
THE PLAIN DEALER, Thursday, June 25, 1992  

        CONGRESSMAN WANTS REVENGE IN THE CASE OF U.S. DEFECTOR.......
  

 Fort Worth Star-Telegram
 ________________________
                       WASHINGTON

  Rep. Sam Johnson of Texas spent seven years in a North Vietnamese prison
 camp after his plane was shot down by an anti-aircraft gun developed in the 
 Soviet bloc by an American defector.

  Now the man who built the weapon has returned to the United States and is
 collecting Soviet Security. Johnson wants revenge.

  The Dallas Republican has joined 20 other lawmakers in urging the FBI to re-
 open a 42-year-old investigation into one of the most intriguing spy cases of
 the Cold War.

  The story starts in June 1950, when Joel Barr, a vative New Yorker with a
 degree in electrical engineering, vanished from his Paris apartment. Barr's
 disappearance came as FBI agents were closing in on him as part of their
 investigation into the atomic spy ring headed by Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

  Although the Rosenbergs were executed for treason in 1953, Barr avoided 
 detection for more than four decades. Fleeing to the Soviet Union via 
 Czechoslovakia, the American radar specialist established a new life under a
 false identity supplied by his benefactors.

  In return, Barr devoted his considerable expertise to the Soviet micro-
 electronics industry. His numerous scientific accomplishments included develop- 
 ing the first radar-guided anti-aircraft gun in the Soviet bloc.

  Despite Barr's prominence in the Soviet Union --- Nikita Khrushchev once
 personally visited his lab to praise the defector's work --- his whereabouts
 remained a mystery to the FBI.

  His anonymity ended abruptedly last week when he revealed the details of his
 defection during an appearance on ABC's "Nightline." The broadcast infuriated
 Johnson and other lawmakers, expecially when Barr acknowledged that he is 
 collecting Social Security from the government he once scorned. 

  Barr, 75, quietly returned to the United States last year and reclaimed his
 citizenship. He maintains an apartment in Brooklyn as well as a home in St.
 Petersburg, Russia.

  We're talking about someone who most likely, or could well have, committed
 treasonous acts against the United States of America," Rep. Dana Rohrabacher,
 R-Calif., said  at a news conference yesterday. "If Mr. Barr is found guilty,
 he should be sent on to join the Rosenbergs."

  Johnson, who joined other conservatives in demanding a new FBI investigation,
 said he held Barr responsible for his seven-year internment as a prisoner of 
 war.

  Johnson, a highly decorated Air Force colonel, was shot down over North
 Vietnam in 1966. He was released in 1973 and served in the Texas Legislature
 before  coming to Congress in 1991.

  "Seven years without my family, my friends or my country -- not to mention
 thousands of American servicemen and women who lost their lives," the Texas
 congressman said bitterly. "That's 1950s technology, but it's still killing
 American guys."

  Barr, who returned to Russia shortly after his "Nightline" appearance, denied
 on the program that he ever spied for the Soviet Union. But two former FBI
 agents who worked on the Rosenberg case said they are convinced that he fed
 information to the Soviet Union long before his defection.

  Ed Wierzbowski, an independent televisioin producer who located Barr in 
 Russia, said the defector decided to return to the United States primarily for
 business reasons.

  Barr, who was recruited to the American Communist Party by Rosenberg, des-
 cribed himself on "Nightline" as a naive victim of his ideological beliefs.

  "I'm beginning to beel a little guilty now about the whole thing -- from
 the point of view, that is, that I used my knowledge to make anti-American
 weapons," he said. "Well, it's probably true, but I think you have to consider
 the motives. Maybe it was stupidity."

  Again from G.M. and typed by MJL.

  
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