Games will shield spying—exile

Press, 20 January 1984, Page 6

Games will shield spying—exile

NZPA-AFP Los Angeles

The Soviet Union planned to use the Los Angeles Olympic Games as a cover for widespread spying, says a former chief sub-editor of the Soviet Novosti press agency. Tomas Schuman, who changed his name from Yuri Bezmenov after defecting to the United States several years ago, works in Los Angeles as an analyst of Soviet politics.

He said that the Soviet Union had requested per-

mission to land 25 Aeroflot planes at Los Angeles for the Games, and to anchor a Navy cruiser in a Californian harbour. They also wanted complete freedom for Soviet journalists to go wherever they wished. The only purpose of these requests could be for “the dirty business of spying,” Mr Schuman said. He was to take part later in a meeting called by the “Ban the Soviets Coalition,” a group set up after the South Korean airliner disas-

ter to campaign for the exclusion of Soviet competitors from the Los Angeles Games. Mr Schuman, who said that he had also served as press attache at the Soviet Embassy in India, asserted that at least 75 per cent of Soviet journalists were K.G.B. members. Their assignments during the Olympics would include “spying, subversion, and recruitment of agents to buy, steal, or search out United States high-technology secrets.”

He believed that the Soviets wanted to use planes from their own Aeroflot fleet because they were equipped for spying and because they would make it easier to secretly bring in electronic equipment. The cruiser would be needed because “it’s a piece of Soviet territory not subject to normal search procedures, allowing it to be used for electronic surveillance, and even a prison for Soviet athletes who become a little too interested in the American way of life.”

Mr Schuman said that he had been aboard a similar ship when he worked for Novosti. The lower decks had housed code-breakers, translators, and analysts who studied foreign military or other communications. “Parts of it look much like the war room in the movie ‘WarGames,’ while other parts resemble the control panels on ‘Star Trek’,” he said. Mr Schuman said that Novosti was a K.G.B. front for “disinformation and ideological subversion.”