WHY MOSCOW IS WINNING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302000003-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 21, 2012
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: April 27, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Anal AM
ON P.
U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT
27 April 1987
90-00965R000302000003-7
Why Moscow is winning
? For two years, the naticrn has been
rocked by one major spy scandal after
another: The Walker family plunders
secrets under the Navy's nose, the Pol-
lards snoop on America for Israel, a
hard-drinking CIA rogue officer outwits
his would-be FBI captors.
Now, an equally grave
Moscow embarrassment is
raising the specter of a
worldwide U.S. embassy.
security crisis. With cases
rapidly piling up?and
these are only a sampler?
Washington has come face
to face with the painful re-
ality of chaos in its coun-
terintelligence apparatus.
Complacency factor
Until now, the guard-
ians of America's secrets
have mostly insisted that if
the problem were serious,
no spies would ever have
been nabbed. But, in fact,
cash-and-carry espionage
by the likes of the Walkers
and the others went unno-
ticed for years before lucky
breaks finally triggered ar-
rests. With the Moscow
sex-for-secrets scandal ex-
panding, the official atti-
tude is far less sanguine.
No one can plausibly deny
any longer that the U.S.'s
own complacency has left
it highly vulnerable to pry-
ing enemy eyes. "America
has been indifferent to se-
curity matters for a long
time," says 5 tansSigld
Turner, the former CIA
airiEfOr. "We've had a dis-
tressing casualness toward
the whole business of keep-
ing an eye on suspicious
Americans, and now we're
seeing the results."
Nothing underscores this laxness so
much as the still unfolding embassy
case. Two Marines who served as U.S.
Embassy guards in Moscow stand ac-
cused of permitting Soviet KGB agents
into top-secret areas after they were
sexually entrapped by Russian women.
A third Marine has been accused of
improper . fraternization with Russian
women, and a fourth?a former Lenin-
grad sentry?is being held for question-
ing. Last week, the Pentagon recalled
The Marine spy scandal is just
the latest U.S. intelligence
fiasco, indicating deep-seated
problems with no easy remedies
long without arousing suspicion. Why,
for instance, did no one think it odd that
two young Marines?Lonetree and Cpl.
Arnold Bracy?would volunteer for
dead-of-night shifts? Why post them at
their own request to the most secret
areas? Why permit them to
remain when they made no
attempt to disguise illicit
friendships with Soviet
women? Just as important,
why would fellow guards,
despite ample reason to in-
form, stay mute?
The answer to the last
question strikes at the very
heart of the problem?a
refusal to accept, even in
the face of mounting evi-
dence, that Americans,
themselves pose one of the
biggest spy threats. "We
probably counted too
heavily on the dynamic of a
high-morale group report-
ing on each other," admits
Arthur Hartman, ambas-
sador during Lonetree's
tour. "We thought if some-
one was going astray, other
members would tell us."
Yet, incredibly, during
more than 250 hours of
guard school, Marines got
no tips on whistle blowing
and only minimal guid-
ance about moral obliga-
tions in critically impor-
tant overseas posts.
Such official myopia is
distressingly apparent in
many of the cases. Among
them: The 18 years of mes-
sages handed to Moscow
by the Walker family spy
ring, the thousand or more
documents sold the Israelis
by Jonathan Jay Pollard,
the multibillion-dollar
electronic-eavesdropping program com-
promised by Ronald Pelton, the descrip-
tion of CIA Moscow operations given
the KGB by former officer Edward Lee
Howard. Although differing in some
respects, these cases have common
threads?specifically, the ease with
which these turncoats almost cavalierly
perused America's top secrets, and the
fact that their bizarre behavior signaled
no red flags to U.S. counterspies.
Pollard worked under an honor sys-
At storm's center Lonetree, in shackles, departs hearing
four Marine guards from Vienna for
possible Moscow-style violations. The
U.S. has replaced all 28 guards in Mos-
cow and is doing the same in Leningrad.
Meantime, as pretrial proceedings re-
sumed for Sgt. Clayton Lonetree, the
first arrested, Naval Investigative Ser-
vice gumshoes are busy quizzing 50 Ma-
rines in 20 countries about possible se-
curity breaches.
The puzzlement is how the embassy
spying in Moscow could occur for so
Continued
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tern in which he was expected voluntari-
ly to limit his top-secret access to data on
possible Caribbean terrorism, yet he
brazenly obtained baskets of sensitive
Mideast information. While he repeat-
edly bragged to friends that -he was an
Israeli agent, security checks failed to
spot him as a risk. John Walker's pre-
enlistment history of burglaries hardly
seemed the sort of background that
would qualify him for a career as crypto-
custodian of a command vessel. And no
one questioned how Walker could pay
for a sailboat and flying lessons. Only his
estranged wife's tip belatedly brought
him to the attention of investigators.
Felton had severe money troubles and
filed for bankruptcy while at the super-
secret National Security Agency, later
becoming a drug abuser after resigning.
His January, 1980, call to the Soviet
Embassy was detected through a lawful
wiretap, but he wasn't caught until his
KGB contact, Vitaly Yurchenko, de-
fected five years later. Howard, too, had
severe drinking and drug-abuse prob-
lems, and failed a polygraph test before
being fired by the CIA in June, 1983.
Yet it appears that the CIA was un-
aware of his merchandising of secrets
until Yurchenko tattled. Howard theri
slipped an FBI tail in September, 1985,
later turning up on Moscow television.
Root causes
The spying seems to have flourished
because of two things?a deeply in-
grained attitude that Americans ought
not spy on fellow citizens and a crip-
pling lack of coordination among agen-
cies sharing the counterespionage pie.
Of the two, attitudes may well be the
most resistant to change.
Senator Malcolm Wallop (R-Wyo.), a
member of the Select Committee on
Intelligence, believes the paranoid Wa-
tergate-era spying created such fear of
intrusion that many officials today shut
Senator Wallop. He says problem
is mainly one of attitude
their eyes to the possibility of traitors in
their midst. "You cannot imagine a
more benign environment for moles
than that in which they can't be believed
to exist," he says. "What makes us think
we have developed such a corner on
morality that our people are not turna-
ble?" Others feel Secretary of State
George Shultz compounded the prob-
lem by refusing to submit to a polygraph
test required of all those cleared to see
top-secret information.
The feeling perceived by Wallop and
CIA official, "is that a whiz kid has no
interest in making embassies secure. He
wants to wear striped pants.- Within
the FBI, counterintelligence people are
scornfully called "rusty guns."
Even with the long series of embar-
rassments, there is still virtually no co-
ordination among agencies. The U.S.
approach of giving different counterin-
telligence duties to several branches?
chiefly the CIA, FBI, Defense Intelli-
gence Agency and the NSA?is rare for
a Western power. For good reason, al-
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given dramatic expression by Shultz has
led virtually all federal agencies charged
with responsibility for counterintelli-
gence to treat it less than seriously. The
FBI, the lead agency for domestic coun-
terspying, is reported to have spent far
less than Congress provided. One prac-
tical result is a shortage of translators to
handle the load, sometimes with grave
consequences. Sources tell of a Soviet-
bloc spy who succeeded in fleeing the
U.S. when incriminating statements
could not be translated in time.
Other branches have problems as
well. At the National Security Agency,
no one bears sole responsibility for
counterespionage, and many operatives
are guided by outdated theories. "They
need to adjust .. . in the face of U.S.
weaknesses that have become apparent
in the 1980s," says one longtime ob-
server of the NSA. At the CIA, coun-
terintelligence is still not a separate ca-
reer track, which means agents do not
always get the chance to develop exper-
tise. At the State Department, the tick-
et to the top is diplomacy, not security.
"One of their problems," says a former
most all of America's allies have single
agencies doing counterspy work, such
as Britain's legendary MI-5, France's
DST and Canada's respected Intelli-
gence and Security Service. "What we
have is every agency carving out its own
little area and no one bringing it togeth-
er," says a former CIA spook. "We're
trying to find out if the Kremlin can
break message traffic, the NSA tries to
decode traffic, the Pentagon to screen
employes, the State Department to find
bugs. No one pulls it together, and
things fall through the cracks."
The pitfalls became obvious with
Howard's defection. When he left the
CIA and moved to New Mexico, his old
employer didn't inform FBI agents. By
the time the FBI was ready to pounce,
Howard had plotted an escape.
Yet despite all the foul-ups, few ex-
perts recommend a new superagency to
handle counterspying. The concern is
that it would take years to create and in
the meantime might tempt those now
handling the task to become less
vigi-
lant. Instead, a consensus favors a
smaller bureau to coordinate available
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cleared for the most sensitive secrets. '
and when he walks out the door, he's the
man who never was. Our greatest vul-
nerability is from people who have left."
A prime example: Walker, whose free-
spending ways and peripatetic travel
might well have rung alarms had the
Navy kept an eye on former top-secret
workers. Defense Secretary Caspar
Weinberger said last week that the ring
enabled Moscow to decipher more than
a million secret messages?"devastat-
ing," he said, "in event of war."
But whatever measures are taken, ex-
perts agree that they must be applied
without exception. Says Bass, the for-
mer Justice Department lawyer: "Noth-
ing is more counterproductive than
turning the screws on the career people
and letting top policy people play by
different rules. Of all the people who
don't believe in security, the people at
the top are the worst." ?
espionage data and make rules for both
counterintelligence and security.
Meanwhile, several preventive mea-
sures?such as increased use of the
polygraph?seem possible. The Penta-
gon reported last week that it has be-
gun weighing use of random, tests on
embassy guards as part of a general
security shake-up. But the testing, al-
ready required of CIA-employes, could
be applied on a much broader scale. "It
has proven one of the most effective
deterrents and investigative tools," said
Kenneth Bass, a former Justice Depart-
ment intelligence expert. "I wouldn't
send people to jail on the basis of a
polygraph, but I would remove them
from sensitive security positions."
Years without checkups
More frequent scrutiny of those with
top-secret clearances also would cut ex-
posure. With manpower in short supply,
many workers go years without under-
going checks aimed at turning up the
kind of troubles that could attract a
KGB ever alert to personal weaknesses.
"Most people aren't problems when
Arthur Hartman, US. ambassador
to Moscow during the time that Ma-
rine guards are alleged to have spied
for the Soviet Union, spoke to U.S.
News at his home in Washington.
0 Secretary of State Shultz was In
Moscow recently for high-level talks.
Wasn't it humiliating for him to have to
use a trailer in order to have secure
communications?
I think it was important that he
go. We have known all along that
this kind of espionage activity goes
on, and so I don't know why people
are suddenly so shocked. It
shouldn't interfere with negotia-
tions with the Soviet Union.
a In your view, were the incidents involving the Marine
guards at the Moscow embassy preventable?
In hindsight, everything is preventable.
What we have to determine now is what improve-
ments can be made--possibly getting more-mature, mar-
ried guards. But other embassies have had difficulty even
with married guards.
O Given the small size of the embassy staff, you must have
known the Marines who have been charged?
I think two of them were our guests for Thanksgiving.
It was a shock.
they come into service," said an official.
"They become one once they're here.
The Soviets don't place people in jobs.
They recruit them once they're hired."
A more controversial option is to
track certain former key employes who
once had access to secrets. While intelli-
gence officials believe such a policy
would have given them early warning of
most big recent spy cases, civil-rights
ramifications make it a politically vola-
tile issue. Still, says a congressional ana-
lyst, -it makes no sense to have someone
Interview: Ambassador Hartman
'Preventable'-
in hindsight
O in retrospect, how do you think a situation developed in
which U.S. Marines have been charged with spying for the
Soviet government?
We probably counted too heavily on the dynamic of a
high-morale group reporting on each other. We thought
if someone was going astray, other members of the group
would know and tell us.
by William L. Chaze with Gordon Witkin,
Maureen Santini, Donald Baer, Dennis
Mullin and Charles Fenyvesi
0 Did anything occur that was puz-
zling at the time but now makes more
sense In light of the fact that the
guards admitted Soviet citizens to the
embassy building?
People told me there were securi--
ty-alarm anomalies. The same
thing happened with the fire-alarm
system, and if you are an enemy in-
telligence service, you try to reduce
confidence in the alarm system.
But we all knew what we should
not talk about in our houses, bed-
rooms, out in the garden or even in
my office. Therefore, the only place
I did feel secure?perhaps falsely?
was in the secure rooms.
O The U.S. is in the process of replacing Soviet nationals
who worked at the embassy with American employes. Won't
they be just as vulnerable to the KGB as the Marines were?
They will have to be very carefully screened. It's diffi-
cult, particularly when you are talking about blue-collar
jobs, to recruit Americans to those jobs in Moscow.
People asked how I could have a Soviet driver. I said I
would rather have a Soviet driver because, even if I had
an American driver, I could not have a secure conversa-
tion in my automobile; at least a Soviet driver knew how
to get you where you wanted to go.
O Do you believe the Soviets knew In advance what policy
positions the U.S. would take at the Reykjavik summit?
Anyone who knows how this administration treats
sensitive issues like arms control knows that even though
U.S. positions might leak to the press in Washington,
they were not put down on paper and sent to the embassy
in Moscow. I would learn more about our position from
the Washington press than from the cables.
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