Brooke Took Messages For Emigre Group

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32053, 30 July 1969, Page 6

Brooke Took Messages For Emigre Group

(N.Z P.A.-Reuter— Copyright)

LONDON, July 28. Coded radio messages go regularly into the Soviet Union to antiCommunist underground agents, who reply by letters in invisible ink, a Russian emigre leader said yesterday. This disclosure was made by Mr Lev Rahr, a leader of the Russian emigre organisation N.T.S. He was commenting on statements made by Mr Gerald Brooke, the British university lecturer who was freed last Thursday from a five-year prison term passed for disseminating N.T.S. material in Russia. Mr Rahr told reporters that radio messages were sent into the Soviet Union sometimes openly, sometimes in code. "We supply our people there with codes so they can decipher.” he said. “It was absolutely nothing to do with espionage, because for espionage it would be

needed to send the coded message out of Russia. We send messages in.” Mr Rahr said one way of getting messages out of Russia was by letters—“in this case instruction about invisible ink is given to those working for the N.T.S.” Mr Brooke said in an interview on Friday night that he had delivered coded messages

to someone in Russia before his arrest, without knowing fully what they were. Mr Rahr said however, that he was sure that if Mr Brooke had wished, he could have been given details of all the material he was taking with him.

The revelations made by Mr Brooke in his interview were greeted without enthusi--1 asm in British official circles. There was some puzzlement

over why he had chosen to be so loquacious. The British Government has been criticised for agreeing to exchange Mr Brooke for two formidable Soviet agents captured in 1981— Peter and Helen Kroger. British officials took the view that carrying material for an organisation such as N.T.S. did not make Mr Brooke a spy—certainly not in the employ of the British Government.

N.T.S. is not regarded with any great favour in British official quarters. It has been called "half-baked and amateurish.”