‘Hijackings part of conspiracy’

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32777, 30 November 1971, Page 15

‘Hijackings part of conspiracy’

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

LONDON, November 29.

The spate of aircraft hijackings last year was part of a world-wide Communist conspiracy to steal North Atlantic Treaty Organisation secrets, an espionage expert, E. H. Cookridge, alleges in a book to be published tomorrow.

Britain, he says, was brought into the murky web of blackmail barters with the detention of the girl hijacker, Leila Khaled, after an abortive attempt to seize an Israeli airliner at Heathrow Airport. She was later released by Britain in a deal freeing British, American and German and Israeli hostages taken from three hijacked aircraft blown up by Palestinian guerrillas in Jordan.) In his book, “Spy Trade,” Mr Cookridge says that a small ■ group Of conspirators of various nationalities, all self-confessed Communists and obviously taking their instructions from a secret centre, reduced six nations to impotence. “Using several hundred innocent people as puppets in the game of world politics, and a country tom by civil war as their base of operations, they succeeded in accomplishing their assignments,” the author suggests. "They captured a mass of N.A.T.O. documents from a Pan American . airliner hijacked on a flight from Amsterdam to New York, including top-secret plans for the combined N.A.T.O. air arid naval exercises codenamed Wintex-”

From a Trans World Airlines Boeing 707 hijacked after take-off from Frankfurt to New York, they captured another set of N.A.T.O. documents, Mr Cookridge writes, adding: "Sealed pouches carried by couriers from the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers in Europe, at Casteau, Belgium, included secret documents from the N.A.T.O. Military Council en route to the Pentagon.”