Sloppy Spies

The orange juice papers

The American Navy officer, code-named "Ed" by his Soviet contact, slowed his car on New Jersey's Garden State Parkway near Woodbridge. On the side of the road, at a prearranged spot, he nervously dropped an orange juice container stuffed with documents describing the U.S. Navy's top secret method of tracking enemy submarines.

The Navy man made his drop just as he had been instructed to by "Jim," the Soviet agent who first telephoned him last August, and had since directed him in several turnovers of information. This time the drop had a different ending.

A few minutes after Ed drove away, the FBI seized three Russians in a nearby shopping center: Rudolf Chernyayev and Valdik Enger, employees of the United

Nations, and Vladimir Zinyakin, a member of the Soviet U.N. mission. The first two were charged with espionage and put in jail, where they remained last week in default of $2 million bail apiece. They face life imprisonment if convicted. Zinyakin, who has diplomatic immunity, may simply be sent home by the Soviets at the State Department's request. As is apt to happen in the spy business, the three had been doublecrossed by Ed, actually a loyal Navy officer who went along with the Russians to entrap them. His name is being withheld, but he may have to reveal himself when the case goes to court.

"It's a classic spy case," said an FBI man--but it was not a particularly difficult one. Ed had tipped off the FBI when Jim first phoned him. The Soviet agent, in follow-up letters, asked the officer about his naval background and his access to classified material. He then promised to pay thousands of dollars a month for "longterm cooperation," and provided money for a camera to use in photographing documents.

Through the long, cold fall and winter, Ed drove the New Jersey highways, littering them, on Soviet instructions, with orange juice, milk and peanut crunch containers into which he had crammed documents for Jim. In return, as promised, the money flowed freely. All the while the FBI screened his giveaway secrets --and kept the cash he received.

On March 11 Ed went to a phone booth on the Garden State Parkway. It rang and Jim's now familiar voice told him to look under the shelf of a nearby phone, where he found written instructions. He was to stuff his documents into a used milk container and make the drop at the base of a telephone pole on Fulner Street in South Amboy. Waiting for him there was a red coffee can containing $3,000, which brought his total payoff to $16,000. The can also held another message: "By the way, have you paid attention to my request to pass over to us films of the latest documents dated 1976-1978, if possible?" Some of the documents requested dealt with a secret underwater acoustic system that allows the Navy to identify Soviet submarines by then" distinctive sound patterns. The system can also tell a submarine's location, speed and course.

Ed set to work on this new mission, making the final drop at Woodbridge just before the FBI closed in. The agents had no problem identifying their quarry: Enger and Chernyayev had used cars--observed near the drop-off points--registered in their own names.

FBI men later said they had wanted to seize the three Soviets months ago, but that the State Department was reluctant to have the U.N. employees arrested. The department dropped its objections, says the FBI, when shown photographs of the Russians retrieving that sour-smelling milk carton from the base of the South Amboy telephone pole.

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