Evening star., 1939-09-24
U. 5. Expects Radio
Bugs 10 Guard Air
Against Spies
Officials Think Amateurs
Will Block Use of
Code Flashes
BY the Associated Press.

Code Flashes
BY the Associated Press.
Fifty thousand spare time de-
tectives guard the neutral air Of
American against the coded secrets
of spies and informers for warning
Europe.
These radio bugs"-operators of
amateur stations throughout the
Nation-are the spearhead of de-
tense which officials believe will
make impractical the use of Amer
lea as base for wartime tipsters.
Behind them are corps of trained
radio observers-experts of the great
experimental stations of Army and
Navy, and engineers at the seven
monitor stations which police the
air for the Federal Communications
Commission.
At sea and along the coasts, the
cutters and shore stations of the
Coast Guard add a final check
against mystery messages of unau-
thorized foreign agents.
One Safe Channel.
The chances of a spy radio op-
Grating long from a melodramatic
hideout in an abandoned shack or
aboard an interned ship are slight,
officials believe.
The only safe channel by which
q foreign agent might get confiden-
tial information to his principals
abroad, they declare. is the coded
communique of diplomats And
there the enemy nations may be
trusted to check each other-as they
did in the World War.
At that time. wireless was an i'm
perfect, ittle-known art. Few
householders tinkered with the in
tricate designs; the experimenters
in their laboratories still were strug-
Cling with fundamental problems Of
power interference and fading"
The United States Navy had just
made a beginning with two expert
mental stations. But radio became
a major weapon in the code war
behind the battlefront, and neutral
America had its share of trouble.
Two months after war broke out
IN Europe, naval officials closed up
powerful wireless station at Say
vile, N. j., which was sending in
formation to one belligerent.
Picture Is Changed.
Radios rapid growth since 1914
has changed the picture. In the
code rooms of fighting nations, the
hundreds of new inventions may
make more difficult the task of
breaking down garbled messages
into the words-with- meaning that
will give clues to enemy moves
But for neutral America, the task
OF policing the air lanes is primarily
one of halting any suspicious broad
cast from unauthorized sources.
Breaking the code is not paramount.
And here the profusion of radio sets
blankets the Nation against air
abuses of its neutrality.
Each of the $4,000 sending and
receiving sets of the amateurs is
threat TO the foreign spy. The Short
wave connections of radios built for
parlor use make other thousands of
average citizens an added check on
improper broadcasts.
Americas radio amateurs, fiddling
around with homemade sets, fish
ing" for new ether friends, operate
in the short-wave freQuencies most
likely to be used by foreign agents
attempting to send directly to Eu-
ropean principals. Police radios and
ship signal systems are attuned to
these frequencies, too.
Group Believed Loyal.
Many of the amateurs are reserve
officers of the Army and the Navy,
and F. c. C.lofncials are convinced
the group as a whole is Thoroughly
loyal" Should one of these after
hours radiomen catch strange sig
mails in his receiver and run into a
station whose call letters were not
listed, he would report Immediately
to the American Radio Relay League
at Hartford, Conn.
In the tra-Short-Wave field,
fewer experimenters work, but there
the spys activities would be limited
by the pace of scientific knowledge.
Generally, experts say, such broad
casts are good only for shorter dis
tances. While they might be used
in Europe to communicate between
armies working together, their only
use in America would be to slip
messages across the borders into
Canada and Mexico.
Science has given the secret agent
other new weapons in the mfra-red
and ultraviolet rays. These rays,
invisible to the human eye, inaudi-
BILE to the human ear. travel on
wave-length too short to be cap
tured by an ordinary radio set.
Link for Confederates.
Like their second cousins in the
ultra -high-wave radio bands. how
ever, they will not bend with the
earth's surface, and would be lost
in space a few hundred miles from
their sender. Conceivably, they
might be used for communication
between confederates who did not
wish to be seen together. A SIM
pie machine could send the dot
and-dash rays, and they would be
visible only to man equipped with
special goggles which catch that
light.
In the more powerful long-wave
area, where the Navy's big sta
tions operate, the very size of the
station needed for sending is q limit
ing factor. It would be difficult
to conceal such a station long from
American ofncials.
Once stranger station is heard,
the task is to run it down. The
rum-runners of prohibition trained
many an American officer in that
la -