Spy scare shows risks

Press, 28 October 1982, Page 9

Spy scare shows risks

NZPA-Reuter ' Washington

American concern that sensitive information it gave Britain was handed over to Moscow by a spy underscores the risks inherent in an accord under which Western governments share intelligence from electronic intercepts. Under the 1947 agreement, such information is rountinely shared by the intelligence services of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, according to a congressional report.

American intelligence sources told reporters this week they were worried that messages intercepted and decoded by the top-secret United States National Security Agency and provided to the British might have been passed to the Kremlin between 1968 and 1977.

The sources said that they were concerned about a reported penetration by a

Soviet “mole" of the British counterpart to the N.S.A., the Government Communications Headquarters.

Officials fear that this security breach could prove to have been the most serious since the Second World War. and might have prompted Moscow to strengthen its secret codes while feeding Western intelligence false data, according to a report in the New York Times.

But the incident is only the latest in a series that have marred the long-standing close co-operation in electronic intelligence among the five English-speaking nations.

Considering the unsettling nature of some of these cases, ranging from Soviet penetration to revelations that certain Western governments were spying on one another, it is remarkable that the co-operation has remained so strong.

Twice in 1963 Americans working for N.S.A. were

revealed to have been spies passing secrets to Moscow, according to “The Puzzle Palace,” a best-selling book on the agency by James Bamford, published last month. Victor Hamilton, a former N.S.A. code-breaking expert, turned up in Moscow in July, 1963, and disclosed embarrassing details about the agency to the Soviet newspaper, “Izvestia.” The same month Army Sergeant Jack Dunlop, an N.S.A. courier, shot himself when he discovered he was being investigated for living beyond his modest financial means.

It turned out that Dunlop had been selling highly sensitive documents to Moscow for several years, said officials.

Three years earlier, the new book' said, N.S.A. intelligence analysts Bernon Mitchell and William Martin defected to the Soviet Union where they held a televised news conference and accused

the United States of unscrupulously spying on allies. The two were suspected by N.S.A. of having a homosexual relationship, and in the ensuing months a total of 26 N.S.A. officials were fired for “indications of sexual deviation," according to a congressional report cited in the Bamford Book.

In 1954 Joseph Peterson, an N.S.A. cryptologist, was convicted of passing information to Dutch intelligence, said the book. While officials regarded these incidents as very serious, the United States spy scandals received less public attention than the defections of British intelligence officials Guy Burgess, Donald McLean and Harold “Kim" Philby in the 1950 s and 60s, and the exposure in 1979 of Anthony Blunt as the fourth man in their spy ring.

Revelations from both sides of the Atlantic put a serious strain on AngloAmerican co-operation in intelligence.