Intelligence watch on Russians

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32971, 18 July 1972, Page 15

Intelligence watch on Russians

(N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright? NEW YORK, July 17. American intelligence techniques are so sophisticated that the United States keeps track of every Russian plane, missile-carrying submarine, and troop unit, and routinely listens to and decodes Soviet communications, according to a former intelligence analyst for the National Security Agency (N.S A.).

According to the analyst the breadth of United States intelligence activities virtually precludes a surprise attack on the United States by the Russians. The analyst, who used the nseudonvm Winslow Peck is a former Air Force sergeant assigned by the supersecret N.S.A. to posts in

Istanbul and Vietnam before he left the service. He made his revelations in an article in the August edition of "Ramparts” magazine, published in Berkeley, California.

“As far as the Soviet Union is concerned,” he said, “we know the whereabouts at any given time of all its aircraft, exclusive of small private planes, and its naval forces, including its missile-firing submarines.

“The fact is that we’re able to break every code they’ve got, understand every type of communications equipment and enciphering device they’ve got. We know where their submarines are. what every one of their V.I.P.s is doing, and generally their capabilities and . the dispositions of all their forces,” he said. The extent of N.S.A. intelligence reaches to the identification of the pilot flying a specific Russian aircraft on a specific flights, according to Peck.

In addition, N.S.A. regularly monitored secret communications by other countries, including such allies as Britain, Israel and West Germany, Peck said. For example, during the 1967 six-day war between Israel and the Arabs, Peck recalled, N.S.A. learned that General Moshe Dayan planned to order his troops to push to Cairo and Damascus, but was called back and reprimanded.

Moreover, N.SA. learned that Soviet paratroops—the equivalent of the American Green Berets—were airborne from Bulgaria, apparently planning a troop drop into Israel. A call from then President Lyndon Johnson to the Soviet Prime Minister (Mr Alexei Kosygin) on the hot-line, warning of grave consequences of such a troop drop, persuaded the Russians to turn the planes back, Peck said.

N-S-A. also watched a tele-

vision conversation between Mr Kosygin and the cosmonaut, Vladimir Komarov,

who was aboard the ill-fated Soviet spaceship Soyuz 1, the article said. The Russians had discovered that the craft’s reentry parachutes would not function and that Komarov was doomed, Peck said. He said that Mr Kosygin was in tears during the emotional episode, which also included a segment in which Komarov told his wife how to handle their affairs after his death. Komarov was killed during re-entry when his spacecraft burned up. Peck asserted that American planes regularly violate the air space of the Soviet Union to activate their defensive reaction and thereby gauge the Russian defence plan. Official statements from Washington consistently have denied that any authorised flights over the Soviet Union have taken place since a U2 aircraft piloted by Francis Gary Powers crashed in 1960,