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Enough cloak-and-dagger skulduggery? Wait, there may be more. Harper is being held without bail for a hearing Oct. 27. If convicted of espionage, he faces life imprisonment. If Harper talks some more, the big question is what he might say about William B. Hugle, an engineer-businessman in his late 50s who founded several Silicon Valley electronics firms.
Hugle is named in the FBI affidavit as the man who first introduced Harper to Polish intelligence officials and was cut in on a deal under which Hugle allegedly was to get a third of the money paid by the Poles for the theft of U.S. defense secrets (the Poles, however, according to the affidavit, later told Harper they would prefer to bypass Hugle and deal with Harper directly). Attorney Dougherty says that Harper has been "scared to death that Hugle would kill him." Hugle has been charged with nothing; he is testifying before a grand jury in the San Francisco area but has been silent publicly. The other principal in the tale, Harper's second wife Ruby Louise Schuler, died in June of cirrhosis of the liver.
Harper, when he appeared in federal court in San Francisco last week, cut an appropriately nondescript figure. He is 49, about 5 ft. 10 in., has thinning brown hair that curls into gray sideburns, and displays a paunch. He is an electrical engineer who does mostly freelance work. Dougherty describes him as the kind of spy who is motivated by a simple desire for "money and adventure."
According to the FBI affidavit, Harper in 1975 was introduced by Hugle, whom he called "the Big Man," to Polish intelligence officials. Hugle is described by one associate as "a good guy at putting deals together." The Poles had a portion of a "shopping list" of secrets that the Soviet KGB wanted, and still wants, to buy. The master list is said never to leave Moscow. Harper in 1975 turned over items of U.S. technological information. But they apparently were relatively minor: he was paid no more than $7,500 for them.
Harper seemingly let his Polish contacts lie fallow for four years. One reason may have been that he lacked a security clearance. In 1978, however, he separated from his first wife Colleen, whom he eventually divorced, and in 1980 he married Schuler, then 36, whom he later described to friends as an alcoholic and anorectic. Despite those problems, Schuler, who was divorced and childless, worked as a secretary at Systems Control, Inc., a company involved in research for the U.S. Air Force's missile program. She had a "secret" security clearance. Shortly before her death, in a telephone conversation with a friend that FBI agents listened in on, she said: "There was a reason that Jim and I got married that only he and I know. I can't tell you or anyone else, and I never will."
By 1979, the FBI reported, Harper and Hugle were in contact with a Pole whom Harper knew by the code name of "the Minister." His real name is Zdzislaw Pryzchodzien. According to the mole, he is an official of the Polish Ministry of Machine Industry, but actually is an operative of the Polish intelligence agency, SB, which works closely with the Soviet KGB.
They met in October 1979 in an apartment in Vienna that, the FBI affidavit quotes Harper as saying, "the Big Man [Hugle] assured us was not bugged."