U.S.A.F. MAN ARRESTED

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31206, 2 November 1966, Page 17

U.S.A.F. MAN ARRESTED

Spying Charges Laid (N.ZJP.A.-Reuter —Copyright) LOS ANGELES, November 1. A German-born United States Air Force sergeant, Herbert William Boeckenhaupt last night denied charges of conspiring to commit espionage with a Soviet diplomat, after his arrest by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents.

Boeckenhaupt, tall and gaunt with crewcut hair, appeared before a United States commissioner last night accused of conspiring to deliver American defence secrets to Aleksey R. Malinin, an assistant commercial counsellor at the Soviet Embassy in Washington. He was granted bail of 50,000 dollars and a preliminary hearing was scheduled for November 18. If he is eventually found guilty Boeckenhaupt could face the death penalty. In Washington, the State Department announced that Malinin had been expelled from the United States and was ordered to leave the country by Thursday night. The Soviet diplomat—the 21st to be expelled from the United States since the Second World War—has been in America for about three years. Boeckenhaupt was born in Mannheim, West Germany, he was arrested by F. 8.1. agents earlier yesterday at March Air Force base, Riverside, California, where he had top security clearance as a communications repairman. He emigrated with his mother in 1947 and worked at the Pentagon in Washington from April, 1964, to April, 1965.

Apart from detailing two alleged meetings between Boeckenhaupt and Malinin in June, 1965, and April of this year, the F. 8.1. said the ser-

geant wrote a letter in May this year to an address in England and received a reply in September. Officials would give no further details about the correspondence or discuss its significance. But it was understood the bureau had been in close touch with British counter intelligence about the case.