OBTAINED BY RUSE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27258, 8 December 1949, Page 7

OBTAINED BY RUSE

SECRET AMERICAN RADAR AIRCRAFT FLOWN TO RUSSIA WAR-TIME BASE BY-PASSED NZPA—Copyright Rec. 7 p.m. NEW YORK, Dec. 6. “ Russia obtained top secret American radar equipment by a ruse,” Mr George Jordan, war-time air force major, said to-day. Mr Jordan yesterday testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee for examination of a story he told on Friday in a radio broadcast in which he said atomic secrets and material's had been despatched to Russia during the war with the aid of the head of the lend-lease programme, the late Mr Harry Hopkins. Mr Jordan said to-day that the Russians had managed to get a plane with top secret radar equipment to Russia after he had balked them at the lendlease base at Great Falls, Montana, by removing similar radar from four other aircraft. He said the equipment was so important that General H. H. Arnold, war-time head of the Army Air Force, “would just as soon have given away his right arm as the radar.” Mr Jordan said lie first noticed the special radar equipment in a plane which was scheduled to be transferred to the Russians. Mr Jordan said he removed the equipment from that plane and later from three others, but a fifth got away with similar radar by dumping all unnecessary baggage at Washington airport and taking advantage of the lighter load to by-pass Great Falls. Atomic Materials

In Chicago to-day, Dr Harold Urey, the leading atomic scientist, said that the reported shipments qi uranium to Russia under lend-lease in 1943 would have been of negligible value. Dr Urey, who is famed for his development of heavy water and pioneer work on the first atomic bomb, added that the weights involved were so small as to be insignificant to the amount needed to produce an atomic bomb. He said: “I think we had to keep a trickle of all these chemicals flowing during that period. If we had shut them off entirely we would have told the world that they had some new value.”