THE WEEK

Louis Harris, court pollster to His Royal Corn-pone, in a study that a lawyer might call an admission against interest, has found that 88 per cent of the voters are in favor of prayer in the public schools, 94 per cent in favor of Washington’s tightening up its internal security procedures, and 60 per cent in agreement on the proposition that “relief” payments sap the moral juices of the recipients. Now if the American voter can only be brought to the point of agreeing to annihilate little girls who play with daisies, this country can have a conservative Administration.

The Senate Internal Security Subcommittee has made public Col. Stig Wennerstrom’s testimony in his sensational trial for espionage in Sweden. On the stand, Wennerstrom was voluble about his role as Soviet agent “Eagle” while assigned to this country as Swedish Air Attaché from 1952 to 1957. The sum of his recitation is that spying on the U.S. is embarrassingly easy. He obtained most of his information, Wennerstrom said, from casual conversations with U.S. officials while visiting U.S. military installations (which his position as military observer from a neutral nation entitled him to do). Sometimes classified material was released to him for the asking, and defense plants in particular never bothered to ascertain whether he was cleared to get classified information. Wennerstrom was able to transmit microfilmed secrets to Soviet contacts with impunity, even inside the Pentagon, by means of a handshake. He managed all this and more for fifteen years before getting caught. Sweden imprisoned Col. Wennerstrom for life, but it’s a safeish bet another Eagle has taken his place—what is there to prevent it?

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Louis Harris, court pollster to His Royal Corn-pone, in a study that a lawyer might call an admission against interest, has found that 88 per cent of the voters are in favor of prayer in the public schools, 94 per cent in favor of Washington’s tightening up its internal security procedures, and 60 per cent in agreement on the proposition that “relief” payments sap the moral juices of the recipients. Now if the American voter can only be brought to the point of agreeing to annihilate little girls who play with daisies, this country can have a conservative Administration.

The Senate Internal Security Subcommittee has made public Col. Stig Wennerstrom’s testimony in his sensational trial for espionage in Sweden. On the stand, Wennerstrom was voluble about his role as Soviet agent “Eagle” while assigned to this country as Swedish Air Attaché from 1952 to 1957. The sum of his recitation is that spying on the U.S. is embarrassingly easy. He obtained most of his information, Wennerstrom said, from casual conversations with U.S. officials while visiting U.S. military installations (which his position as military observer from a neutral nation entitled him to do). Sometimes classified material was released to him for the asking, and defense plants in particular never bothered to ascertain whether he was cleared to get classified information. Wennerstrom was able to transmit microfilmed secrets to Soviet contacts with impunity, even inside the Pentagon, by means of a handshake. He managed all this and more for fifteen years before getting caught. Sweden imprisoned Col. Wennerstrom for life, but it’s a safeish bet another Eagle has taken his place—what is there to prevent it?