On Sun, 25 Feb 1996, Timothy C. May wrote:

At 4:17 PM 2/25/96, Brad Dolan wrote:

...

Lipke's neighbors indicate his income didn't match his lifestyle.

FINCEN at work?

I'm skeptical.

How would Lipka's neighbors know what his "income" is, unless he told them? (My neighbors don't have any idea what my income is, for example.) Sounds like typical bullshit by neigbors, saying they knew something was "suspicious" (always after the fact, it seems).

Could be. That's what they said, anyway. See below. But if I had the FINCEN databases, I would spend my idle hours looking for statistical anomalies. Like guys whose outgo exceeds reported income. bd (Associated Press, 2/23/96) Lipka's Neighbors Had Wonders MILLERSVILLE, Pa. (AP) -- To his neighbors, Robert Stephan Lipka was a coin collector, chess player and off-track betting enthusiast who lived on disability payments. [...] [...] On Friday, federal agents converged on his one-story brick colonial house in this rural central Pennsylvania town and arrested Lipka. He was charged with selling secrets to the Soviets for nearly 10 years. Authorities said he passed documents to the Soviets during the Vietnam War when he was an Army clerk at the Pentagon's National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Md., sometimes getting up to $1,000 for each delivery of information. [...] Bewildered neighbors watched as federal agents walked in and out of the house Friday morning. A garbage crew stopped to pick up the family trash, only to open the lid of an empty can, the contents apparently taken already by authorities. Neighbor James Quinn said there had been some speculation in the neighborhood how about the Lipkas could afford the $168,000 house they bought a year ago. Lipka sold his former house only two months ago, for $76,000. [...]

Also, all indications so far revealed are that Lipka was only paid by the Sovs in the mid-to-late 60s. And then only, according to released information, something like $500 to $1000 per dead drop, about once a month. Hardly a huge sum, even back then. Even if he invested this, which is unlikely, how would his neighbors know if this was part of his "income" or not?

Sounds more like, "Yeah, we knew there was something strange about him," which about half of all neigbors say about arrested fugitives in their midst. (The other half saying, "But he was a really nice guy.")

--Tim

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