FINLAND: Model Spy

Through locked doors and a heavy screen of Finnish secrecy, it seemed last week that Finland, too, had scratched a U. S. citizen and found a spy. But Arvid Werner Jacobson. 27, onetime teacher in the Northville (Mich.) high school, had adopted a different technique from that of the Robert Gordon Switz’s in Paris. Soon after his arrest by the Finnish political police last October on charges of high treason and espionage, the French Government let it be known that Jacobson and Switz were mixed up in the same far-flung spy ring.

Citizen Jacobson obligingly confessed everything. Yes, he knew the Switzes. Yes, Soviet agents in Manhattan had hired him and sent him to Finland. Yes, his ring was connected with groups operating in France, the U. S., Canada, Sweden,

Norway, Estonia. “Latvia?” “Certainly. Latvia too.” He confessed so handsomely that he may get the minimum sentence of two years, four years less than the maximum. Less hopeful were the 28 others being examined with him last week by the

Superior Court at Abo. But so confusingly variegated was Spy Jacobson’s panorama of confession that when he gets out of jail, he will still be useful to his employers, whoever they are.