The Henpecked Spy

How do you break into the spy business? Simple. Your wife goes round to a Soviet embassy, knocks on the door and tells the Russians that you want to join up because you need some quick cash to pay off store bills, a mortgage and other debts. Preposterous? Not at all. That is precisely what happened to Royal Navy Sub-Lieut. David James Bingham, 31. Last week he was sentenced in a British court to 21 years in prison for selling to the Soviets for $5,520 defense secrets which, according to the British Attorney General, were "valuable almost beyond price."

As the sentence was pronounced, Bingham's wife Maureen collapsed sobbing on the courtroom floor. Later British television viewers saw her talking at length with reporters in the Binghams' $30,000 home, surrounded by the sort of luxuries that had put the family $5,000 in debt--elegant red leather furniture, stereo phonograph, color television set. She claimed that she was the guilty party. "I nagged him into becoming a spy," said Maureen, who found it extremely expensive to try keeping up with the navy's social whirl. At the same time, however, she boasted that her husband had taken the Russians for more money than he had admitted in court --about $12,000 in all. "The Russians gave us money like water," she said.

Suggestion. While hospitalized with a painful spinal problem in 1969, Bingham had complained to his wife about their problem of trying to make ends meet on his modest annual salary of about $5,000. She suggested that they "go to the Russians." Whereupon he wrote out a note stating his name, rank and naval assignment as an antisubmarine warfare and torpedo specialist at the British naval base in Portsmouth, and Maureen delivered it to the Russian embassy in London. After he left the hospital, the Soviets invited him to London for a meeting. Over vodka, they gave him $1,200 as an initial payment, as well as instructions to photograph "anything of interest." Using his security clearance to gain access to secret documents, Bingham took photographs of among other things, sonar detection systems and wartime contingency plans of the British fleet. "The damage you have done is incalculable," declared the sentencing judge.

Bingham delivered exposed films to the Soviets by leaving them at one of seven "dead drops" in or near the town of Guildford, including a tree, a hollow under a bridge, and a car door in a rural trash heap. In turn, the Soviets left a "parcel"--a hollow sphere made of putty and shaped like a stone, containing a fresh supply of film, instructions and sometimes money.

Despite their new source of income, the Binghams were unable to get out of debt. A finance company threatened to report them to the police for selling a car before they had completed payment on it. Bingham was becoming desperate, and was eventually even driven to pawning the camera the Soviets had given him. He also felt increasingly guilty about selling secrets to the Russians. One day last August, he sought out a senior officer aboard his ship in Portsmouth. "I am and have been for a number of years a Soviet agent," he declared. (Actually, according to the Attorney General, Bingham had been spying for only about 18 months.) His confession came only a few weeks before the British government expelled 105 Soviet diplomats and other officials on charges of engaging in espionage. Bingham's contact, the assistant naval attache at the Soviet embassy who was quickly sent home on leave, was refused re-entry into Britain.

After the trial, Maureen was by turns contrite, defiant and apologetic, with an unending supply of startling statements about the affair for newsmen. "My husband was an idiot to give himself up," she told the Daily Mail. She also declared that "I was the one who passed on information through the dead drops. I shall never know why I was not charged." Britain's Director of Public Prosecutions also was puzzled, and ordered an investigation. At week's end Maureen Bingham was charged under the Official Secrets Act and released on $1,200 bail.

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