Soviet Guard Kills U.S. Army Major : Reagan Protests Shooting; Moscow Charges Spying

BONN —  A U.S. Army major was shot Sunday by a Soviet sentry in East Germany while on official duty and died an hour later after being denied medical treatment, American officials here and in Washington said Monday.

A spokesman for the U.S. Army’s European headquarters in Heidelberg identified the officer as Maj. Arthur D. Nicholson Jr., 37, a member of the U.S. Military Liaison Mission in Potsdam near East Berlin that has monitored Soviet and East German military activity since the end of World War II.

Nicholson, a Russian linguist originally from West Redding, Conn., died of chest wounds. Another U.S. soldier, Sgt. Jessie G. Schatz, who accompanied Nicholson, was fired on but not injured.

‘Jess, I’m Shot’

“Jess, I’m shot,” Nicholson cried out when he was hit at about 3:50 p.m., according to Assistant Secretary of State Richard R. Burt. But when Schatz, who had a first-aid kit, attempted to help the major, he was forced back to his car by a Soviet soldier, Burt said in Washington.

Soviet soldiers with a medical kit did not arrive until 4:20 p.m., Burt said, but even so, “no attempt was made to assist Maj. Nicholson until 4:50 p.m.,” at which point it was determined that he was already dead.

Burt called the shooting “murder.”

He told reporters at the State Department that U.S. officials were not told of the shooting until about 6:30 p.m. and that the first U.S. official reached the site at 9 p.m. Schatz was kept in the area until late in the evening, Burt said, and responded to Soviet efforts to interrogate him by displaying the credentials indicating that he is a member of the liaison mission.

Body Flown to Frankfurt

Nicholson’s body was turned over to U.S. officials in West Berlin and was later flown to the U.S. Rhein-Main Air Base outside Frankfurt where it was met by an honor guard.

The U.S. and Soviet governments held each other responsible for the shooting, which took place in a wooded area near the city of Ludwigslust, about 80 miles northwest of Berlin and 40 miles east of the frontier between East and West Germany, in an area where there are several Soviet military installations.

The Soviet Embassy in Washington accused the officer of spying and said he was “caught red-handed” while attempting to take photographs within a restricted Soviet military installation.

President Reagan called the incident “unwarranted” and said, “We have already registered our protest over the tragic death of this man.” He added that it “should never have happened” and challenged the Soviet charge that Nicholson was a spy.

The tone of the official statements, however, was somewhat milder than might have been expected--perhaps a sign that both sides want to prevent the unprecedented shooting from aggravating U.S.-Soviet relations just as the two nations have resumed delicate arms control negotiations in Geneva and are trying to arrange a summit meeting.

Reagan noted that the Soviets “expressed their regret” over the shooting and said that the incident “would make me more anxious” to meet with new Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

The little-known American liaison mission was set up in Potsdam during the early postwar years as a contact with the Soviet military command in Moscow’s zone of occupied Germany, but after the zone became East Germany in 1949, the mission has been used principally to gather intelligence.

Intelligence-Gathering Trip

It was apparently on such an intelligence-gathering trip that Nicholson was killed.

Military liaison missions from Britain and France, the other two Western powers that defeated Nazi Germany, carry out similar intelligence-gathering functions, also from bases in East Germany. Soviet military missions do the same in West Germany.

The job of all four military liaison groups has been called “licensed spying” since they operate under a 1947 U.S.-Soviet agreement.

“The way these missions have evolved, on both sides, they monitor, observe--call it what you will--they are official intelligence-gatherers, and everyone knows it,” said a Pentagon official.

U.S. officials said that confrontations between U.S. mission members and Soviet military authorities over the limits of their movements were not uncommon, but were usually settled without major incident.

“Occasionally, someone got detained or had a camera taken away, but there’s never been shooting,” a U.S. diplomat said in Bonn.

Reagan Defends Mission

In a brief encounter with a group of reporters, Reagan on Monday pointed out that the United States and the Soviet Union are each allowed to conduct the liaison activities and that Nicholson “was doing what he was permitted to do. He was doing nothing he was not supposed to be doing.”

To the suggestion that he had not expressed outrage over the incident, Reagan replied: “A lack of outrage? You can’t print what I’m thinking.”

In Washington, Soviet Embassy spokesman Vladimir Kulagin said the two U.S. soldiers entered a restricted Soviet installation “despite the presence of clearly visible warning signs, in Russian and German.”

“One of the U.S. officers (apparently Nicholson), wearing a camouflage suit and carrying a camera, penetrated directly into the territory of that installation, where he took pictures of the combat equipment which was there,” Kulagin said.

He added that the officer was “caught red-handed by a Soviet sentry” but ignored the sentry’s orders. The Soviet spokesman said the American was shot “while attempting to escape” after a warning shot was fired. “The other U.S. officer, who was a driver, was apprehended with his vehicle nearby,” Kulagin said.

“The Soviet side has lodged a resolute protest in this connection and expressed its regret over the death of the American military officer,” he said.

The State Department’s Burt said Nicholson and Schatz were unarmed and traveling in a U.S. military vehicle. They were wearing camouflage field uniforms and were “not hiding the fact” that they were members of the U.S. military.

According to Burt’s account, the incident took place “near, but not on” what is known as a “permanently restricted area” from which the members of the U.S. military liaison mission are barred. He said they were 300 to 500 yards from the restricted area.

“The vehicle, the major and the sergeant were outside of the permanently restricted area. Even if they were not, killing the major was totally unjustified,” Burt said.

“They were in the process of monitoring Soviet military activity” in an area where Soviets generally undertake military maneuvers and training, Burt said.

But, he said, “when attacked, the two-man patrol was not in a restricted area, and no Soviet forces were visible.”

Burt said the first shot was fired at Schatz, who was in the vehicle. A second or third shot was fired at Nicholson, the State Department official said. The bullet hit the major in the chest.

“As we now understand it, there was no effort to warn Maj. Nicholson,” he said. “It is certainly our understanding the Soviet soldier shot to kill.”

The assistant secretary of state would not say whether Nicholson was carrying a camera, as the Soviets stated. But members of the liaison team are known to carry cameras and other equipment to use in monitoring Soviet activities.

Initial reports reaching the Pentagon said the fatal shot came from an AK-47, the standard Soviet infantry weapon, but later reports did not include that detail, leaving officials uncertain what weapon was used.

Reagan-Shultz Meeting

While Burt met with Oleg M. Sokolov, a high-ranking Soviet official at the State Department in what the U.S. official described as a “very stern and serious” session, Secretary of State George P. Shultz was briefing Reagan in the Oval Office. The President first learned of the incident when he was given a report by Robert C. McFarlane, his national security adviser, between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. EST, about 20 hours after it occurred.

The U.S. liaison mission in East Germany is composed of 14 people, according to officials in Washington. Although formally based in Potsdam, most members live in West Berlin, a few miles to the northeast.

The absence of a formal peace treaty with defeated Germany prevents any German controls over the missions and gives their members unprecedented freedom of movement within the two Germanys. Only sensitive military areas are declared out of bounds.

U.S. officials noted that under terms of the military liaison basing agreement, the Soviets are responsible for the safety of U.S. mission members.

Still, duty with a military liaison mission has always carried an aura of risk-taking, according to those familiar with its demands.

‘Always a Risk’

“They try to push in as close as they can, and there’s always a risk of getting caught,” noted John Alford, a retired British army colonel and currently deputy director of the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies. “If they are found where they aren’t supposed to be, then there’s usually an arrest, an apology and that’s it.”

However, exactly a year ago, a member of the French military liaison team was killed in a traffic accident near the industrial city of Halle in East Germany, in what a surviving French officer claimed was a staged collision.

The French military vehicle was hit head-on by an East German army truck while returning to Berlin, apparently after viewing last spring’s Warsaw Pact military maneuvers in East Germany. The Soviets claimed the French car was at fault.

There are an estimated 400,000 Soviet troops stationed permanently in East Germany, a country the size of Tennessee. It is Moscow’s largest military presence outside the Soviet Union.

Nicholson, a member of the liaison team since 1982, lived in West Berlin with his wife, Karen, and their 8-year-old daughter.

Times reporter James Gerstenzang in Washington contributed to this story.