Dear Ed,

Janauary 2, 2002

Where can I find more information on Colonel William Whelan (the highest ranking spy, etc.)? I worked for him around the time he was recruited by the Russians ...had no clue. .. I served at Far East command headquarters in Tokyo and at Eighth Army Headquarters in Seoul, in 1953-4 as a cryptographer for an office which was the lone destination to which all sources of intelligence
sent their coded data...for the exclusive "eyes only" use of the
commander in chief. Colonel Whelan was then the head of this top secret service...called "Detachment X"...wonder if he was a mole then? What fascinates me is what motivated him, other than money, to turn mole. (Is it interesting that he was still a Lt Colonel at the time of his arrest, the rank he held in 1953?). One thing I recall is, according to him, that he was wounded by "friendly fire"as an enlisted man in WWII.

Dana

Hi Dana: You can find information about the case of your Colonel Whelan in the records of federal court. Briefly, here is what I know about this case. Lieutenant Colonel William Henry Whalen was arrested by the FBI in 1962. At that time, he was Intelligence Adviser to the Army Chief of Staff-- one of the highest intelligence positions in the country. He also had vast access to US defense secrets. As Intelligence Adviser, he had "need to know" whatever intelligence was relevant to the Joint Chief of Staff's planning and allocation of military forces. This included communications and electronic intelligence-gathering. He had also served since 1957 as deputy chairman of the Joint intelligence Objectives Agency, which, among other tasks, assessed secret nuclear and ballistic intelligence received from scientists. During most of that period, he was also a paid mole for the Russian Intelligence Service. He had been compromised and recruited in the mid 1950s for the Russian Intelligence Service by Colonel Sergei Edemski in Washington. At that time, he worked for the Foreign Liaison Service at the Pentagon. His recruitment was just after you worked for him in Detachment X. Although it is possible, the Russians contacted him earlier in Korea.

After being caught, he admitted passing documents that revealed some of America's most carefully guarded secrets, including the deployment of US nuclear weapons and the US retaliation strategy. He was convicted and, because of his cooperation, was given a relatively light sentence. He served six years in a federal prison before being paroled. His initial motive seemed to be money, although, like most spies, he was probably enmeshed in escalating compromises by the Russians.

His light sentence proceeded from his cooperation with the FBI in identifying the secrets he gave to Russia.


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