‘Turncoat Diplomat Allowed To Resign’

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30389, 13 March 1964, Page 13

‘Turncoat Diplomat Allowed To Resign’

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

NEW YORK, March 11. An American diplomat, caught with “irrefutable” evidence that he had been a Soviet spy for 18 years, was allowed to resign and disappear in 1961 for fear that his prosecution would cause a major scandal in the United States State Department, the New York “Journal American” claimed today.

The newspaper said the diplomat’s spying had been known to a Soviet secret police agent, LieutenantColonel Michael Golendewski. who defected to the United States in 1961.

“The hope of keeping buried forever the story of the high-level American turncoat and that of his American mistress who worked in the Warsaw Embassy, is one of the prime motives of the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency to keep Colonel Goleniewski from testifying before the Senate Internal Security Sub-com-mittee,” the newspaper said. Other Disclosures Feared Other reasons behind the attempt were fears of the Russian’s disclosure of 19 Americans working for the Soviet secret police, 12 in the State Department, four in the C.I.A. and three in American scientific laboratories. The newspaper said the spying diplomat, a State Department employee since 1939, had not been discovered until 1961. It quoted a “high Government official” as saying that his activities were revealed as a result of Soviet espionage attempts to obtain information about a series of “serious dialogues” the American held with Chinese

representatives in Warsaw, beginning in 1958. At about that time Goleniewski established contact with the C.I.A. in Warsaw, telling them he wanted to defect to the West. He was told to remain where he was. Subsequently he told the Americans that there was a “big leak” in the United States Embassy. Finally, Goleniewski, finding that the Russians were close to discovering he was working for the Americans, fled to West Berlin. He was able to identify the diplomat behind the “leak.” who was recalled to Washington.