Dear
Ed,
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Janauary
2, 2002
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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
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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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