USSR Expels U.S. Scientist for Collecting ‘slanderous Information’ from ‘zionists’

An American scientist was expelled from the Soviet Union on March 24 for having “collected slanderous information from persons described as ‘Zionists and other elements,'” the State Department disclosed today. Department spokesman Charles Bray identified the scientist as Dr. David Viglirchio, 45, a nematologist (specialist in parasitic worms) at the University of California at Davis, who had arrived in the Soviet Union last Nov. 24 for a six-month stay under the Soviet-American scientific exchange agreement. Bray could not confirm if Dr. Viglirchio is Jewish. He said the scientist and his wife were on their way back home to Madeira, Calif., by way of Teheran and Tokyo. Bray reported that Dr. Viglirchio claimed no knowledge of having made contact with Zionists while in Moscow working at the Academy of Sciences. Bray said that Valentin Kamenev, cultural counselor at the Soviet Embassy here, had been told by the State Department that the “absurd charges” against Dr. Viglirchio were “a crude attempt to discourage scientific contact between Soviet and Western scientists,” and that “expulsion of exchanges on insubstantial grounds is detrimental to the program.” There are nine American scientists remaining in the USSR, according to the State Department. Bray said Dr. Viglirchio was subjected to “a minute personal search” before leaving Moscow, but that it was not yet known if any materials were confiscated.