The big news in Europe is that former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt has been very closely associated with two Communist spies. His top aide, Gunter Guillaume, has been a Communist spy since 1956, and has been so close to Willy Brandt that the Chancellor took him as a companion on his vacation last summer.
Brandt admitted on television that he “allowed secret papers to come into the hands of the agent Guillaume during my holiday in Norway.” Among those papers was a confidential letter from President Nixon to Brandt outlining U.S. plans regarding NATO.
No sooner had Brandt resigned in the wake of these startling revelations than a second Brandt spy scandal surfaced. A Communist woman agent, Susanne Sievers, had been assigned by the Party to work her wiles on Brandt. The West German newspapers have reported that the West German Government ultimately paid her $163,000 in return for her promise not to publish her memoirs. She had already entitled them “And Then There Was a Girl.”
U.S. State Department officials reacted by describing the Brandt affair as “very surprising.” If our Government officials are surprised, then they have learned nothing from the many acts of Communist espionage previously committed against Western countries.
Spy scientists Klaus Fuchs and Bruno Pontecorvo and the Rosenbergs stole the secrets of our atom bomb. Soviet spies Gordon Lonsdale, Harry Houghton, Ethel Gee, and Peter and Helen Kroger stole the secrets of our Polaris submarine.
Colonel Israel Beer, trusted aide to Prime Minister Ben Gurion of Israel, betrayed his country’s secrets toMoscow. John Vassal, the secretary to the First Lord of the British Admiralty, transmitted secrets to Russia for seven years. Colonel Stig Wennerstrom, military attache to the Swedish embassy in Washington, sent Swedish and U.S. secrets to Russia for years.
It is ridiculous to think that the Communists would plant top spies in other governments, but not do likewise in our country. Yet, in the United States, the Subversive Activities Control Board has been abolished. Our most knowledgeable security officer, Otto Otepka, has been removed from the State Department. The House Internal Security Committee and the FBI are constantly being harassed and restricted in their efforts to protect us. There is a continuing propaganda effort carried on which is designed to destroy their usefulness.
Instead of being surprised at Communist espionage, our Government should realize that spying is a standard Soviet tactic. The successful spying on Willy Brandt should encourage our Government to strengthen, instead of weakening, our internal security. The important question may be, what secrets are being sent to Russia by well-placed Communist spies in Washington?
