Moscow. 1983.
William Plunkert. Diplomat at the US embassy in Moscow.
Sue Pamela Carne - American Jehovah's Witness woman employed as governess to Plunkert
Moscow charges CIA link to religious activist
MOSCOW -- An American governess in the U.S. Embassy was a CIA agent who formed a religious group that equated the Soviet Union with the 'antichrist' and called for its destruction in a nuclear war, the Tass news agency said.
In a dispatch Thursday, the official news agency identified the woman as Sue Pamela Carne but give no age or hometown. The embassy said Miss Carne worked as a governess for William Plunkert, 2nd secretary in the political section.
'There was an incident involving the Soviet authorities but I cannot go into the nature of it at all,' an embassy spokesman said, adding that Miss Carne has left the Soviet Union.
Tass said Miss Carne was caught in a May 15 police raid on an illegal meeting in Kalinin of a group called 'Jehovah's Witnesses-Ilyinites.'
It said the group, formed at Miss Carne's initiative, organized 'subversive work against the U.S.S.R. under the pretext of the struggle against the antichrist.'
The agenda at the May 15 meeting included 'how to bring about sooner a world nuclear war in which the antichrist -- that is the Soviet state system -- should be destroyed,' Tass said.
Tass accused Miss Carne of using her civilian position at the embassy as a cover for the CIA. It called her 'an emissary of a clerical organization which is closely connected with the CIA and has headquarters in the United States.'
It did not further identify the organization.
According to the agency, Miss Carne distributed material to sect members that 'were meant for subsequent copying and illegal circulation among Soviet citzens.'
She also, 'without batting an eyelid,' distributed large sums of Soviet rubles to build a cooperative flat for illegal gatherings and equip it with typewriters, copiers, and tape recorders, Tass said.
Tass said Miss Carne presents no problem since she has left the Soviet Union, but said Plunkert has some explaining to do.
'How could a modest governess manage to keep in his (Plunkert's) apartment those materials that were taken from her when she was detained?' Tass asked.
'How will Mr. William Plunkert explain that he employed as a governess in his family the emissary of the notorious organization connected with the CIA?' it asked.
As it turns out, William Plunkert was later exposed as a CIA operative during his time in Moscow:
How the CIA ran a ‘billion dollar spy’ in Moscow
...the future of the operation was put in the hands of Bill Plunkert. After a stint as a Navy aviator, Plunkert had joined the CIA and trained as a clandestine operations officer. He was in his mid-30s, 6-foot-2, and had arrived at the Moscow station in the summer. His mission was to give the slip to the KGB and make contact.
Sue Pamela Carne, Plunkert's governess, went by the alias "Paula Combs" while she was posing as a language student at Moscow's Pushkin Institute.
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/208392765/
The U.S. Embassy confirmed that Miss Carne had been detained and had left the country. But a spokesman said because of the privacy law, he could not discuss the case. , , . '.' Her employer, William G. Plunkert, a diplomat in the embassy's political section, could not be reached for comment immediately. Tass said she was known to the Jehovah's Witnesses in Kalinin as Paula Combs, a Russian-language student at the Pushkin Institute in Moscow, but her identity papers established her true identity.