Navy Says Spy Ship Off Alaska Got Only ‘Good Garbage’ : Soviet Trawler Retrieves Carrier’s Trash

A Soviet spy ship retrieved a bag of garbage dumped by the U.S. aircraft carrier Constellation, apparently to probe for secrets, but got only “food, Coke cans and the garbage of 5,000 men,” the Navy said Tuesday.

“We were in typical fashion getting rid of our garbage,” senior intelligence officer Joe Mazzafro said in an interview aboard ship. Garbage is put in plastic bags, punched through with holes to make it sink, and discarded, he said.

One bag did not sink and a Soviet trawler that had been shadowing the Navy fleet sent out a small launch to retrieve the garbage, Mazzafro said. He said of the trawler: “In plain words it’s a spy ship.”

Has Photo of Pickup

“We’ve got a picture showing the Soviet trawler picking up the garbage,” said Adm. Lyle Bull, commander of the six-ship carrier group. “Now why would they be picking up the garbage?”

The admiral described the Soviet action as “amazing” and joked, “We’ve got damn good garbage.”

“It’s unlikely that they found anything,” Mazzafro said of the Soviet scavenging effort. “But because we’re a free society, we put all sorts of things that would be classified in the Soviet Union in the trash.”

Officers with access to secret information aboard ship are under orders to destroy all classified information before discarding it, Bull said. Shredders are on board ship.

Such unclassified Navy garbage that the Soviets might find useful could include an old aircraft carrier telephone book, Mazzafro said by way of example.

‘Lot of Effort’

Mazzafro termed the Soviet garbage patrol “an awful lot of effort for very little take.”

A Navy plane from the carrier photographed the Soviet garbage collection about five miles behind the Constellation as it and five other Navy ships steamed from Vancouver, B.C., to Anchorage through the Gulf of Alaska.

The 344-foot-long, 4,000-ton Soviet spy ship was one of several Soviet vessels encountered by the Navy ships heading north in international waters for maneuvers off Alaska’s coast as part of a new naval presence in the North Pacific recently announced by Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr.

The 1,079-foot Constellation, based in San Diego, is on a six-week Pacific tour that includes Gulf of Alaska exercises with the seven warships accompanying it: three Navy frigates, a guided missile cruiser, a guided missile destroyer, and two Canadian vessels.

The Constellation carries 5,000 men and 85 planes. About 6,500 Navy personnel are taking part in the exercises.