GERMANY: A Mine of Information

Political Geiger counters quivered in West Berlin last week. A political refugee who slipped across the line from East Germany was identified as Lieut. Colonel Fedor Nikolaevich Astakhov of the Red army. Astakhov is a geological wizard, a winner of the Stalin Prize, and until recently in charge of all technical operations in the Russian-run uranium mines in southeastern Germany. Allied intelligence would not confirm, but did not deny, that the new Soviet "defector of colonel's rank" is Astakhov. If he is, the West has found a source of atomic intelligence as useful as Britain's missing Bruno Pontecorvo presumably is to the Russians.