A Prisoner-Swapping Triple Play

And there could be more intriguing trades in the works

To the rest of the passengers who had boarded Pan Am's Flight 688 in Frankfurt, West Germany, one morning ast week, there seemed nothing remarkable about the bearded man and his three neatly dressed companions. But as soon as the jet landed at West Berlin's Tegel Airport, the foursome rushed into a U.S.

Government sedan, which promptly sped off to the U.S. mission in the verdant Dahlem quarter of the divided city. There, the three escorts -- an East German attorney, a U.S. State Department official and an Israeli parliamentary aide-- delivered their charge, winding up one of the most intricate East-West spy swaps in years: the exchange of a convicted Soviet agent who had been held in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania for an American student who had been imprisoned by the East Germans. As part of the same deal, a young Israeli had already been freed by the Marxist regime in Mozambique.

The central figure in the swap was the prisoner from Lewisburg: Robert Thompson, 43, a onetime U.S. Air Force clerk who had served 13 years of a 30-year sentence after confessing, in 1965, that he had passed hundreds of photos of secret documents to the Soviets while he was based in West Berlin. After the exchange, Thompson hurried off into East Berlin, leaving behind several lingering puzzles about his true identity. Although U.S. investigators remained persuaded that he was a Detroit-born American, Thompson maintained that he was actually born in Leipzig (now in East Germany) of a Russian father and a German mother. If given another opportunity to spy for the Soviets, he said, he would "do it again." In any case, Moscow was so eager to obtain Thompson that it arranged for other Communist regimes to give up two prisoners:

> Miron Marcus, 24, an Israeli who holds a passport from Rhodesia, and works there in his father-in-law's radio-manufacturing business. In late April, Marcus was allowed to walk to freedom into Swaziland from Mozambique, where he had been held since September 1976, when bad weather forced his private plane to land during a flight to South Africa. Mozambican troops surrounded the craft and opened fire, wounding Marcus and killing his brother-in-law. Although he has insisted that his flight was strictly for business purposes, diplomats in West Germany have speculated that Marcus might have been surveying Cuban and Soviet activity in Mozambique for the CIA and Israeli intelligence.

>Alan van Norman, 22, a biology student at Minnesota's Concordia College. He flew home last week after being delivered to the U.S. mission in West Berlin by the East Germans. They sentenced him to a 2 1/2-year prison term last January, after he had been caught five months earlier attempting to smuggle a family out of East Germany. After his release, Van Norman told newsmen that he had "only wanted to help people. It was not a question of money." He appeared in good health, although he complained of "very rough interrogation" during his first three months of confinement.

The triple prisoner play was the result of several months of negotiations.

Among the key Western officials involved in the bargaining was Congressman Benjamin Gilman, a New York Republican who has worked quietly to obtain free dom for a number of people imprisoned by Communist regimes. For the East bloc, the chief negotiator was East German Lawyer Wolfgang Vogel, an old hand at spy swapping. He negotiated the 1962 exchange of Francis Gary Powers, the American pilot whose U-2 spy plane was shot down over the U.S.S.R., for top Soviet Spy Rudolf Abel, who was imprisoned in the U.S. More recently, Vogel has acted as the primary channel through which Bonn has been getting East Germany to free political prisoners by paying ransom money (up to $35,000 per prisoner).

Clearly well rewarded for his work, Vogel drives a gold-colored Mercedes sedan, wears gold watches and elegant Western-style clothes, lives in a plush villa outside East Berlin and has a comfort able lakeside dacha. His most envied badge of privilege, however, may well be his "open" visa; it apparently allows him to pass freely through the Berlin Wall to visit the West.

There are indications that Vogel may be ready to make more deals. One candidate is Captain Nikolai Artamonov, a Soviet naval officer who defected to the U.S. in 1959, assumed the name Nicholas Shadrin and then disappeared in Vienna 2 1/2 years ago, possibly while on a U.S. intelligence assignment.

Although the Soviets insist that they know nothing, it is widely believed that Artamonov was kidnaped by the KGB.

The most intriguing speculation focuses on Anatoli Shcharansky, the Soviet computer expert who has been held incommunicado in a Moscow prison for more than a year be cause of his activities as an out spoken refusenik, the common nickname for Jews who have applied to Soviet officials for permission to emigrate but have been refused. Although Moscow is preparing to try Shcharansky soon, apparently on charges of anti-Soviet activity or possibly treason, Vogel has told Congressman Gilman that the Kremlin may be ready to deal for his release. The Soviets may even be willing to trade their prisoner for some one being held outside the U.S. This could replay the 1976 barter that freed Dissident Vladimir Bukovsky from his Rus sian cell in return for Chilean Commu nist Party Leader Luis Corvalan, who had been jailed by his country's ruling junta Whatever form a Shcharansky deal may take, if one develops at all, the Carter Ad ministration seems almost certain to resist it if it implies that Shcharansky spied for the U.S.--a charge frequently made by the Soviet press but vigorously denied by the White House.

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