In view of the Petrulli case, the Embassy proposes to delay completing the renunciation procedure until the action of the Soviet authorities on his request for Soviet citizenship is known or the Department advises.
A dispatch follows.
The press has been informed.
The Chairman. Would the Commissioners like to see the document itself?
Mr. Coleman. Mr. Snyder, could you tell the Commission what the Petrulli case was?
Mr. Snyder. Yes. The Petrulli case I remember quite well.
Mr. Petrulli was an American citizen who came into the Embassy some weeks before, I believe, asking to renounce his American citizenship. Mr. Petrulli hung around Moscow for quite some time, again a number of weeks, and perhaps as long as 3 weeks or a month. He had entered the Soviet Union as a tourist, I believe.
It is not clear what intent he had when he arrived.
But, at any rate, he did apply for Soviet citizenship while in Moscow, and he did come into the Embassy, and was interviewed by me to renounce his American citizenship. I did not, in accordance with the thinking which I outlined to you earlier—I did not accept his renunciation the first time he came in, but did accept it when he subsequently appeared, and insisted that is what he wanted to do.
The case had a—I might skip over the minor details, but it had a rather rapid denouncement, when the Soviet authorities, after having looked him over for a number of weeks, decided they did not want him as a citizen or resident of the Soviet Union. And when we subsequently learned, that is I learned, from my reporting to the Department, and correspondence with them, that Mr. Petrulli had been discharged from the Armed Forces some time earlier on, I believe, a 100-percent mental disability—the Soviet, I think it was the head of the consular section of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, called me into the Foreign Ministry one day and said words to the effect that an American citizen Mr. Petrulli, has overstayed his visa in the Soviet Union, he is living here illegally, and "We request that you take steps to see that he leaves the country immediately."