Ex-Hero

Norway was abuzz with talk about a shocking case: the 32-year-old son of the commander in chief of the Norwegian navy was in jail, charged with being a Russian agent.

During World War II, Lieut. Per Edvard Danielsen's swashbuckling sea-raids against the Nazis made him something of a national hero. In 1941, as skipper of a motor torpedo boat, he helped strike one of the first blows against the Quisling government, in a Commando raid from Britain against Norway's Nazi-occupied island base of Maaloy.

But ashore, Sailor Danielsen lost his sealegs, wavered into trouble. On a spree in London one night, he smashed through a glass door in a salon of the swank Dorchester Hotel, where the Norwegian government in exile was meeting. Later, at the same hotel, he tried acrobatic stunts from the chandeliers. At war's end his disciplinary record was so bad that his father, Admiral Edvard C. Danielsen, tossed him out of the navy.

Young Danielsen nevertheless managed to get a job with the Geographical Survey, making charts of Norway's coastline. With his wife Anne, a known member of the Oslo Communist Party, he became a leader of Norway's small pro-Russian crowd. The police began to take an interest in young Danielsen's movements. They shadowed him from one furtive rendezvous to another, decided he was passing information to Soviet agents. On April 17, they pounced on him as he was talking to a Soviet Embassy underling in a suburban railway station. The arrest was bungled: Danielsen had already passed over his information, and the Russians refused to give it up, claiming diplomatic immunity.

Last week, ex-Naval Hero Danielsen was in Oslo's "No. 19" prison, awaiting trial. His father, an able, widely respected officer, was deeply distressed by his son's rowdy behavior and pro-Communist activities, has not spoken to him since war's end. Recently he saw him for the first time in five years, when he visited Per in prison, urged him to make a full confession. Per refused. These days, Danielsen sticks close to his desk at naval headquarters, planning Norway's defense against possible attacks from the East. He never mentions his son's name.

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