S Oakland Tri bune 23 Jan 69

Who Was Assassin's Target?

MOSCOW (AP) — A youth Continued from Page 1 described by the Foreign Min- istry as mentally deranged Yeliseyev and Yevgeny Khru- The Foreign Min i st r y were standing in the spokesman refused to discuss fired several pistol shots yes- nov, back of an open car. The the ease further. A brief re- terday at a motorcade honor- closed limousine c a r r yin g.: port by the official news agen- ing the four newest space cy Tass later said only that heroes and carrying two So- Beregovoy was the second ear behind that of the four, who shots were fired at the car in viet leaders. would have been easy targets. which Beregovoy and other A chauffeur and an escort For- cosmonauts from earlier riding a motorcycle were The reluctance of the flights were riding. wounded. eign Ministry and other offi- Cosmonaut Georg Beregbv- cial channels to elaborate on It was possible that officials oy, whose flight in 3 the case gave rise to specula- supressed news of the shoot- last October blazed the way tion that there was more to ing until the day after the pa- for the successful space link- the incident than was immedi- rade, to avoid ruining the - up by the four last week, was ately made public. triumphant ceremonies. cut on the neck by flying glass Firearms are strictly con- The four cosmonauts re- as a bullet struck the driver trolled in the and mained unruffled by the inci- of his limousine. assassination attempts on dent. They went through the There was speculation that public figures here have not ceremonies in the Kremlin the youth was aiming at Com- been heard of for years. Palace 'of Congresses main munist party chief Leonid I. stage and showed no sign of The last known violence in injury. Brezhnev and President Niko- the Kremlin area occurred in lai V. Podgorny, riding in a June, 1967, when a man car- It was recalled that during closed car behind. But the rying a homemade bomb was the televised Kremlin ceremo- Foreign Ministry today in an- blown up near Lenin's Tomb. nies, a messenger h and ed nouncing the incident nearly notes to Brezhnev and Yuri 24 hours after it happened re- He was officially reported to have been a criminal. Andropov, chairman of the fused to confirm this. KGB, the state security Com- The leaders were several The shooting incident was mittee. kept secret for nearly 24 hours cars behind Beregovoy's lim- As Podgorny was pinning ousine. despite the presence of more than 1,000 spectators at this medals on the four cosmo- The youth was grabbed by nauts, Andropov handed a spectators and immediately climactic point in the parade near the Kremlin's Borovitsky note to Brezhnev, who read it arrested by the police. The. with a serious expression. Foreign Ministry refused to Gate. identify him or give a possible The news came to light motive. when an unofficial So v i e t It seemed clear, however, source with close government that the youth was not aiming contacts told :-ome Western at the cosmonauts who rode reporters about it today. Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 into orbit A Foreign Ministry spokes- and achieved the world's first man, confronted with the un- manned linkup and transfer of official version, said, The men from one spaceship to facts as you have them took the other. place." He described the gun- The four, Vladimir Shata- man as a "schizophrenic." Loy, Boris Volynov, Alexei Continued Pige 4, Col. 7