Secrets of the Deep

The oak-paneled Bow Street Magistrates' Court had seen nothing like it since the case of Atom Spy Klaus Fuchs in 1950. Up before Magistrate K.J.P. Barraclough last week was an international spy quintet that, the prosecution charged, was caught attempting to pass on to "a potential enemy ... a picture of our current antisubmarine effort and research," as well as details of Britain's first nuclear submarine, the Dreadnought, which is fitted with a U.S.-designed reactor power plant.

As prosecution and police stated their case in the pretrial hearing, the key man was Gordon Arnold Lonsdale, 38. Jowly, confident Lonsdale arrived in London only a few months ago bearing a Canadian passport and birth certificate. As on two prior visits, he rented a small flat at a residential hotel called the White House, styling himself a company director in the hotel register. He had interests in a small London firm, Allo Security Products, makers of remote-control locking mechanisms still under preproduction testing.

At the Elm. But Lonsdale, said the prosecution, was not a Canadian but a Russian. He soon found occasion to journey to Weymouth on Britain's southern coast, where he somehow made contact with Henry Houghton, 55. Ex-Navy Petty Officer Houghton was a clerical officer at the Royal Navy's heavily guarded underwater experimental station at nearby Portland. According to Houghton, Lonsdale identified himself as "Commander Alexander Johnson of the U.S. naval attache's office," and explained that the U.S. was anxious to know if U.S. information supplied to the British was being acted upon.

Houghton claims that he saw nothing wrong when Lonsdale asked him to obtain information and documents, even enlisted the help of his fiancee, Elizabeth Gee, 46, who also worked at the naval station. Between them they collected and photographed secret manuals (Particulars of War Vessels), Admiralty orders and charts. Nights they frequently relaxed at the Elm, where the pub's other patrons had come to know the generous and jovial Houghton as Harry. "One of our best customers," said the publican's wife. "We were amazed at his arrest."

Every month, Houghton traveled to London, usually met Lonsdale at a pub near the Old Vic theater. On his last trip five weeks ago, he brought Miss Gee along. All three were nabbed just as she was handing over a shopping bag to Lonsdale. Found on him were undeveloped photographs of 212 pages from Particulars of War Vessels, drawings for some of the Navy's latest ships, and 58 pages of Admiralty fleet orders. Said Houghton to the police: "I've been a bloody fool." Miss Gee pleaded, "I've done nothing wrong," and the inscrutable Lonsdale said nothing.

From Lonsdale the trail led to a bungalow in suburban Ruislip, just outside London. There, middle-aged Peter and Helen Kroger had set up a modest book business in the front room. Hospitable and friendly, the Krogers had long been neighborhood favorites. Neighbor George Hammond recalled that Mrs. Kroger had dropped around only a couple of hours before her arrest with some fresh bones for his dog.

Trap Door. The charming Krogers, said the Crown, were the bankers and communicators for the ring. Rummaging through the Krogers' home, British police found $8,000 in cash and travelers' checks. A high-speed radio transmitter was found beneath a trap door in the kitchen, and in a secret cigarette-lighter compartment, a radio transmission schedule. Following the transmission schedule, counter-intelligence agents swiftly locked on to a station that directional locators placed in the vicinity of Moscow. Moscow's transmissions came in faithfully at the times and on the frequencies listed in the Krogers' schedules.

The police found New Zealand passports in the Krogers' effects. But soon fingerprints told a different story. From the FBI in Washington came evidence that Helen Kroger was, in fact, Lona Petka of Adams, Mass., and her husband was Morris Cohen, sometime of New York City, who had played guard on Monroe High's championship 1927 football team. Teammates remembered him as "Unc," for his likeness then to Uncle Walt of the Gasoline Alley comic strip. Unc Cohen went on to take a degree at Mississippi State College, later fought with the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War (his nom de guerre: Israel Altman), hired out as a guard at the Soviet pavilion during the 1939 New York World's Fair, worked for the Soviet Amtorg Trading Corp. in 1942. Around the time of the Ethel and Julius Rosenberg spy trial in 1951, the Cohens ducked from sight. The FBI was not looking for them then but for reasons unrevealed, began taking an interest in them during the Rudolf Ivanovich Abel spy case in 1957. When Colonel Abel was convicted as a Russian spy, the FBI sent circulars concerning the elusive Cohens to their counter-intelligence counterparts in Britain.

Also Flyspecks. The spy ring was handsomely equipped. A Chinese scroll discovered in Lonsdale's apartment had a secret catch revealing a hollow core. It contained $1,800 in cash. A can of paint at Houghton's place contained a plastic bag with $1,820 in cash. The brandy flask at the Krogers' contained iron oxide powder, which can be sprinkled on magnetic tape to make coded messages visible. Fly-speck-sized pieces of film found in Helen Kroger's purse were "microdots"--photographs of documents shrunk down by special equipment to minuscule size.

Testifying in court, the Admiralty's underwater warfare chief, Captain George Osborn Symonds, said that the work of the spy ring could have been "of highest value to a potential enemy." But British counter-intelligence had learned of a security leak at the Underwater Experimental Station last July, had had the ring under surveillance ever since. Implication was that most of the valuable information had been intercepted before it could be delivered.

In court, Lonsdale seemed fatalistically detached. Curiously enough, police searching Helen Kroger's handbag had found a microdot message from Lonsdale's wife and a six-page handwritten letter in Russian from Lonsdale in reply. Wrote his wife: "How unjust is life. I fully understand you are working and this is your duty and you love your work and try to do all this very conscientiously. Nevertheless my reasoning is somehow narrowminded in a female fashion and I suffer dreadfully. Write to me how you love me and maybe I will feel better." In his reply to "beloved Galiusha," Lonsdale wrote: "All I am going to say is that I myself have only one life and not an easy one at that. All I want is to spend my life so that looking at it there will be no shame in looking back ... I will be 39 shortly; is there much left?"

Lonsdale and four co-accused were held over for trial, which will probably begin sometime next month. Under British law, they face, if convicted, maximum sentences of 14 years.

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