Transmitter Found

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30051, 8 February 1963, Page 12

Transmitter Found

Sir Garfield Barwick said security agents found a highspeed wireless transmitter concealed in a metal box within a parcel Mr Skripov had asked the woman agent to collect for him. It was the same type as that found in the home of Peter and Helen Kroger, recently convicted in Britain for spying for the Soviet. The Australian Government had decided it would not allow the wireless—described as fully operational and equipped for immediate use—to go out of its hands with the risk it might go into circulation in Australia and be used without detection. The course of declaring Mr Skripov persona non grata had therefore been decided upon.

Sir Garfield Barwick’s statement listed meetings Mr Skripov had arranged with the woman agent and assignments—to pick up and deliver packages and containers from hiding places in Sydney and bring them to him in Canberra—which Mr Skripov had given her.

One metal cylinder which she picked up was concealed under a metal bell covering a water meter in a Sydney park. It was attached to the inside of the meter cover by magnetic force.

Another—Mr Skripov wrote about the assignment to the agent in invisible ink —was concealed under an iron post, on some stairs in WooHoomooloo.

Expert examinations of both containers by security agents before they were delivered to Mr Skripov showed they were designed to detect any unsophisticated attempt to open them, the stat-ment said.

They were known to be of a kind employed by the Russian intelligence service for espionage, the statement said.

Parcel In Cemetery On another occasion on October 10, 1962, the agent was instructed to go to a particular grave in a cemetery and pick up a parcel in a polythene bag. Security agents found this contained an unused but current Canadian passport with a loose photograph of a person different from that on the passport.

The Canadian passport had been issued to an Andrew Huha. a former Czech national, who is believed to have returned permanently to Eastern Europe shortly after he was issued the passport on September 6, 1960 The statement said the woman agent was to travel to Adelaide and meet a man whom Mr Skripov had described and deliver the parcel to him after receiving a password. If the meeting did not take place as scheduled on December 29 last, she was to return the following day Mr Skripov then gave her a Christmas present of a hairdryer The metal box containing the high-speed wireless transmitter was concealed in the hair-dryer package. The agent had attended the meeting place on two days, but the man failed to appear.

Censure Move In Commons

(N .Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON. February 6. Labour Opposition members of Parliament today gave notice of a censure motion criticising the Government’s policies on international trade against the background of the breakdown of .the Common Market negotiations.

The motion calls for a vote of no-confidence in the Government, and invitee the House of Commons to say it has no faith in the Government’s “capacity to arouse in Britain the sense of urgency ... so necessary to meet the sitoation created by the breakdown in Brussels.”

Space Flight Hazard

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) SAN ANTONIO (Texas >, . February 7. A Manned Spacecraft Centre official today said the Russians suspect that the bones of their cosmonauts lost calcium in prolonged space flight.

Lieutenant-Colonel Stanley C. White said at a press conference that loss of calcium symptoms were noted in the cases of Russian cosmonauts who were in space three of four days. This is a potentially serious problem because prolonged loss of calcium weakens bones. Patients confined to bed begin to lose calcium in about 10 days. Lack of exercise is a cause.