SPY IN FOREIGN OFFICE

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27990, 9 June 1956, Page 9

SPY IN FOREIGN OFFICE

Admission 17 Years After Detection

LONDON, June 7. The British Foreign Office, 17 years after the event, said today that one of its officials was seized as a Russian spy *and sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment just as World War II broke out.

At the same time—late in 1939 Britain was tipped off by the United States that a second Soviet agent was working in the Foreign Office. Though they were unable to identify him then, officials now think that this might have been a direct pointer to Donald Maclean, one of the two British diplomats who “vanished" in 1951 and who have since reappeared in "Moscow. The spy, Cdptain John Herbert King, is still alive, a Foreign Office spokesman said in denying evidence given to a United States security sub-com-mittee yesterday that he was shot in the Tower of London. He was freed from gaol just after the end of the war.

King worked as a lesser official in the communications department of the Foreign Office, which dealt in secret codes.

The clue that he was a spy was provided by General Walter Krivitsky, a former secret police chief who defected to the West and who was found shot in a Washington hotel room in 1940.

Krivitsky was only able to describe the mysterious “second spy” as a Scotsman of artistic tastes in the habit of wearing a cloak. This could have fitted Donald Maclean.

The official spokesman said there had been an investigation at the time, but the information was too weak to point to anybody. The case of Captain King—the unknown spy—was brought to light by Mr Isaac Don Levine, the author and expert on Russia, who had the facts from General Krivitsky, and told them to the Senate Security Committee in Washington.

Dogs Kill Sheep.—Nearly 1000 sheep and lambs have been killed bv dogs in the last fortnight in the Benaha district of north-eastern Victoria. Several graziers are maintaining night watches round their properties, and. on several occasions, have seen prowling dogs, but none has yet been caught. The losses are the worst in the district many years.—Melbourne, June 8.