Eastern Bloc Ties to 6 Accused in Ariane Spying Case Suspected

Six people arrested on espionage charges who allegedly sought information on the propulsion system of Europe’s Ariane rocket were probably working for the Soviet Union or one of its allies in the Eastern Bloc, the chairman of the rocket program said Friday.

Frederic d’Allest, who heads Arianespace, the French-led international consortium that builds, markets and launches the unmanned Ariane rocket, told Radio France Inter it appears that the accused spies were seeking intelligence on the rocket’s third and final stage that boosts its satellite cargo toward orbit, and that the spy ring probably stemmed from an “Eastern network.”

D’Allest said other countries, including Brazil and India, might be interested in the technology of the Ariane rocket engines, “but I don’t want to suggest a false trail. It certainly seems that it is the trail to the East that is concerned.”

Both Europe and the United States use the technology and “Japan and China have been using it on their launchers for two years. For the U.S.S.R., to my knowledge, it’s for the near future,” D’Allest said.

He also pointed out that the two women being held are East European. One is a Soviet emigre married to a French engineer, who also was arrested. The other woman, a Romanian, worked for the French National Institute for Economic Statistics. The Romanian’s husband was being sought Friday by investigators, police said.

The Soviet Embassy, however, said in a statement it made an official protest to the French External Relations Ministry against “the new campaign of disinformation and lies” arising from the Ariane affair. It denied “categorically these false assertions.”

Among the six are three engineers and a free-lance journalist working for the daily Le Figaro, sources close to the investigation said. One of them, Jean-Michel Haury, 54, had been working on a temporary contract basis for the European Propulsion Society, the company that builds the engines for the unmanned rocket.

Company Chairman Jean Sollier, however, said in a statement that “no salaried personnel were among those arrested.” He also said that it has been established that “a search for information on cryogenic propulsion had been carried out.”

Cryogenic propulsion, the rocket’s third and final stage, involves liquid hydrogen and oxygen stored at very low temperatures, then brought together in the rocket engine. It was mastered first by the United States, then Europe. China and Japan have used the system in rocket motors for two years.

Left unclear, however, was to what documents the suspects had access and whether they succeeded in passing along any useful information.

Investigators said the apparent mastermind of the operation was Pierre Verdier, an engineer for the National Institute of Economic Statistics and Studies in France. He is the husband of the Soviet woman, Ludmila Varyguine.

They said it appears that Verdier and Antonetta Manole, the Romanian woman who also worked for the statistics institute in Rouen, and Michel Fleury, who worked for it in Paris, probably had access to a number of confidential reports concerning Ariane as well as companies working under Defense Ministry contracts.

Twice in the last four launches since September, 1985, Ariane’s third stage, involving cryogenic propulsion, has failed to fire properly, sending the rocket and its multimillion-dollar satellite cargo flying out of control and forcing it to be automatically detonated by mission control at the French launching pad at Kourou, French Guiana.