EXPERTS BEGIN TASK OF ASSESSING DAMAGE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504210019-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 19
• Publication Date: December 8, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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4N PAGE
WASHINGTON POST
8 December 1985
Experts Begin Task
Of Assessing Damage
T By Ruth Marcusa-
W;-ninon ''r >r 'If Wnter
FBI agents trick a former
Navy communications specialist
as he drops a bagtul of classified
documents at a rural Montgom-
ery County roadside, setting off
a total of tour arrests in what
authorities describe as the big-
gest and most damaging spy ring
in decades.
A top-ranking KGB official
apparently defects to the United
States and, in a stunning turn-
about, redefects to the Sovi-
ets-but not before providing
information leading to espionage
charges against a former CIA
officer and a retired employe of
the super-secret National Secu-
rity Agency.
In a whirlwind week of espi-
onage arrests, FBI agents appre-
hend the NSA employe, a Navy
intelligence analyst and his wife
in connection with an alleged
Israeli spy plot and a 30-year
CIA veteran on charges of fun-
neling volumes of secret docu-
ments to the Chinese.
This was the year that the
murky cloak-and-dagger world of
espionage came blazing out of
the shadows and onto the front
page. Eleven persons were
charged with spying: the four
current and former Navy men
implicated in the Walker family
spy ring; CIA employe Sharon
Scranage and her former
Ghanaian lover; Edward L. How-
ard, a former CIA officer fin-
gered by defector Vitaly Yur-
chenko and now a fugitive from
justice: and the four Amer.cans
arrested last month on charges
of spying for three countries.
And the roster of 1985 espi-
onage cases may not yet be
closed: FBI Director William H.
Webster said in a television in-
terview last week that agents
"have opened a substantial num-
ber of cases based on very useful
information" supplied by Yur-
chenko.
Five of those arrested this
year have been convicted or
pleaded guilty to espionage
charges: three of the four Walk-
er case defendants, John Antho-
ny Walker Jr.; his brother, re-
tired Navy Lieutenant Com-
mander Arthur James Walker;
and John Walker's son, Navy
Se-aman Michael Lance Walker;
and the two arrested on charges
of spying for Ghana, Scranage
and her ex-lover, Michael Agbo-
tui Soussoudis.
And nine persons arrested last
year were found guilty. Nor-
throp Corp. engineer Thomas P.
Cavanagh received a sentence of life in pris-
on for trying to sell Stealth bomber blue-
prints to FBI agents masquerading as So-
viet operatives. Soviet emigres Svetlana
Ogorodnikova and her husband, Nikolai
Ogorodnikov, pleaded guilty to conspiring
to commit espionage with FBI counterin-
telligence specialist Richard W. Miller, the
first FBI agent ever charged with espio-
nage. Miller's trial ended in a hung jury last
month, and he is awaiting retrial.
' n perhaps the most controversial of the
espionage cases, Navy intelligence an-
alyst Samuel Loring Morison, convicted
of giving classified photographs to a British
magazine, Jane's Defence Weekly, was sen-
tenced last week to two years in prison.
Morison's conviction, roundly criticized by
,civil libertarians who charged that it would
chill public disclosure of important informa-
tion, was the first under the Espionage Act
for leaking classified material to the media.
"The threat is certainly increasing ... ,"
President Reagan warned in a radio address
,Nov. 30 spurred by the recent spate of es-
pionage arrests. "The free world is today
confronted with some of the most sophis- I
ticated, best orchestrated efforts of theft
and espionage in modern history."
The problem of espionage "certainly has
come to the front this year," said Sen. Wil-
liam V. Roth (R-Del.), a member of the Sen-
ate Intelligence Committee. "It's like a
movie serial: Every week there's a new
chapter."
The year 1985 has been a remarkable
one not simply for the volume of spy
cases-in fact, the total number of arrests
was higher last year-but also for the grav-
ity and time span of the alleged espionage
activities uncovered. john Walker, for ex-
ample, admitted he had been spying for the
Soviets since 1968. His friend and Navy
colleague, former Senior Chief Radioman
Jerry Alfred Whitworth, is awaiting trial
next month on charges of giving Walker
classified informat'on, including "key cards"
and "key lists" that the Soviets could use to
decipher Navy codes.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. James D.
Watkins said during the summer that the
Walker ring enabled the Soviets to break
the code on some of the Navy's most secret
messages to the fleet in the 1960s. possibly
reducing the U.S. lead in antisubmarine
warfare.
He said the Navy will spend millions of
dollars to change the secret coding gear
believed compromised and that it could be
faced with the need to modify submarine,
ship and airplane tactics in warfare to offset
the presumed loss of secrets to the Soviets.
Authorities are still assessing the nature
and extent of the damage caused by the
Walker ring.
Larry Wu-Tai Chin, the former CIA an-
alyst arrested Nov. 22, is accused of spying
for the Chinese since 1952 or before.
Sources familiar with the investigation said
last week that Chin is believed to have been
a "plant" who received intelligence training
from the Chinese Communists even before
he started working for the U.S. government
Army Liaison Office in 1943.
This year we've had more serious cases
in terms of what people were actually able
to do, not just attempting to do," said L.
Britt Snider, the Defense Department's
Director of Counterintelligence and Secu-
rity Policy.
Should Americans feel relieved that ar-
rests are being made in such cases or wor-
ried about the damage that may have been
done and the prospect of even more espi-
onage that has gone undetected?
-We should look at it both.ways," said
intelligence expert Roy Godson. " 'Good, I
we're catching some,' and 'God, is this the
tip of the iceberg?'
Said Snider, "There's not an iceberg out
there .... The degree of it, though dis-
maying, may not be as widespread as these
cases, particularly this recent spate all :oni-
ing at the same time, would lead you to be-
lieve.
"When you consider the numbers of peo-
C1 ,' , ..I
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pie who have access and the numbers of
documents, the instances [of espionage] are
relatively small," he noted.
Phillip D. Parker, deputy assistant direc-
tor for operations of the FBI's Intelligence
Division, said, "I think there's good reason
to feel good that the FBI with the cooper-
ation of other agencies and the American
people in general are working together to
solve the problem .... I don't believe that
we have reached the point that the average
person should lose sleep over [espionage].
The FBI may be losing sleep, but that's part
of our job."
Lincoln Faurer, who headed the NSA
from 1981 until his retirement last spring,
said, "The recent spate of spy cases does
not suggest that we are grossly inadequate"
in counterintelligence. "It may, in fact, sug-
gest the opposite."
But a senior intelligence official, pointing
to the length of time that the Walker spy
ring and Chin allegedly operated, said the
eventual ability to arrest them "isn't exactly
a counterintelligence success."
FBI officials and others have described
the spy of the 1980s as a new breed moti-
vated more by greed than by ideology. But
the current crop of cases points up the
strange blend of motives-political beliefs,
love of intrigue, job dissatisfaction or alien-
ation, as well as money-that may drive a
person to engage in espionage.
F or example, friends have described
Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay
Pollard, charged with passing classi-
fied documents to the Israelis, as an ardent
Zionist fascinated by the world of intelli-
gence. They said Pollard bragged from his
college days about being a member of the
Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service.
Chin, who sources said is believed to have
received more than $1 million from the
Chinese, was "indoctrinated ... on the aims
of the Chinese Communist Party" by a "Dr.
Wang" more than 40 years ago, according
to an FBI affidavit.
Former CIA officer Edward L. Howard,
who tied his home outside Santa Fe, N.,M.,
while under FBI surveillance, allegedly
passed information to the KGB after being
fired by the agency when he acknowledged
in a 1983 polygraph test that he was using
drugs.
"There are still mixed motives," Godson
said. "It's easier for us not to have to con-
front the problems of loyalty" posed by
someone who would spy for ideological rea-
sons. "If it's just greediness, it's easier to
manage with things like a polygraph, exam-
ining people's financial records."
The Defense Department's Snider said
he believes that there is a "need to study
the psychological motivations" that lead
people to spy, with the aim of developing
tests or other tools to "give us some better
feel for people's attitudinal changes."
The year has also been unusual for the
number of countries that were the alleged
beneficiaries of espionage.
In the past, the vast majority of espio-
nage prosecutions in the United States in-
volved Soviet or Soviet Bloc countries. This
year's cases include the first arrest on I
charges of spying for China, as well as es-
pionage charges involving Israel, one of the
United States' closest allies, and Ghana,
whose relationship wtih the United States is
generally friendly.
"As the events of recent days have made
clear, many nations spy on the United
States," Reagan said in his radio speech last
weekend. The United States, he vowed,
"will not hesitate to root out and prosecute
the spies of any nation. We'll let the chips
fall where they may."
Government officials and intelligence ex-
perts offer a variety of explanations for the
addition of countries to this year's catalogue
of espionage charges. Some say it is a mere
blip in a field that is dominated by the So-
viets and their allies.
Some attribute it to increased funding for
counterintelligence during the last several
years. "In times of constrained counterin.
telligence resources, your focus is going to
be primarily the main target," said a former
FBI counterintelligence official. "If you have
more resources, maybe you have the oppor-
tunity to take a close look at others."
Another reason may be the increased
tendency in recent years to prosecute es-
pionage cases rather than try to 'turn''
agents, feed them false information, or ban-
die the cases through diplomatic channels.
Between 1966 and 1975, there were nQ
federal espionage prosecutions, according
to a Congressional Research Service study..
From 1975 to 1980, Reagan said in his
speech, 13 people were arrested for espi-
onage. From 1981 through this year, 34
were charged with spying, 25 in the past
two years.
O ne U.S. intelligence official said that a
more aggressive prosecutorial cli-
mate contributed to the decisions to
make arrests in some of the cases this year.
In the Soussoudis case, for example, the
Justice Department overcame what sources
said were State Department qualms and
took the bold legal step of asserting its au-
thority to prosecute Soussoudis, a Ghanaian
national and first cousin of Ghana's leader,
Flight Lt. Jerry Rawlings, for acts com-
mitted in Ghana.
U.S. District Court Judge Albert V. Bry-
an Jr. in Alexandria said U.S. espionage
laws are broad enough to cover acts com-
mitted by non-U.S. citizens outside the
United States. Soussoudis later pleaded no
contest to two charges of receiving classi-
fied information from Scranage and was
given a 20-year sentence. The sentence
was suspended as part of an agreement in
which he was exchanged for eight
Ghanaians accused of spying for the United
States.
!,
In the only other case in which the Unit-
ed States has sought to prosecute a foreign-
er for espionage committed outside this
country, East German Alfred Zehe pleaded
guilty this year to eight counts of espionage
and was traded to the Soviet Bloc in a spy
swap in June.
Israeli parliament member and former
ambassador Simcha Dinitz said that "if cases
like [the Pollard case] would have happened
in the past, it would always be dealt with in
a very discreet manner, away from the pub-
lic eye."
But current and former intelligence of-
ficials said that the allegations against Chin
and Pollard might have been brought in a
less prosecution-oriented climate. "If some-
body had brought me a case on any country
that was nice and neat and clean ... we
used it," said a former FBI counterintelli-
gence official.
The Pollard case, said the FBI's Parker.
"was so blatant that the only option there
was prosecution." He said that "no matter
who we find corrupting our citizens or vi-
olating our laws we will investigate fully. It
makes no difference who it is."
The Chin arrest represents the first pros-
ecution on charges of spying for the Chin-
ese, although sources said evidence of such
activity has been uncovered in the past.
Some intelligence officials said they be-
lieve that the Chinese have been less ag-
gressive in their espionage activities in the
United States for fear of upsetting the im-
proved relationship between the two coun-
tries.
But Parker said he believes the threat of
espionage by the Chinese is "pretty clo,e"
to the magnitude of that posed by the So-
viets. He said that while the Chinese are ".i
little lower" in terms of the number of ic -
tive intelligence agents believed to be op-
erating in the United States, the Chine,e
have a far greater number of people in the
country as students-an estimated 15.00,
according to a Chinese Embassy spoke,-
man-and for other nondiplomatic pur-
poses.
f each one of these is given a ;mall
task, it's much easier, less obtru..ive
for them to gather what that
want"-both material freely available and
classified information, Parker said.
While the number of arrests is one meas-
ure, as Reagan said, of "impressive results"
in combatting intelligence, the cases il,o
have pointed up serious lapses in security.
John Walker, for example, held "top se-
cret" clearance from 1965 until his retire-
ment in 1976, but he was never reinvesti-
gated, as regulations require. Only a belat-
ed tip from his former wife alerted author-
ities to his alleged activities.
His son, Michael Walker, received inter-
im "secret" clearance in 1983 after a scanty
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check of his service record and police and
medical records: through an administrative
oversight, his superiors tailed to order a
full-fledged investigation for "secret" clear-
ance, and his transfer orders to the USS
Nimitz incorrectly noted that he had been
checked.
Retired NSA employe Ronald William
Pelton, who held a high-level clearance for
''special compartmented information relat-
ing to signals intelligence," had severe fi-
nancial problems while at the agency and
filed for bankruptcy shortly after retiring in
July 1979.
According to an FBI affidavit, he started
spying with a trip to the Soviet Embassy in
Washington in January 1980 and on two
trips to Vienna stayed in the Soviet ambas'
sador's apartment-all of which apparently
went undetected until Yurchenko provided
clues that led to Pelton's arrest.
As a CIA employe for more than 30
years, Chin should have been subject to pe-
riodic polygraph tests as part of standard
agency procedure-and either was not
polygraphed or managed to elude detection.
T he CIA was alerted to Scranage's ac-
tivities when she was polygraphed
during a routine debriefing upon her
return from Ghana. But the test came only
after the CIA ordered Scranage to stop see-
ing Soussoudis and then failed to make cer-
tain that she had followed those instruc-
tions-a move that some, including Rep.
Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.), have called a
blunder.
And friends of Jonathan Pollard, who held
a top secret clearance for his work in an
antiterrorist unit at the Naval Investigative
Service, say they would have alerted au-
Walker. a Norfolk private detective and
specialist, was arrested in a Rockville
motel May 20, hours after he dropped
a bagful of classified documents for
his Soviet contact at a rural roadside
in Poolesville. The FBI had Walker
under surveillance after receiving a tip
been a spy. Accused of masterminding the biggest espionage
ring in three decades, Walker pleaded guilty on Oct. 28 to
spying for the Soviets since 1968. He is to be sentenced to
life in prison.
agreement. John Walker agreed to divulge details of his
espionage activity in exchange for a more lenient sentence of
25 years for Michael Walker, who also pleaded guilty to
espionage.
Walker, a Navy seaman. was arrested
May 22 aboard the aircraft carrier
USS Nimitz in Haifa, Israel. The son of
John Walker, he said his father
recruited him to spy, and he admitted
giving his father stacks of classified
documents from the Oceana Naval Air
Station in Virginia Beach, Va., and the
thorities to his eccentricities and claims of
intelligence ties had they been contacted
during the clearance process.
"There may be things in his personality
that could have come out had we talked to
the right people," the Defense Depart-
ment's Snider conceded.
But the flip side of the year's seemingly
unceasing flow of spy scandals has been a
heightened awareness of espionage. Ac-
cording to Defense Department officials,
the case against Pollard was triggered when
colleagues at the Naval Investigative, Ser-
vice noticed that he was seeking access to
and copying more documents than his job
seemed to require.
This year, said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-
Vt.), vice chairman of the Select Committee
on Intelligence, has "been a big eye-opener
to a lot of people" and has convinced them
that the problem of spying "is not 1950s
right-wing fantasy. It's real, and it's going
to be real in good times and bad, during de-
tente or non-detente.
"A lot of people don't like to think the
threat is real," Leahy added. "If anything
convinces them, it should be this year."
Walker, a retired Navy lieutenant
commander, was arrested May 29 at
his home in Virginia Beach. He said
his younger brother, John Walker,
enlisted him in the espionage ring in
1980, and he admitted giving John
Walker two confidential documents
from VSE Corp., a Chesapeake, Va.,
defense contractor where he worked
as an engineer. He was convicted Aug. 9 of seven counts of
espionage and sentenced Nov. 12 to life in prison and fined
$250,000.
A reared Navy senior chief radioman
and close friend of John Walker.
receiving $332,000 from John Walker
in return for giving h m Navy secrets,
including 'key cards and 'key lists'
that the Soviets could use to decipher
codes As part of his plea arrangement. John Walker agreed
to testify against Whitworth
Scranage, a low-level clerk for the CIA
in Ghana, was charged July 11 with
espionage. Scranage s answers (luring
a routine polygraph test after her
return from Ghana soarked a CIA
investigation, and Scranage later
admitted to the FBI that she had given
Michael A Soussoudis, a Ghanaian
and her former lover, the names of
CIA employes and informants in Ghana. Scranage, of King
George. Va., pleaded guilty to three counts. She was
sentenced on Nov. 25 to five years in prison
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courts had no power to try Soussoudis
for acts in Ghana, but a federal fudge
Soussoudis was arrested July 10
during a visit to the United States and
charged with espionage based on
information given to the FBI by Sharon
Scranage. Lawyers for Soussoudis, a
first cousin of Ghanaian leader Flight
ruled otherwise On Nov 25, Soussoudls received a 20-year
sentence after pleading no contest to receiving classified
information. His sentence was suspended on the condition
that he leave the United States within 24 hours and in
exchange for the release from Ghanaian jails of eight men
who allegedly worked for the CIA
Morison, of Crofton, Md . a former
Navy intelligence analyst. was
convicted Oct 17 of giving the British
military journal, Jane s Defence
Weekly, three secret photographs of a
Soviet aircraft carrier under
construction The pictures were taken
by a U S spy satellite. Morison. who
worked at the Naval Intelligence
Support Center in Suitland, is the first person convicted of
leaking classified information to the press. He was sentenced
Dec 4 to two years in prison, and is free on bond pending
appeal
with the Naval Investigative Service in
Suitland, was arrested outside the
Israeli Embassy and charged with
espionage on Nov 21 According to
FBI affidavits. Pollard, who lived near
Dupont Circle in Washington, has
acknowledged passing secret
documents on national defense to an
agent of a foreign government, later identified as Israel
Pollard, who held a top-secret clearance and sifted through
information about terrorist activities, had worked for the
Navy since 1979 is being held without bond.
The wife of Pollard, Henderson. Pollard
was arrested Nov. 22 and charged
with possessing unauthorized classified
nformation. According to an FBI
affidavit, Henderson-Pollard delivered
a suitcase containing classified
documents to another person while
Pollard was being questioned by
federal agents on Nov. 18 The
affidavit says she said something had happened to her
husband and the contents of the suitcase had to be
destroyed.' Henderson-Pollard worked on a free-lance basis
for CommCore, a New York public relations firm.
V7 Annapolis and charged with selling
information to the Soviets. According
to an FBI afhnav t. Pelton, a
citizen in 1965. After retiring, Chin, an Alexandria resident,
worked as a consultant for the CIA until his arrest.
Howard was one of two alleged Soviet spies named by Soviet
defector Vitaly Yurchenko, who has returned to the Soviet
Union.
Pelton was arrested Nov 25 in
Chin, a retired midlevel analyst for the
Central Intelligence Agency, is charged
with spying for China for more than
30 years. Chin, who was arrested Nov.
23, had worked for the agency's
Foreign Broadcast Information Service,
which translates classified documents
for other branches of the CIA. Chin
was born in Peking and became a U S
Howard, a former CIA employe who
was fired from the agency in 1983 for
alleged occasional drug use, was
charged by the FBI on Sept. 23 with
selling U S. intelligence secrets to
Soviet KGB officials in Austria a year
ago. Howard fled from his home near
Santa Fe, N M., on Sept. 21. He is
believed to have left the United States
communications specialist for the
super-secret National Security Agency
from 1965 to 1979. admitted
contacting the Soviets in January
four months after filing for bankruptcy Pelton was the
second alleged Soviet spy identified by Yurchenko. Pelton
was living on a houseboat in Annapolis and working as a
yacht salesman at the time of his arrest He is accused of
selling information about a U S intelligence collection protect
targeted at the Soviets.
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