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| 18.11.200910:29 (GMT) | Former Hungarian military intelligence officer Istvan Belovai has died at the age of 71, The Daily Telegraph reports. He revealed to the United States government the existence of an extensive spy-ring working within NATO.
In 1975, Major Belovai was asked to translate a despatch which was containing details of the standard operating procedures of the US 7th Army. The despatch came from Clyde Lee Conrad, an administrator at secret NATO archives in Germany. From 1974 until his arrest in 1988, Conrad sold top secret information to Communist Hungary and recruited several other US Army personnel to help him.
Among the papers from the Conrad spy ring Belovai was given the job of translating in 1978 there was the Cosmic Top Secret General Defence Plan with details of the position of every unit in Europe in case of a war, and how they were to defend against Warsaw Pact forces. Belovai decided to alert the United States to the security leak because he became convinced that the information could lead to a nuclear war.
In 1984, already serving as assistant military and air attaché in London, he made contact with an American agent known as Richard C in a CIA safe house. That summer Belovai was transferred back to Budapest, but he continued to communicate with the Americans under the code name Scorpion-B. In 1985, however, Lieutenant-Colonel Belovai was arrested by Hungarian counterintelligence while on his way to a CIA drop point. It is believed that he had been betrayed by the CIA counter-intelligence officer and Soviet spy Aldrich Ames.Belovai was sentenced to life imprisonment for espionage and was held as a political prisoner. Three years later, he learned of the arrest of Conrad and four accomplices. Belovai eventually won release on parole in September 1990, six months after the first free elections in Hungary. Though, the new Hungarian authorities refused to grant him a full pardon. In 1990 he left for the United States and settled in Colorado.
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