cuting here from another thread not disputing you but you have a
reference for the below ad not heard it and wanted to follow up on it


Hold up example: The late Colonel Rudolph Abel of the KGB, under
a cover name as an "artist" with a "hobby of amateur radio"
operating in NYC around the late 1950s-early 1960s. His HF radio
was used to send-receive encrypted information from the KGB. He
was exchanged for Francis Gary Powers, the missle-shot-down pilot
of a U-2. Abel used "one-time pads" for encipherment, virtually
unbreakable by anything since the encryption key was obtained from
natural random noise (or of "noisy" KGB clerk-typists)(take your
pick).


It's irrelevant whether Abel actually held any sort of amateur
radio license (he probably had a cover for one, no details on
that) but that was his cover excuse for having/using an HF radio
when arrested. Amateur radio in espionage activities! Not a
good PR thing but so long ago that most have forgotten it or
never knew.


The