ESPIONAGE CHARGES

Press, Volume C, Issue 29402, 3 January 1961, Page 12

ESPIONAGE CHARGES

Former Pentagon Employee (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) COLUMBIA (South Carolina). December 30. A United States Justice Department official said today he would ask a grand jury in Virginia to indict Arthur Rogers Roddey on espionage charges. Roddey, a 38-year-old University of South Carolina graduate, was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation yesterday and charged with having stolen shout 200 top secret Defence Department papers while an employee at the Pentagon, the department's Washington headquarters. “Some of the documents are so highly classified that their mere existence, let alone their contents, are top secret," said United States Attorney Joseph Bambacus, of Richmond, Virginia. Mr Bambacus said he planned to reconvene the Alexandria. Virginia, grand jury within 10 days. “I will ask it -to indict Roddey on espionage charges," he said. At Roddey's arraignment in Columbia yesterday before United States Commissioner Henry Kirkland, F. 8.1. agents said espionage was not Involved in the theft

Roddey, a former employee of the Institute of Defence Analysis of the Defence Department, is being held in lieu of 15,000 dollars bail.

In charging that Roddey was guilty of espionage. Mr Bambacus declined to name any foreign government involved, but said: “Indications point to the fact he had made contact' with someone.” At his arrangement, Roddey said he planned to turn the secret papers over to the National Security Counci of the Defence Department. He was dismissed last August after two years with the Institute ot Defence * Analysis. The F.B.L said his dismissal resulted from a “reduction in force,” but the Defence Department said Roddey failed to measure up to “competence requirements." Roddey was arrested in Columbia at the home of his mother-in-law where he and his wife, Josephine, were spending the Christmas holidays. They have been married 12 years, but have no children. Mrs Roddey visited her husband briefly in his gaol cell today and took him some cigars and a tooth brush. She took some "nerve .medicine” to the gaol last night, but officers refused to let Roddey take any.