Tass at Work

As press secretary to Australia's Labor Party leader, Herbert V. Evatt. young (26) ex-Reporter Fergan O'Sullivan achieved public and private recognition on the same day two months ago. In public, Australian newsmen voted to give him a silver mug for his help to the press during the Labor Party's unsuccessful election campaign this spring. In private, the government subpoenaed him to appear before an Australian royal commission investigating Soviet espionage.

The commission had become interested in O'Sullivan after Vladimir Petrov, a Russian embassy secretary in Canberra, surrendered to Australian authorities and began to talk (TIME, April 26). Petrov, an ex-colonel in the MVD, the Russian secret police, charged that O'Sullivan had been helpful to the MVD in Australia. Last week O'Sullivan's answer took Australian newsmen by surprise.

Helpful Dossiers. O'Sullivan admitted preparing "dossiers" on Australian newsmen and turning them over to a correspondent for Tass, the official Russian news agency and cover-up for Moscow's international agents. The dossier on one reporter said: "[He is] drinking himself to abnormality; probably originally a Protestant, not now practicing, married, promiscuous." On another: "[This reporter] also probably holds security job, drinks, married." The dossiers went to Moscow by diplomatic pouch, said Petrov.

The Tassman who asked him for the dossiers, explained O'Sullivan, said he wanted them to "circumvent the bad press" in Australia. O'Sullivan insisted that he prepared them only to "assist international relationships," had no idea that they might be used to help the Russians recruit new agents. But there was no doubt in the Communists' mind about O'Sullivan's helpfulness. In secret messages from Moscow, testified Petrov, O'Sullivan was referred to by the Russian code name Zemlyak (i.e., fellow countryman). Furthermore, added Petrov, Rex Chiplin, an Australian reporter who works for a Communist newspaper, had told a Tassman that O'Sullivan was a "progressive," the Communists' favorite term for "fellow traveler." (As soon as Petrov mentioned him, Reporter Chiplin jumped up before the commission and shouted "That's a lie," was hastily ushered from the room.)

Double Life. For Tassmen the Australian operation was routine, but for Western newsmen it was added proof of the fact that Tass correspondents are Red agents rather than legitimate reporters. In The Netherlands and Canada, Tass correspondents have actually been found spying (TIME, Jan. 5, 1953). All Tass correspondents, in every country of the world, Petrov testified, act as MVD agents.

"If a Tass representative was not a permanent MVD worker," he added, "he was invariably called in to do that work." Petrov explained that only the secret police chief in each country knows what actual rank each Tass correspondent holds. Petrov's description of Tassmen's MVD mission: to pass themselves off as working newspapermen while they gather information for the Russian secret police.

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