Ex-U.S. Code Expert Seized as Soviet Spy

A former National Security Agency communications specialist, implicated as a Soviet spy by turnabout defector Vitaly Yurchenko, was arrested today on charges of conspiring to sell secrets to the Soviet Union, the fourth American arrested on espionage charges in five days.

Ronald William Pelton, 44, a boat salesman, was arrested by FBI agents before dawn at an Annapolis, Md., hotel, an FBI spokesman said.

The FBI said Pelton worked from 1965 to 1979 for the super-secret spy agency, which is responsible for breaking foreign codes in government, military and private broadcast transmissions it monitors around the world. The NSA also helps devise U.S. codes and monitors and analyzes foreign telephone transmissions.

One federal source said Pelton was paid by the Soviets for his information and that he began providing it to them before he was fired from the NSA over unrelated matters.

2nd Fingered by Yurchenko

Federal sources said Pelton was the second former U.S. intelligence officer implicated in spying for the Soviet Union by Yurchenko, the top-level KGB general-designate who defected to the West on Aug. 1 and returned to the Soviet Union three months later.

The sources said that both Pelton and the other man implicated by Yurchenko, Edward L. Howard, 34, had been fired from their intelligence jobs well before they were implicated, but for reasons unrelated to the spying allegations now placed against them.

Pelton had been investigated by the FBI for several months as a result of a description provided by Yurchenko, the sources said.

A former CIA covert agent who was fired for petty theft and drug use, Howard fled to Finland in September after the FBI interviewed him about the spying allegations.

Pelton was accused of violating federal law concerning the gathering of defense information for a foreign government.

He had rented and moved into a $760-a-month furnished apartment in northwest Washington in October, signing a year’s lease and paying for the first and last months, said his landlord, a lawyer who asked not to be identified.

White House Response

At the White House, presidential spokesman Larry Speakes said, “This Administration from the outset has set priority on rooting out cases of espionage over the last five years.”

He said the Administration was trying to improve counterintelligence capabilities, and that “it is our goal to have more appropriations, more people and an aggressive posture to recognize the threat to our national security posed by the activity of hostile intelligence. That is a high priority, and I think you see it paying off.”

Others facing espionage charges are: Jonathan J. Pollard, 31, a civilian analyst for the U.S. Navy, arrested outside the Israeli Embassy Thursday and charged with selling classified military documents to Israel and Pakistan; Anne L. Henderson-Pollard, 25, Pollard’s wife, arrested Friday and charged with gathering or delivering defense information, and Larry Wu-Tai Chin, 63, a former CIA intelligence analyst, arrested Friday and charged with selling U.S. secrets to China since 1952.