WRANGEL ISLAND

There is a small Wrangell Island off SE Alaska in the Alexander Archipelago, which is administered by Alaska, but that is not the Wrangel Island that I meant and marked on the map. The "real" Wrangel (also Wrangell) Island in the Arctic Ocean was and is claimed by the US, which to this day has not ceded sovereignity to any foreign nation and considers it by law a part of the State of Alaska. But the island is not administered by Alaska; it is controlled by the Soviets, and what makes my blunder shameful is that the island is the location of several Soviet concentration camps, listed in Avram Shifrin's First Guidebook to the Prisons and Concentration Camps of the Soviet Union (Bantam Books, 1982).

The first recorded landing on the island was made on 12 August 1881 by a party under the leadership of Captain C.L. Hooper, the de facto governor of Alaska, on a congressionally funded rescue mission; he was authorized by Congress to claim US sovereignty over discovered lands. On 20 August 1924 the Soviet gunboat Red October with a company of Soviet infantry took the 14 Americans on the island by force, confiscated their property, and abducted them to Vladivostok. After intervention by the US consul in Manchuria, the Soviets released 12 survivors (without a credible explanation what happened to the other two), and a year later proclaimed the island their territory. [Source: "The Right of American Sovereignty over Wrangell Island" by D.B. Nolan and M.J. Seidenberg, J. Dept. Geol. Sci., U. of Saskatchewan, Musk-Ox, vol. 29, 1981.]

Two addenda: In dealing with oil and gas fields, the US is at last getting tough about boundaries based on a 200-mile limit and the equidistance principle. With the Soviets? No: with Canada. (When you get kicked by a bully, there is nothing like finding yourself a smaller guy to kick.) The dispute with Canada involves the Diapir oil and gas field off Alaska; as for the giveaway to the Soviets [AtE Aug 84], a State Department delegation went to Moscow in late July, in virtual secrecy (was Interior, Defense and Energy represented?), to negotiate the unnegotiable. My source is again Carl Olson, who will supply full details for a stamped, self-addressed envelope (Box 7273, Alexandria, VA 22307); better still, join his Stockholders for World Freedom for $25/year. Now that Olson has brought the sorry affair to light, the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee (chaired by Jesse Helms) will hold hearings on the subject; experts on oil shelves, geology and geography should contact Dr C. Kiracofe on Sen. Helm's staff.

But the new organization may not have improved his ability to keep his hands out of the till. On July 2, he was fired by the FoE Board of Directors for an unauthorized appeal to contribute "money to the chairman's fund, which he was to use at his own discretion..." (NYT Service, 7/3/84).