Word: zacharski
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...American airlines cabin attendant, and her nine-year-old son from an earlier marriage, Bell lived in a fairly ordinary-looking condominium complex in Playa del Rey. It had the usual Southern California accouterments-tennis courts, pools, saunas and Jacuzzis. One of his neighbors there was Polish-born Marian Zacharski, 29, an affable, fast-climbing executive of the Chicago-based Polish-American Machinery Corp. Since both men enjoyed tennis and watching their children play in the pool, there seemed to be nothing extraordinary about the friendship between them. Nothing, that is, until both were arrested last week...
What a casual observer would not have noticed about Bell and Zacharski -and their neighbors certainly missed -was a tale out of John le Carré: international espionage, replete with secret passwords, a document-copying camera, clandestine meetings with foreign agents, and payoffs made in gold. Zacharski, the FBI alleged last week after six years of not-so-casually observing him, was an undercover operative for the Polish intelligence service. According to a court affidavit filed by the bureau, he had paid Bell about $110,000 over the past three years to photograph highly classified documents detailing Hughes Aircraft radar...
...year ago and obtained his confession and cooperation in the investigation shortly before his arrest. Bell's motive, said Agent John Hoos, was "definitely monetary." Despite a $50,000 salary, Bell said he had been having "financial problems" when he first met his neighbor about three years ago. Zacharski offered to help him out. Equipped by his new friend with a movie camera capable of taking single-frame exposures, the Hughes engineer began photographing unclassified company documents in exchange for cash and gold coins...