BRITISH LAWS LIMIT DETAILS ON SPY SUSPECT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505220025-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 11, 2010
• Sequence Number: 25
• Publication Date: October 26, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/11: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505220025-2
%?':;;c~lCLt~', APPEARF3l
WASHINGTON POST
26 October 1982
on Spy. Suspect
By Peter Osnos stantive details that a spy scandal involving Chel-
' = Wa huts Pe serVft _ . . tenham was in 'the making and that it, couldbe
LONDON, Oct. 25-On June 28, a-man named spectacular. Under the British "lobby' system,
Geoffrey Arthur Prime appeared in an English journalists are giver, such information by govern-
country courthouse charged with three counts of_'' ment and opposition sources on the condition that
sexual assault on young girls over a period of two there may be no indication of the source;...
years.'Police claimed that Prime, 44, had drawn _T :.'case - disappeared from' view on :July 20''
up a list of potential victims while working for a afjtstr.Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher issued , a
taxi company in Herefordshire. " bland statement in response to questions. by op
Just over two weeks later, Prime appeared position members of Parliament, saying, in effect,'.
again in the same court. This time his alleged of- that the appropriate agencies were looking into se....
fense was of a vastly different kind: spying. In curity at Cheltenham.` "Any charge under Section'
accordance with stringent British laws on report- I of the Official Secrets Act is very serious," she
ing criminal cases, news accounts merely said said. _
Prime had been charged under Section 1 of the Asa result of the British restraints on informa-
Official Secrets Act-which even without details lion, little is known about Prime. The youngest of
meant that the case was serious. I. . three-sons of a gardener, he joined the Royal Air
Amongthe many mysteries in the Prime affair' Force in the early 1960s and was taught Russian.
is how ldcal investigators transformed a routine He was sent to West Germany, where he learned
morals arrest into the uncovering of what U.S. German and, according to U.S. reports, was re-..
.officials were quoted over the weekend as saying is cruited by the'Soviet&
potentially the most serious security leak in West- In 1968 he went ' to- work at Cheltenham' the
ern intelligence since World War IL : , ' -- heart of an extensive British electronic. intelligence
Officials refused to comment today on reports network coordinated with the United States, Aus-
handling Washington about U.S. concern over British
handling of the case, in particular, the British re- tralia and Canada: By the time he left in 1977, he
fusal to give the United States a full accounting of ! had reached the senior rank of advanced linguis-
the suspected espionage. With Prime awaiting tics specialist and was one of several dozen Rus-
trial scheduled for late November, spokesmen said sian-language experts. It was apparently his high
no comment .is permitted and that as a national .. rank that gave him access to much of the sensitive
security-issue, it is doubly off-limits. , information on NATO codes and military deploy-
"It would not be right to have further public ments that he allegedly passed to the Soviets.
discussion until the trial is completed," Attorney According to local sources in the town of Chet-
General Michael Havers said in Parliament. ` tenham, Prime gave "pressure of work" as his rea-
But there is no inclination here to dispute'the "son for leaving intelligence work. He joined a local
basic U.S. view that Prime's alleged supply of mini-cab company, which, among other contracts,
highly classified data to the Soviets for the nine ' transported computer tapes . from the base to
years he worked at the Cheltenham electronic in- other.' locations. This could explain why the
telligence center was a major security breach. `charges against him extend -until 1981. " -
Also not denied are reports that security pro-., Friends said that Prime displayed a marked in-
cedures at the installation, known formally as ^terest in Russian literature and went to London
General Communications Headquarters, may have ; regularly to Russian cultural exhibitions. But 'they
been lax in the past--since the main allegations did not recall him making political statements.
against Prime predate the present government- Prime was married twice and has three stepsons.
which maintains that it is tightening up security 1981, Prime joined another taxi company ((
procedures. and then briefly worked for a distillery. At the
After Prime was charged on July 15, British time he was picked up on the morals charges he !
newspapers reported without attribution or sub- was unemployed. After his arrest, police said they
found a Card file of names and addresses of po-
tential victims and a list of women to whom he
-made obscene telephone calls. .
CONT INUF1~'
i
STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/11: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505220025-2