emerged from a Soviet jail, Crawford's eyes brimmed with tears, and his voice cracked as he faced newsmen and insisted: "I am innocent of all charges." If so, Crawford, and the American reporters, seem to be mere citizen pawns caught in the Kremlin's power plays...