Carrot & Careless George

The Communist spy, who doubtless regards the East-West detente as a conspiracy, has yet to come in from the cold war. Judging from two espionage cases in Washington that were disclosed last week by the FBI, the Red system is equally reluctant to adjust its wage-price guidelines to capitalist living costs. For two years of alleged secret-swiping in the Pentagon, a retired Army colonel got just $5,500 from the Soviets -- and may face the death penalty. For nearly four years of risky spy projects, a State Department employee (and FBI informant) was paid a mere $3,440 by the Czechs. Both cases were as tawdry in detail as they were paltry in cash value.

Meetings with Mike. The first case involved a paunchy former Army lieutenant colonel named William H. Whalen, who retired five years ago to become a $1.79-an-hour park-litter picker and treeman in Fairfax County, Va. As the FBI told it, Whalen, 51, had worked with Soviet espionage experts between 1959 and 1961 while assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Whalen, charged the FBI, had conspired to turn over to the Russians information covering "atomic weaponry, missiles, military intelligence reports and analyses."

Whalen purportedly had several shopping-center contacts with a couple of Soviet embassy officials named Sergei Edemski and Mikhail A. Shumaev (code-named "Mike"). After Whalen had to retire because of a bad heart, he applied for a civilian job in sensitive Pentagon areas. He was rejected, much to the disappointment of Soviet espionage, according to the FBI. Whalen, who was fired from his park job in Fairfax County last month for some private espionage (he bugged a phone conversation between Mrs. Whalen and his boss), was arrested and released on $15,000 bail.

Carrot Friends. The other case involved a different kind of mike. In 1961, Frank John Mrkva, State Department visa courier and the son of Czechoslovakian-born parents, met Zdenek Pisk, then a third secretary at the Czech embassy in Washington. Aft er a number of casual conversations with Mrkva (whose surname means "Carrot"), Pisk became confident that Carrot was ready for uprooting. Pisk arranged a private dinner, suggested that Mrkva, now 38, might want to help the Czech Communist cause by doing a little spying. "Knock off the patriotism business," snapped Mrkva. "I'm interested in money." Pisk offered to give Mrkva and his family a free trip to Czechoslovakia, pay off Mrkva's mortgage and finance an operation on his daughter's spinal curvature. Mrkva, who had kept the FBI informed from the start, fed his Red friends such unclassified items as the State Department phone book, press releases, and previously cleared administrative reports.

Bookcase Bug. FBI men carefully counterspied on each of 48 rendezvous between Mrkva and the Czechs, soon discovered that the Reds had counterspies tailing Mrkva's meetings. Nevertheless, the FBI managed to counter-counterspy on the counterspies and the spies without ever being observed.

Eventually, after a man named Jifi Opatrny (which means "George Careful") had taken over as Mrkva's contact, Mrkva was told to plant a listening device in a bookcase in one of the State Department offices used by the director of the Office of Eastern European Affairs.

On May 29, Careful gave Carrot a battery-powered bug in a walnut-covered container to match the bookcase. It was 13 in. long, 1 1/2 in. wide and 1/2 in. deep and contained a microphone and a transmitter that could be activated by an outside high-frequency signal to broadcast conversations from deep inside State Department offices. No sooner was the meeting over than Mrkva gingerly handed the bug to waiting FBI agents.

Puzzled by its sudden silence, Opatrny told Mrkva that the Czechs wondered why the bug had worked perfectly for 20 minutes and then stopped. Mrkva said he had accidentally dropped the mechanism. Opatrny then ordered him to get it back since the Czechs hoped to plant a similar device in the office of Under Secretary George Ball. Said he: "Everyone wants to know what is wrong with it."

Everyone found out what was wrong last week when the FBI released details of the case. Careless George Careful was "PNG'D" (kicked out of the U.S. as persona non grata) by the State Department. Mrkva, who had turned over to the FBI all of his receipts from the Czechs, admitted that spying "was hardly worthwhile" as a way to get rich quick. But the State Department showed its appreciation by giving him a raise from $9,267 to $10,619 a year.

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