CLERK ON SPY CHARGES

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27538, 21 December 1954, Page 9

CLERK ON SPY CHARGES

TRIAL BEGINS AT OLD BAILEY EVIDENCE TAKEN IN SECRET (N.Z. Press* Association—Copyright) LONDON, December 18. All the evidence was givfcn in secret at the trial of a 27-year-old clerk who is alleged to have admitted spying for the Russians. Reporters and members of the public, were cleared from the Court— London’s famed Old Bailey, where the master atom spy, Klaus Fuchs, was sentenced—soon after the trial began. The clerk on trial under the Official Secrets Act is John Clarence. Four charges against him say that he obtained and recorded information and an official code word about England’s east coast anti-aircraft defences. The trial was adjourned till Monday —when evidence will still be in camera to prevent defence secrets leaking out. At earlier preliminary hearings of the case Clarence was alleged to have been in touch *with a Soviet Embassy official named Ivan Barabanov. Before the famed Old Bailey Court went into secret session, Clarence, bespectacled and sporting a walrus moustache, protested that he was “not getting a fair trial.” This was because the Judge, Mr Justice Hilbery, refused to subpoena as a witness the editor of a Communist publication, saying that a copy of the publication produced in Court would be sufficient. • Services Offered The Attorney-General said that Clarence joined the Young Communist League in 1943 and the Communist Party in 1952. In September 1952, Clarence called at the Soviet Consulate and offered his services in any capacity. He met a man there called Barabanov, who asked him to sell Communist and Russian propaganda. Clarence had told police officers that he was also asked to spy on Russian refugees in this country and report their activities to Barabanov. He reported to Barabanov regularly. The Attorney-General submitted that a long time before matters in the present case were revealed Clarence was “working for the Soviet Union. Spying is the word he uses,” he added. When the Court was cleared, wooden panels were fitted over all entrance doors to the Court to prevent people from peeping inside. One public entrance was shuttered and locked, the other guarded by policemen. Several men, including an Army major, waited to be called into the Court.