WOOMERA SECRETS

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30367, 17 February 1964, Page 11

WOOMERA SECRETS

(N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright) SYDNEY, February Ift. The Sydney “Sun-Herald” today published a claim by a former British intelligence officer that a Russian woman spy had recently escaped from Australia with Woomera rocket range secrets. The “Sun-Herald” said the former intelligence officer, and British member of Parliament, Mr H Montgomery Hyde, had told the “SunHerald” London correspondent that the woman fled Australia because she thought she was under suspicion. She left . justnalia in a touring cabaret and was now back in Russia. Drugs And Hypnosis While in Australia she masqueraded as a circus performer. She had been sent to Australia with orders to find out “what is going on at the Woomera rocket range and Australian atomic research stations.” ’“Victims” whom she drugged' and hypnotised usually answered her questions with the “utmost candour." Mir Hyde also claimed that “We first heard about her when the Petrov affair broke in 1954, and the Australian security people followed it up.” Mr Hyde said the woman spy had been “last heard of in Pakistan and Afghanistan and from there vanished into the Soviet Union."

Rail Stock For N.Z. (N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) TOKYO, Feb. 16. The Kinki Sharyo Company, a leading Japanese rolling stock producer, said today it had received an order from New Zealand Railways for 500 covered goods waggons. The order, of about £500,000, followed last year’s contract to sell 250 refrigerated cars with 25-ton capacity to New Zealand, the firm said.