Former Sergeant Awaiting Trial : Five Ex-GIs Implicated in Probe of Europe Spy Case

Five retired American soldiers are under investigation in an expanding European espionage case involving Clyde Lee Conrad, a former U.S. Army sergeant with access to North Atlantic Treaty Organization secrets, officials confirmed Friday.

The other soldiers’ names could not be learned immediately. But the widening number of suspects and reports that Conrad passed documents of a higher secrecy classification than he possessed indicates that Conrad’s case is more serious than reported after his August arrest. Still, “it could have been a lot worse,” a Pentagon official said.

Conrad, awaiting trial in West Germany on charges of selling NATO war plans, was recruited to spy for the Hungarian Intelligence Service by Zoltan Szabo, a Hungarian-born American soldier, officials said. All the information provided by the alleged spies is presumed to have been passed on to Moscow.

A bizarre new aspect of the case is that Conrad, posing as a Hungarian intelligence agent, was paid $100,000 by the CIA for information about an alleged U.S. Army spy ring working for the Hungarians, officials said.

Native of Ohio

The FBI, the chief U.S. agency now handling the case, refused to comment on it, as did the Defense Department. West German authorities are handling most of the investigation, a source said.

Conrad, a 42-year-old native of Sebring, Ohio, was arrested in August by West Germany authorities. He had retired from the Army in 1985 after 20 years but remained in West Germany where he had spent most of his career and had married a West German woman.

In his last five years of service, Conrad had access to secret NATO contingency plans for repelling a Soviet invasion and other information. He allegedly sold it to the Hungarians for as much as $2 million.

He was arrested along with two Hungarians, Imre Kercsik, 34, and Sandor Kercsik, 48. The Kercsik brothers, medical doctors living in Sweden, acted as couriers for the ring throughout Western Europe. They were convicted in Sweden last fall of espionage. Though they received relatively light sentences because they were not spying against Sweden, the brothers did talk at length about their activities, both to Swedish authorities and at their trial, U.S. officials said.

Sandor Kercsik said that the espionage ring began with Szabo, whom he first met in Vienna in 1967. He transmitted military secrets stolen by Szabo for several years. Szabo introduced Kercsik to Conrad around 1974, before Szabo retired from the military in the late 1970s.

Coded Messages, Drop Boxes

Szabo lived in Austria after retirement but since has fled to Hungary, where he cannot be reached by American or West German authorities, officials confirmed.

Conrad, meanwhile, transmitted hundreds of documents through the Kercsiks in more than a decade of espionage. The doctors used an elaborate system of coded messages and drop boxes to move the stolen papers. When they were arrested, code books and telecommunication equipment were found in their home.

Some documents reportedly deal with U.S. nuclear missiles and their bases, pipeline supply systems and NATO troop strengths. Conrad had top-secret Army clearance, so the papers of a higher classification that he transmitted apparently came from the five other soldiers whom he recruited, officials speculated.

Offer to Testify

The Kercsiks have identified pictures of some American soldiers and have offered to visit the United States to testify against them, officials confirmed. All the suspects reportedly live in the United States.

While Conrad worked for the Hungarians, officials said, he approached CIA agents in the guise of a Hungarian intelligence officer, offering to provide information on a U.S. Army spy ring selling documents to the Hungarians.

He received money for fictitious information, but paradoxically, the Hungarian intelligence service learned of his brazen action and ordered the Kercsiks to break off contact with him.