More Arrests in Computer Sale Case Expected

Federal agents said Friday that more arrests may be made in an alleged plot to sell the Soviet Union plans for a U.S. super-computer capable of tracking submarines and detecting incoming missiles.

The plot, which allegedly involved the Soviet’s top space official, was broken up when agents arrested three men after recovering plans for a billion-computations-per-second computer developed by Sunnyvale-based Saxpy Computer Corp.

“We’re cleaning it up now and there may be more arrests,” said Rollin B. Klink, chief customs agent in San Francisco.

Soviet space agency chief Roald Sagdeyev met with Charles McVey, 57, a former Anaheim entrepreneur indicted in 1983 for export violations, to discuss the sale of the computer designs for $4 million, said Quint Villanueva, Pacific regional customs commissioner.

Sagdeyev is chief adviser to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on President Reagan’s “Star Wars” program, Villanueva said.

Yelena Luzhnikova, administrative aide to Sagdeyev at the Soviet Space Research Institute, said in Moscow, “I don’t know anything about it.”

She said Sagdeyev was away and will return late next week.

“The technology would have given the Soviet Union the capability to develop a super-computer, which, in the event of war, could anticipate American missile strikes, allowing the Soviets to neutralize them,” Villanueva said.

“The Soviets wanted to use it in a Star Wars role,” said an expert for the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington who asked not to be identified. “It was very significant for them.”

Ivan Pierre Batinic, 29, a French national living in Fremont and a former Saxpy engineer; his brother, Stevan, and Kevin E. Anderson, 36, a software designer also from Fremont, were arrested Thursday in the alleged plot.