Campus Spy Uproar

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31321, 17 March 1967, Page 11

Campus Spy Uproar

(NZ.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) MADISON (New Jersey), March 16.

A fashionable university in Madison was embroiled in controversy today over the case of the girl who became too fond of her victim to spy efficiently.

Pretty auburn-haired Mrs Linda Hobbie, aged 20, confessed to her instructors at Fairleigh Dickinson University that she had been planted by police as a “special student” to spy on 19-year-old

Jacqueline Diamond, a suspect in a narcotics case. But, she said, she took a liking to Miss Diamond and found she could not carry out her spy duties in spite of pleas from detectives to “spy harder.” “I just couldn’t do this,” she said. “Jackie was too nice.” The university president, the county prosecutor, the local police and the American i Civil Liberties Union are ' waging a war of words about the rights of students to spy on each other. The university president. Dr. Peter Sammartino, strongly defended the right to spy, saying narcotics were a danger at any school and “no institution has the right to refuse to co-operate with any law agency involved in the discovery of the culprits.” The New Jersey branch of the Civil Liberties Union was quick to disagree. “The placement of an undercover agent as a fake student is Orwellian in nature,” it said. The County Prosecutor, Mr Robert J. Del Tufo, said it was the responsibility of his office to attempt to discover; any narcotics traffic. The police said Miss Diamond, a former model, was arrested at her home last December 14. She and two New York men

were charged with the control of narcotics and were awaiting action by a grand jury. Mr Del Tufo refused to say whether he had other—and harder working—spies than Mrs Hobbie in the college dormitories.

Nevertheless, there appeared to be reason to believe that other spies were on the campus and that university officials were co-operating with the police in the investigation. Mrs Hobbie, who is separated from her husband, said there must be more spies at the university because “Detective McKenna was constantly aware of all my moves at Fairleigh and I’m sure he was having me watched, too.” Mrs Hobbie said she was enlisted as a spy by Detective McKenna last January. Detective McKenna heads the County Prosecutor’s narcotics bureau. She said she had worked on two previous occasions for narcotics authorities and when she worked out her pay a month ago, she found she was only earning about two dollars an hour.