The Faceless Ones

The romance of spying went out with Mata Hari. Such is the nature of the game today that a lowly government code clerk or a technician who punches computer cards at a missile site may be a more important intelligence source --and far more difficult to detect--than the disgruntled general or the indiscreet diplomat. Last week, in a case that has still undetermined links in Britain, the FBI arrested a characteristically obscure technician on charges of conspiring with the Russians. Held on $50,000 bail was a crew-cut Air Force communications operator and repairman, Staff Sergeant Herbert Boecken-haupt, 23, who had worked for some 17 months in the Air Force's Pentagon communications center, and was distinguished only by his unhappy childhood in Nazi Germany.

The Government, not wanting to prejudice its case in court, would give only sketchy details of the alleged conspiracy, but the pattern was as commonplace as the personalities. Boecken-haupt had top-secret clearance and access to many high-level communications, including those on the Moscow-Washington hot line. His contact, said the FBI, was Aleksey Malinin, a low-ranking clerk in the commercial section of the Soviet embassy. In June 1965, at the first of at least two meetings in Washington's Virginia suburbs, according to the FBI, the Russian merely questioned Boeckenhaupt about his duties in the Pentagon. At the second, in a bowling alley parking lot last April, Malinin gave him a 35-mm. slide listing the location of future rendezvous and drop areas where, presumably, information could be left for later pickup.

"One of the Many." The FBI said it had picked up the slide, as well as papers used for secret messages and notes taken at the second meeting, in Boeckenhaupt's apartment in Riverside, Calif., near March Air Force Base, where he was stationed at the time he was arrested. At March, he had access to information going through the cryptographic machines. Shortly after his arrest last week, Scotland Yard picked up Cecil Mulvena, 47, a quiet Southend-on-Sea businessman, on charges of violating Britain's Official Secrets Act, and English newspapers hinted that further arrests were planned.

Of the three, Malinin, described by one observer as "just one of the faceless many" in the Russian embassy, clearly had the brightest future, suffering only the embarrassment of being expelled from the U.S. If convicted, Boeckenhaupt, on the other hand, could receive the death penalty; Mulvena, 14 years in one of Britain's sometimes insecure jails. Whether or not Boeckenhaupt passed on important information or, indeed, any information at all, he had every opportunity to glean intelligence of interest to the Russians. The Pentagon post where he worked not only has positions of U.S. combat aircraft and missiles but also is Washington's direct line of communication with the President when he is aboard Air Force One, the flying White House.

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