Admiralty Clerk On Spy Charges

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29950, 11 October 1962, Page 7

Admiralty Clerk On Spy Charges

(N Z -P-A.-Reuter—Copyrtflht) LONDON, October 10. A British Admiralty clerk, William John Christopher Vassal!, accused of spying for Russia, appeared at Bow Street Magistrate’s Court yesterday on two charges under the Official Secrets Act.

He was alleged to have made a full confession and was sent for trial at the Old Bailey. The prosecution said that in a statement to the police Vassall, the son of an Anglican clergyman, told how he had been lured into Russian service while working as a junior clerk at the British Embassy in Moscow. First he became friendly with a Polish employee at the embassy—social life with Russian intellectuals followed. Next there was a Russian invitation to a restaurant in a private room.

“After being plied with drink I was photographed in compromising sexual acts,” Vassal pleaded, the prosecution alleged. “Next day the Russians showed me the photographs and threatened to cause an international incident.

“I agreed to pass over information I got from my job as a clerk in the British Naval Attache’s office.”

By the summer of 1955 Vassall was betraying secrets to the Russians. Documents Lent

Transferred back to England in June, 1956, his contacts were “Gregory" and “Nikolia” and Admiralty documents were lent to them. They gave him money to

buy a camera and ordered him to photograph documents, which, in the hands of a potential enemy, would constitute a “grave danger” to Britain, the prosecution said. Scotland Yard swooped on Vassall's London flat on September 12 this year and found 140 film exposures showing pages from 17 official Admiralty documents. The £ 18-a-week clerk’s alleged statement told of Russian agents’ intrigue in London. He could get in touch with an agent by drawing a circle in pink chalk on the trunk of a tree in parklands in fashionable Kensington. Telephone Alternatively he could telephone a Kensington number and ask for “Miss Mary.” The prosecution said not all of Vassall’s spying resulted from blackmail of the "Moscow incident,” He was later paid from £5OO to £7OO for his information. Vassall, aged 38, brownhaired. boyish-looking, and dressed in a crumpled grey suit, sat quietly in the dock during the hearing. Apart from admitting he understood the two charges, Vassall said nothing in Court