ROUTINE POLYGRAPH OPENED GHANAIAN ESPIONAGE PROBE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605070044-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 20, 2013
• Sequence Number: 44
• Publication Date: July 13, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/02/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605070044-9
ARTICLE AMAMI
ON PAGE, A- I
WASHINGTON POST
13 July 1985
Routine Polygraph Opened
Ghanaian Espionage Probe
CIA Employe Aroused Suspicions
/3
1.3..y.-doe-P t By-anl John Mintz Writers
The investigation that resulted in
this week's arrests of a CIA em-
ploye and her Ghanaian lover on
espionage charges was touched off
when the employe was given a poly-
graph test during a routine debrief-
ing upon her return from Ghana,
according to sources familiar with
the case.
CIA officials, their suspicions
aroused by the employe's re-
sponses, launched an internal inves-
tigation of Sharon M. Scranage, a
low-level support assistant in the
CIA's station in Ghana, sources
said. The CIA inquiry uncovered
allegations that the identities of CIA
agents and their Ghanaian infor-
mants were passed on to Ghanaian
intelligence officials, according to
sources and FBI documents filed in
federal court in Alexandria.
Sources said yesterday that Capt.
Kojo Tsikata, the head of Ghanaian
intelligence and a leader of the gov-
ernment's pro-Marxist faction, was
one of the unidentified officials cited
in an FBI account of a May 24
meeting Scranage allegedly had
with Ghanaian officials. At the
meeting, Scranage told the officals
about secret CIA information she
had previously divulged, and one
asked her to learn the identities of
three Ghanaian dissidents traveling
abroad, according to FBI court doc-
uments.
In March 1983, Tsikata publicly
accused the CIA of plotting to over-
throw the government of Flight Lt.
Jerry John Rawlings.
Tsikata is a radical leftist who is
close to revolutionary regimes in
Libya and Cuba, and he is consid-
ered the hard-line ideologue in
Rawlings' regime, specialists said.
He has been a close ally and adviser
to Rawlings since the early 1970s,
years before successive coups, in
1979 and 1981, put Rawlings in
power.
Rawlings has maintained neutral-
ity between the Soviet Union and
the United States, 'using vitriolic .
Third World rhetoric while seeking
western aid in the form of invest-
ment and International Monetary
Fund loans, said Victor Levine, a
Ghana expert who is a political sci-
ence professor at Washington Uni-
versity at St. Louis.
"Ideologically, Rawlings consid-
ers himself to be not a communist
but a disciple of [Libyan leader
Muammarl Qaddafi," said- Levine.
Tsikata is Rawlings' hard-line "aide
le camp" who "really dislikes the
U.S.," Levine added. .
Ghanaian dissident groups and
academics specializing in Ghana
echoed fears expressed by intelli-
gence officials that, in part because
of Tsikata's role, the classified CIA
information allegedly compromised
by Scranage was . passed on to in-
telligence agencies of Libya, East
Germany and other Soviet bloc na-
tions.
"It will go to Libya. Cuba, East
Germany, Russia and others," said
Willie Bediaka Lamouse Smith, a
leading Ghanaian dissident in this
country and a professor of African-
American studies at the University
of Maryland's Baltimore County
campus. "It's quite major damage."
According to an FBI affidavit,
Scranage has admitted to the FBI
that she provided secret CIA data
for about two years to Michael Ag-
botui Soussoudis. He is a relative of
Rawlings and a Ghanaian national
who prosecutors Say is an operative
of the Ghanaian intelligence ser-
vice. Soussoudis, 39, who sources
said was Scranage's lover, was ar-
rested Wednesday night and has
denied being a Ghanaian intelli-
gence agent.
Scranage; 29, who is cooperating
, with the FBI, was formally charged
Thursday. Both are being held with-
out bail.
Besides the names of CIA agents
and informants, Scranage passed on
to Soussoudis the CIA's intelli-
gence-gathering methods for its
station in the Ghanaian capital of
Accra and details about the CIA's
radio and communications equip-
ment, according to an FBI court
affidavit.
The CIA has declined to com-
ment on any aspect of the investi-
gation or on the impact of
ScTanage's alleged disclosures on
agency activities in Ghana. FBI
spokesmen also declined to com-
ment yesterday, as did the
Ghanaian Embassy here.
Ghana's state-run radio, in re-
sponse to the arrests, said that the
CIA activities were a flagrant inter-
ference in Ghana's affairs, but the
government appealed to the public
not to use violence against Amer-
icans there, wire services reported.
Other U.S. government offficials
familiar with the, investigation said
yesterday they did not know the
impact of the alleged disclosures or
whether the Ghanaians had shared
information with other foreign in-
telligence agencies.
One government source said that
at least one of the CIA's Ghanaian
informants had disappeared, but it
was not known whether any infor-
mants have been harmed as a result
of the disclosures.
The CIA delayed turning over
the case to the FBI, which is re-
sponsible for investigating the crim-
inal aspects of espionage cases, in
order to give CIA operatives time
to leave Ghana and to alert
Ghanaian informants, sources said.
On Wednesday, Soussoudis was
lured- by Scranage to a Springfield
motel where he was arrested by
waiting FBI agents, sources said. In
separate hearings before a U.S.
magistrate on Thursday, both were.
formally charged with conspiring to
commit espionage, a crime that car-
ries a maximum penalty of life in
prison.
Continued
Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/02/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605070044-9
Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/02/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605070044-9
U.S. diplomatic sources said two
years ago that Tsikata took part in
a Soviet "disinformation" plot
against the United States. In March
1983, Tsikata announced that the
U.S. Embassy in Accra and the CIA
were trying to overthrow Rawlings,
and he produced as "proof' a copy of
a West German Embassy report
that then-U.S. Ambassador Thomas
Smith was dissatisfied with the CIA
.in Ghana. The report said Smith
ordered the CIA to get to work to, I
overthrow Rawlings..
U.S. and West German officials
branded the document a phony, and
the Ghanaian government later ac-
knowledged that it was. U.S. officials
later said Tsikata's forgery was man- .
ufactured by the Soviets, part of a
campaign of provocative fakes by the
Soviet secret police in Africa.
?Despite reports that the Rawlings
government has distanced itself from
Libya and East bloc nations in the
last two years, dissidents say the ties
remain strong. Last year, Tsikata
sent Ghanaian intelligence opera-
tives to be trained in Bulgaria, and
other government officials have
worked in Libya and Cuba, dissidents
said.
Tsikata's intelligence and security
forces are heavy-handed and have
been involved in numerous violations
of civil rights,, according to dissidents
and Henry Bretton, a professor at
the State University of New. York in .
Brockport., who is a Ghana specialist.
"The country has been cowed more
than ever," he said.
"The security force exists is much
to keep the Ghanaians in line.as ally- -
thing else," and Tsikata in particular
is feared by many Ghanaians. Ghana
specialist Levine said.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/02/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605070044-9