NEW CHARGE AT SPY INQUIRY

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27591, 23 February 1955, Page 13

NEW CHARGE AT SPY INQUIRY

Attempt To Blackmail Witness Alleged

(Rec. 7 p.m.) SYDNEY, February 22. Details of conversations in which John Rodgers, Melbourne secretary of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, allegedly tried to blackmail a security worker, Dr. Michael Bialoguski, were given before the Royal Commission on Espionage. Dr. Bialoguski said that Rodgers had asked him to invent incidents to discredit Vladimir Petrov.

Mr W. J. V. Windeyer, Q.C., senior counsel assisting the commission quoted passages from one of the conversations, which, he said, was recorded on a tape recorder. The commission has been told that Dr. Bialoguski, a bearded Polish physician, pretended to have proRussian views, befriended Petrov, and assisted the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation in moves to persuade Petrov to defect to Australia. Rodgers, who was not represented by counsel, denied the allegations. He declined to tell the commission whether he was a Communist, saying: “I would rather go to gaol on a principle like that.” Rodgers said he was aware that Bialoguski had given evidence that he had recorded a conversation between himself and Rodgers at a Sydney restaurant.

He admitted that he could have told Bialoguski at this meeting that the most important task at the time was to destroy Petrov’s credit. He could possibly have added: “He has to be made to appear a person of no credit.”

Rodgers, cross-examining Bialoguski, asked how he could have blackmailed him.

Mr Justice Owen: “By threatening him that his practice would suffer unless he gave evidence discrediting Petrov.”