Air Force Captain Suspected of Spying but Is Not Charged

A Czech-born U.S. Air Force officer who served in a sensitive European listening post is being investigated for espionage and has been detained at an Air Force base, Pentagon officials said Friday.

Air Force Capt. John Vladimir Hirsch, 33, an electrical engineer stationed at Tempelhof airport in West Berlin, is suspected of having sold secret documents and information to the Soviet Union but has not been formally charged, the officials said.

The Pentagon said no determination has been made of the potential damage to U.S. intelligence operations, but the potential repercussions are substantial.

Eastern Bloc Movements

Tempelhof is an outpost of the Air Force Security Agency, which gathers sensitive information on air and troop movements inside the Eastern Bloc.

Hirsch was the engineering branch chief of a unit that relays information learned from U.S. electronic eavesdropping efforts. The unit, the 690th Electronic Security Wing, also helps safeguard the security of military communications among U.S. and allied forces against Eastern Bloc jamming and eavesdropping.

The American operations accessible to Hirsch are “pretty exotic,” said one defense official.

Hirsch “had a top-secret clearance which allowed him access to areas working with top-secret information,” said Lt. Erlinda Baker, a spokeswoman at the Electronic Security Command headquarters at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Tex.

Restricted to Quarters

The Air Force captain is being restricted to his quarters at Kelly while the Air Force Office of Special Investigations continues its investigation.

Hirsch had served in the Electronic Security Wing since April, 1987, officials said. A native of Prague, Czechoslovakia, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1971.

A defense official said the probe that focused on possible wrongdoing by Hirsch began after an Army warrant officer, James W. Hall, was arrested last December on charges of espionage. Hall had worked for most of his 12-year military career at the Army Security Agency in West Berlin.

In the wake of the Hall case, lie detector tests were administered widely to personnel throughout the Berlin military community to identify other potential security problems, officials said.

They said Hirsch failed a polygraph test recently. Also, “something unusual about Capt. Hirsch’s activities turned up in a usual security review. I can’t get into specifics,” Baker told United Press International. “There was something unusual about his behavior.”

A search of Hirsch’s home found classified documents and photographs from the United States and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries, according to a knowledgeable defense official. Investigators also found that Hirsch had traveled frequently to Vienna, Italy and France. The defense official said the trips “raised a red flag.”

In addition, Hirsch owned two cars and had a total of $120,000 in several U.S. and German banks, raising further questions. A captain with Hirsch’s seniority earns roughly $32,000 per year.

Hirsch was returned to Kelly Air Force Base earlier this week. He has since requested and been given representation by two military attorneys, according to Tech. Sgt. Edward Rasco, a spokesman for the Electronic Security Command at Kelly.

While the Hirsch case appears to have arisen out of suspicions raised by the Hall case, a senior Pentagon official said that investigators have found no evidence that Hirsch and Hall may have worked together for the Eastern Bloc.

Hall was convicted at a court martial earlier this year and is serving a 40-year sentence. His accomplice, Huseyin Yildirim, a Turkish native who acted as his courier, was convicted in federal court in Florida last month, and sentencing is pending.

The electronics wing in which Hirsch served advises U.S. commanders on procedures and techniques to disrupt Warsaw Pact military communications, Rasco said.

Hirsch’s agency works closely with similar Army and Navy agencies in West Berlin.

In the Hall case, prosecutors at his court martial said his spying activities had caused severe damage to U.S. military eavesdropping efforts in Berlin.