That's No Joke, Son

Among U.S. foreign service men who are stationed in Iron Curtain countries, there is an old joke. It is about a foreign service officer who fell in love with a local Mata Hari, took her to bed and was there secretly photographed by Communist agents. When one of the agents later approached the American demanding U.S. secrets in return for the pictures, the foreign service officer looked over the prints and cried happily: "These are great. I'll take ten prints of this one and five of this."

As of last week, Irvin Chambers Scar-beck, 41, a second secretary in the U.S. embassy in Poland, had learned that it wasn't a joke after all. Scarbeck. a mild-mannered married man and the father of four children, had fallen into one of the weariest of Communist traps and, in consequence, was picked up by the FBI and charged with passing secret information to Communists.

A onetime night student at C.C.N.Y. and N.Y.U., Scarbeck came to the State Department in 1952 after serving on the staff of the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany. He worked in Washington and then in San Francisco, where he won an award for "meritorious service, loyalty and devotion to duty" for his efforts while in charge of the foreign students' exchange program. In 1958 he was sent to Warsaw as general services officer of the American embassy. His duties were essentially those of an office manager, supervising Polish help, taking care of travel arrangements, typewriters, stationery, and such mundane matters as stopped-up sinks.

A hard worker. Scarbeck was well liked by embassy hands; about 30 of them went with him to the Warsaw airport last fortnight when he was ordered back to Washington for what seemed a preparation to transfer to Naples. In Warsaw Scarbeck seemed to care little for politics, enjoyed music and taking drives with his family through the Polish countryside. But he had at least one other consuming interest: a petite Polish brunette who wore Parisian-style clothes, hung out in the better Warsaw cafes and was in fact in the pay of the UB, the Polish secret police. Scarbeck's shapely friend lured him into a compromising position, where he was caught by Communist agents. Unable to face exposure, he chose to become an informant.

In all likelihood, Scarbeck told the Reds little of real value. Although he could read files up to those classified as secret, top-secret documents were inaccessible to him. U.S. security officers say his informing was largely limited to casually acquired, uncertain dope and did not include information on current political maneuvers or military secrets. Still, Scarbeck's disclosures cannot be passed over too lightly, since the bulk of espionage is the accumulation of many bits and pieces, such as those that he furnished, in a total picture of enemy operations. Scheduled to go before a federal grand jury this week, Scarbeck faces a jail term of up to ten years.

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