News In Brief

Racist threats to Olympians traced to KGB, Smith says

Racist letters and abusive threats sent to athletes of some 20 Asian and African countries on the eve of the 1984 games in Los Angeles have been traced to the KGB, US Attorney General William French Smith says. Speaking at the opening assembly of the American Bar Association annual meeting in Chicago, he said the Justice Department now knows that these communications - earlier thought to be a product of the Klu Klux Klan - are ''classic examples of Soviet forgery'' and were intended to aid the Soviets in justifying their boycott of the Olympics and to gain the support of noncommunist-bloc countries.