HOW TO PROTECT U.S. EMBASSIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302000004-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 21, 2012
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: April 20, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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\ Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000302000004-6
ARTICLE
ON PAM
U.S.NEWS 4 WORLD REPORT
20 April 1987
The Moscow spy scandal spreads
How to protect
U.S. embassies
III Just as he seemed to be controlling
the damage from they Iran-Contra deba-
cle, Ronald Reagan- now finds his ad-
ministration ensnared in another crisis
that could be every bit as threatening to
national security. A growing sex-for-
secrets scandal in the supersensitive
U.S. Embassy in the Soviet Union has
the President scrambling once again to
appear in command but not responsible
for the episode. By blaming the Krem-
lin while hinting broadly that the impli-
cations for U.S.-Soviet relations "are
widespread," the President has so far
avoided heavy damage, but leaders of
both the State Department and Marine
Corps are coming under heavy fire.
For now, as the bad news tumbles
down, Reagan insists that the Soviets
will not occupy their new complex in
Washington until the U.S. is convinced
that its new Moscow embassy is secure.
It's likely, however, that the new diplo-
matic complex, rising next to the cur-
rent embassy, will have to be destroyed
and rebuilt because it is hopelessly rid-
dled with snooping devices, all of which
may never be detected and removed.
How widespread the danger?
With evidence of a major security
breach mounting, a shaken Washington
is looking at embassies in other capitals,
fearing that they may be equally vulner-
able. And with State Department plans
to construct new embassies in six Com-
munist nations?East Germany, Hun-
gary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Yugo-
slavia and China?over the next two
years, the search for solutions is already
well under way. Remedies for the prob-
lem are expensive, however, and the
quick fixes now under consideration
would seem to do little to address long-
term security concerns.
The arrest last week of still another
Marine?Sgt. John Weirick, 26, of Eu-
reka, Calif.?on suspicion of espionage
during a 1981-82 tour at the Leningrad
consulate brings to four the number of
Marine guards implicated in the evolv-
ing scandal. There are also indications
that the "fraternization" with Soviet
women, as the State Department deli-
cately puts it, is not limited to embassy
guards. U.S. officials say that improper
contacts with Soviet citizens, as well as
other problems, have led to the recall of
nine of 26 Americans sent to Moscow
this year as support employes. The
Americans had replaced some of the
Soviet workers who were pulled out
last fall amid a diplomatic showdown.
The current debacle, the worst ever to
hit U.S. embassy security, is sending
tremors through the White House and
? the Pentagon, but the diplomats in the
State Department, and particularly Sec-
retary of State George Shultz, have been
hardest hit. With Shultz in Moscow this
week for three days of talks with For-
eign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, se-
curity specialists at State must insure
that he will have secure communica-
tions. President Reagan refused to scrub
the trip, saying it must not seem that the
U.S. was "run out of town."
Yet there remains a strong presump-
tion that the old embassy is a security
sieve, infested with electronic bugging
devices believed to have been hidden by
the Soviets with the connivance of the ?
Marines. Washington has shipped to
Moscow a trailer with state-of-the-art
gear said to insure that Shultz can send
and receive messages without intercep-
tion. In the embassy, he may use a new
8-by-10-foot cubicle meant to replace
"the bubble," a superinsulated room
whose security may have been broken.
More unsettling news about the old
embassy came from two lawmakers who
flew to Moscow for snap inspections.
Representatives Dan Mica (D-Fla.) and
Olympia Snowe (R-Me.) discovered in
the existing building substandard securi-
ty alarm systems and heard Marine com-
plaints that diplomats paid no heed to
security procedures. Snowe called the
situation inside the embassy a" 'hear no
evil, see no evil, speak no evil' tendency
towards. . . security." The two also said
they found "hard evidence" of bugging
in the new embassy but declined to
elaborate.
Back home, as the Central Intelli-
gence Agency and other departments
weigh solutions, the rhetorical heat is
being turned up by lawmakers?and
not all of them are Democrats. Embar-
rassed by yet another scandal during
? Reagan's watch, the Senate Republican
leadership has proposed tough mea-'
sures curbing U.S. travel by Cuban and
East-bloc envoys and demanding that
the Kremlin pay for removing embassy
bugs. "If the Soviets play this danger-
ous game," says Senate Minority Lead-
er Bob Dole (R-
Kans.), "two can
play."
At the White
House, Reagan
aides maintain
that the President
cannot be blamed
for the scandal.
True, they concede.
his own advisory panel
did warn in 1985 of trou-
ble brewing at the Moscow
embassy, and a Senate panel ech-
oed the caution only last year. But they
also argue that the problems predate
Reagan's arrival?and, in fact, such es-
pionage is far from new. What are new
are the apparent extent of the damage
and the alleged cooperation of Marine
guards, whose service projects an image
of utter incorruptibility.
Much of the past spying has occurred
because the Americans either failed to:
take into account Soviet clever-
ness or were simply negligent. In
the 1950s and 1960s, for in-
stance, U.S. diplomats in Mos-
cow felt their cars provided air-
tight security. They slowly
tumbled to the fact that their
radios had been "adjusted" by
Soviet mechanics to serve as two-
way radios, broadcasting all that
was said to the KGB. More re-
cently, in the 1970s, Marines
were caught giving to Soviet citi-
zens papers earmarked for burn-
ing. Compromised by Russian
women, the Marines were black-
mailed by the KGB into selling
the only documents they could
lay hands on?the contents of burn bags.
In perhaps the most curious in-
stance, a shipment of typewriters from
the U.S. wound up in an unguarded
embassy room adjacent to the work-
shop of one "Radio Sasha," resident
Soviet electronics wizard. When the
typewriters went into use, U.S. officials
found many had been transformed, no
doubt by Sasha, into transmitting de-
vices. "If they see a vulnerability," says
a veteran U.S. envoy, "they exploit it."
Continued
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000302000004-6
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000302000004-6
Soviet efforts to undermine security
at U.S. embassies are nothing new. If
the stories of KGB defectors are credi-
ble, the campaign is strongest, and most
effective, in Eastern ? Europe, followed
by friendly Third World countries. Oth-
er targets for KGB penetration of U.S.
stations: Hong Kong, New Delhi, Paris,
Brussels, Geneva and Vienna.
Older Marines, tighter rules
For years, the CIA has pointed out
security problems to the diplomats at
the State Department, who apparently
paid little heed. Some of the recom-
mended precautions cost big money.
But others?as investigators from two
congressional panels, the Pentagon and
a special presidential commission are
already learning?require just plain old
common sense. Some prescriptions, for
instance, would require that:
? Marines sent to sensitive posts be
married, older?over 25?and more ex-
perienced, having served at least one
hitch. Employing younger leathernecks
and depriving them of females is to invite
disaster. One proposal calls for guards to
take twice-yearly lie-detector tests, as
CIA employes now do. Moscow might
also be made a special hardship post,
with Marines rotated every 90 days.
? Embassy workers avoid using word
processors or even electronic typewrit-
ers, both of which emit signals that
may be picked up. When possible, em-
ployes should shun electronic transmis-
sions and instead use the tried-and-true
diplomatic pouch.
? Only architectural and engineering
firms with security clearances be hired
to build top-secret embassy communi-
cations centers. Although clearances
are now required, a survey has shown
that 30 centers?including the one in
Moscow?were being built by firms
lacking proper credentials.
Obviously, some of the other pro-
posed remedies will be expensive, re-
quiring more-elaborate facilities and
well-paid security personnel. The most
expensive single project, however,
could well be in Moscow. As U.S. News
first reported last year, the new embas-
sy compound is so shot through with
bugs, many sown in concrete used for
the foundation and walls, that the $191
million structure may be a total loss
and need to be destroyed. Any hope
that the new embassy was not com-
pletely vulnerable vanished last week
with disclosure of a yet unpublished
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
report. It found that a Soviet ?gr?
named Herman Silber was hired in
1975 by the San Francisco architectur-
al firm of Skidmore, Owings and Mer-
rill to help design the new embassy.
Apparently working without security
clearances, he finished in about five
months, then vanished. Moscow later
said he died of a heart attack. Com-
mented an astounded Senator Patrick
Leahy (D-Vt.): "Our general contrac-
tor is the KGB. . . . When you come
right down to it, that's what it is."
Not all the news on the horizon is
bleak, however, and some solutions un-
der consideration could actually wind
up saving money. Intelligence experts in
Washington want the State Department
to drop its $250 million plan to link all
embassies by computer. Even amateur
hackers have shown that the most so-
phisticated system can be cracked with
enough time, effort and brains.
For all the hand wringing in the U.S.,
America has resorted to aggressive tac-
tics of its own in the unending superpow-
er spy war. It planted bugs in the chan-
cery of the Soviet Union's new $65
million Washington diplomatic complex
when it was being built in 1979.
It is ironic that the Moscow spy caper
now could provide the excuse some have
long sought to prevent the Soviets from
using their new Washington embassy,
still unoccupied. Approved during the
cozier days of detente, the complex
sprawls atop one of the capital's highest
hills, vastly improving Moscow's access
to sensitive U.S. government telecom-
munications. In the long run, America's
Moscow losses, humiliating as they are,
may well be outweighed by the vacancy
sign at the Soviet Embassy. ?
by William L. Chaze with Charles Fenyvesi, James
M. Hildreth, Gordon Witkin and Maureen Santini
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000302000004-6