20-Year Sentence For Airman Spy

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29802, 19 April 1962, Page 13

20-Year Sentence For Airman Spy

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright)

WIESBADEN (West Germany), April 18. A Court Martial today sentenced a United States Air Force captain, Joseph P. Kauffman, to 20 years’ hard labour on four charges of giving information to East Germany.

Kauffman’s counsel told the Court in a closing address that he thought Kauffman was a man of poor judgment but added: “I do not believe this man is a traitor to his country or a traitor to the Air Force.” According to the British United Press, Kauffman was found guilty on four counts: Conspiring to give national defence information to East Germany, knowing it would go to Russia; failing to report contacts with East German intelligence ayents in 1960 to his Air Force superiors; agreeing to act as their agent and promising to return to

East Berlin next year for four weeks’ training in espionage; and providing East Germany with information on the mission, strength and other details of Sonderstrom Air Base, Greenland. The eight-officer Court also sentenced Kauffman to dismissal from the Air Force and forfeiture of pay. Arrested On Train Kauffman, small and bespectacled, told the Court on Monday he was arrested by East German police when travelling to Berlin from Hamburg on a sight-seeing trip which was prohibited for American servicemen in September, 1960. The 43-year-old officer said he was interrogated for hours at a time in a closely guarded spy headquarters in East Germany. He refused to give information, though his questioners went “on and on like a record.” He said he made several return trips from West Berlin to East Berlin after his initial release because he had given his word as an officer that he would return.

Church Penalty Sought (NZ Press Assn.—Copyright) NEW ORLEANS, April 1«. The husband of a New Orleans housewife excommunicated from the Roman Catholic faith today called for his own excommunication because he shared her views on segregation. The request from 44-y«ar-old Bernard Gaillot, came 14 hours after Mrs Gaillot knelt before the Archbishop of New Orleans, the Most Rev. Joseph Francis Rummell and asked God to forgive him for ordering school desegregation.