WASHINGTON, July 6 (Reuters)—A United States Navy spokesman categorically denied today a London newspaper report of a program in which the Navy allegedly prepared convicted murderers to carry out assassinations.

The report in The Sunday Times was based on an Interview with a Navy staff psychologist, Lieut. Comdr. Thomas Narut, in Oslo, Norway, where he delivered a paper on anxiety and stress at a conference sponsored by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Dr. Narut was quoted by a reporter, Peter Watson, as saying that the Navy training involved forcing men who were selected for their “passive‐aggressive personalities” to watch Increasingly horrific films of killing and maiming so as to generate detachment toward violence.

According to the newspaper, Dr. Narut said that Navy psychologists had picked men for commando‐type operations from among submarine crews, paratroops and “convicted murderers from military prisons.”