A WIDER NET CATCHES SPIES IN RECORD NUMBERS FOR U.S.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000303050024-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 22, 2010
• Sequence Number: 24
• Publication Date: December 23, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000303050024-6
'WED
ON Pkt
WASHINGTON TIMES
23 December 1985
A wider net catches spies va
record numbers for U.S.
Ex-clerk at FBI accused
of selling data to Soviets
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
A courier with access to top-
secret congressional hearings will
be arraigned today before a U.S. Dis-
trict Court judge on charges of at-
tempting to sell secret documents to
the Soviets.
Randy Miles Jeffries, 26, a former
FBI identification section clerk, met
Friday night at the Holiday Inn Mo-
tel at 14th Street and Massachusetts
Avenue NW with an FBI agent who
pretended to be a Soviet intelligence
officer, according to court papers
filed during a detention hearing Sat-
urday.
Mr. Jeffries' arrest followed a
grand jury indictment Friday in Bal-
timore of Ronald Pelton, a former
National Security Agency Soviet af-
fairs specialist, on six counts of espi-
onage. He is said to have sold NSA
communications data to the Soviets
for $35,000.
Mr. Pelton is scheduled to be ar-
raigned today before U.S. District
Judge Herbert F. Murray in Balti-
more.
Soviet GRU military intelligence
service officers are known to oper-
ate out of the Soviet Embassy's naval
and military office on Belmont Road
in Northwest Washington, where
FBI agents first saw Mr. Jeffries on
Dec. 14, an FBI statement said.
Sergei Bokhan, a senior GRU of-
ficial, defected to the United States
last May from the Soviet Embassy in
Athens and has been cooperating
with U.S. intelligence officials, but
officials would not say if there was a
connection to Mr. Jeffries' arrest.
Mr. Jeffries told the agent he had
already delivered "60 pages of sam-
ple copies" of transcripts of closed
sessions of the House to the Soviets,
the papers stated.
of the security police were tried and
sentenced to terms of between 14
and 25 years. Their superior at the
Interior Ministry was sentenced to
25 years for instigating the crime.
Mrs. Byrdy's conclusion of sui-
cide in this year's death was chal-
lenged by human-rights organiza-
tions and Father Poplawski's
Eastern Orthodox Church. Contri-
buting to the skepticism was the be-
lief by human-rights monitors that
Mrs. Byrdy gave neither a full nor
accurate report in the trial last year
of the four men charged with the
murder of Father Popieluszko.
Keston College says Mrs. Byrdy
was subjected to "official pressure"
to minimize the extent of the injuries
inflicted upon the second priest.
"In this instance, with the victim
being a member of a minority group,
there is not as much official concern
or weight of public opinion as in the
case of Rev. Popieluszko," re-
searchers at Keston College say.
The Polish Orthodox church is po-
litically and geographically isolated
in eastern Poland and claims fewer
than 600,000 members.
Before official denials of the mur-
der were made, both the head of the
Polish Orthodox church, Arch-
bishop Bazyli, and church spokeman
Jerzy Thfiluk confirmed that Father
Poplawski was murdered, but said
the church would refrain from any
official statements until the govern-
ment investigation was completed.
Even then, a source from the
Bialystok area said that Polish police
had not even tried to ascertain Fa-
ther Poplawski's whereabouts or
movements in the week between his
disappearance and the finding of his
body."
Two motives have been put forth
by a variety of sources who accuse
the secret police of targeting Father
Poplawski.
One is that the government wants
to cause an ecumenical rift between
Roman Catholics and the Polish
Orthodox church by sowing discord
between the groups. Those who sug-
gest this motive note that Roman
Catholics are among the strongest
supporters of the trade union Soli-
darity, which the government has
tried to suppress, and after the death
was initially ruled a suicide, rumors
began circulating that he was killed
for "attacking Solidarity."
[In a weekend leadership meet-
ing, a senior government official
said Polish authorities intend to
crack down harder on Solidarity and
opposition activists who are
"threatening the country's political
stability," Reuters reported yester-
day.
[PAP, the official Polish news
agency, said the warning was issued
by Deputy Interior Minister Wlady-
slaw Pozoga at a two-day meeting of
the Central Commmittee of Poland's
Communist Party.
[Mr. Pozoga accused Opposition
activists and their Western support-
ers of trying to discredit the party
and its security apparatus, disrupt
preparations for the congress and
"sustain the myth of the former Soli-
darity free trade union."]
Keston College sources report,
however, that in a sermon delivered
shortly before his death, the
Orthodox priest had warned his con-
gregation that Solidarity was in con-
stant danger of infiltration by secret
police. .
A second motive, say human-
rights monitors, may lie in the deter-
mination of Father Poplawski to
overcome the delaying tactics of
Polish authorities to whom his
church had to apply for building and
renovation permits.
"Communist governments often
use the granting and revoking of
land permits as a means of control-
ling and ultimately destroying the
strength of the local church," the
Rev. Jeffrey Collins of Christian
Reponse International said in an ear-
lier interview.
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