QUIET DIPLOMACY EASED PREVIOUS SPY TENSIONS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605100036-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 3, 2012
• Sequence Number: 36
• Publication Date: September 19, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

M,KI!=+.~i Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/03 :CIA-RDP90-009658000605100036-4
`'~NtPAOE K~~S~ l WASHINGTON POST
19 Septemoer 1986
Quiet Diplomacy Eased
Previous Spy Tensions
Cases with similarities to the cur-
rent Daniloff-Zakharov situation
arose during preparation for U.S.-
Soviet summits in the Nixon and
Carter administrations, but diplo-
matic compromises arranged during
private negotiations in those days
prevented the controversies from
escalating.
On Feb. 14, 1972, with President
Richard M. Nixon about to go to
China, and U.S. and Soviet negoti-
ators working to conclude the final
phase of the Antiballistic. Missile
(ABM) Treaty and the SALT I stra-
tegic arms limitations agreement,
the Federal Bureau of Investigation
arrested a Soviet United Nations
translator who had been under sur-
veillance for two years.
The spy, Valery Markelov, was
charged with taking classified doc-
uments about the Navy's F14 fight-
er from a Grumman Corp. engineer
Mazkelov had been cultivating since
1970. The Grumman engineer had
been cooperating with the bureau.
Markelov initially was held on
$500,000 bond. But two days later,
the U.S, attorney in Brooklyn, on
instructions from the State Depart-
ment, asked that bail be dropped to
$100,000 and that Markelov be
remanded to the custody of then-
Soviet Ambassador Anatoliy Do-
brynin.
A fo.-mer Central Intelligence
Agency official said yesterday that
keeping agents out of jail was a mu-
tual aim of the KGB and his agency.
"You don't have control when your
man's in jail," he said. "We worry
about his comfort, they worry he
might defect."
Three months later, on the eve of
Nixon's summit meeting with So-
viet leader Leonid Brezhnev, the
U.S. government moved to quash
the indictment. A trial was avoided,
and Markelov was freed and re-
turned to the Soviet Union.
On May 20, 1978, with President
Jimmy Carter and his administra-
tion working on the SALT II stra-
tegic arms negotiations in hopes of
having a summit meeting the next
year with Brezhnev, the FBI ar-
rested two Soviet U.N. employes in
New Jersey on espionage charges
after they had paid $16,000 to a
retired Navy officer for secret doc-
uments on antisubmarine warfare.
The arrest culminated a year-
long "dangle" operation, in which
the American officer had offered
himself to the Soviets as a potential
spy. The FBI-run operation was
undertaken, in part, because then-
Attorney General Griffin B. Bell and
some Carter aides believed the ~
viet KGB had gotten out of hand.
A CIA agent under cover as a
U.S. embassy employe in Moscow
had been caught the year before as
she was making a delivery to one of
her Soviet contacts. The contact
was arrested, tried and condemned
to death and the U.S. agent, who
had diplomatic immunity, was ex-
pelled from the country without
publicity.
The CIA, however, was forced to
close its Moscow operations to in-
vestigate how one of its agents
could be caught so cleanly. Mean-
while, aformer CIA clerk had sold
data on the most secret U.S. spy
satellite and had been caught only
because he confessed his actions to
a former coworker.
In that atmosphere, when the
FBI came forward with its plan to
arrest the two Soviet U.N. employ-
es, the Carter administration inter-
agency group that reviewed the
case offered no objection. The only
question was whether to proceed to
trial. The White House and Justice
Department were on one side of
that bitter debate; the State De-
partment and CIA on the other.
The State Department's concern
was for the arms negotiations and
possible summit. The CIA was con-
cerned about a trial and the possi-
bility that the KGB would respond
against one of its people in Moscow.
Since the CIA was already under
fire in Moscow and its agents few in
number, the CIA opposed actions
that could bring on retaliation, a
former agency official said.
Carter agreed to go to trial and
the two Soviets, Rudolf Chernyayev
and Valdik Enger, were jailed when
a New York magistrate, to the sur-
prise of the U.S. attorney, required
$2 million bail for each.
The KGB clearly did not want its
men in jail, a former CIA official
said yesterday. Five weeks later,
while the Carter administration was
preparing to go to trial, the KGB
arrested Francis J. Crawford, an
American businessman in Moscow.
Crawford was charged with violat-
ing money exchange laws, and held
in prison.
"Crawford was a surprise," a for-
mer Carter administration official
said yesterday. But inside of two
weeks, a deal was worked out
whereby Crawford was released in
Moscow to await trial in the custo-
dy of then-U.S. Ambassador Mal-
colm Toon, and the two Soviets
...was tried, convicted and swapped
Continued
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/03 :CIA-RDP90-009658000605100036-4
 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/03 :CIA-RDP90-009658000605100036-4
were released to Dobrynin to await
trial.
There was no formal agreement
on the next step, but both sides
seemed temporarily satisfied, a for-
mer official who participated in the
discussions said yesterday. The
charges against Crawford, clearly
brought to gain bargaining power
for release of the two accused So-
viet spies, had been accumulated
over some time, not trumped up at
the last minute, sources said.
. In succeeding months, U.S. busi-
nessmen, quietly encouraged by the-
Carter administration, .began to
complain privately to Moscow of-
ficials that the arrest of Crawford
endangered continued expansion of
trade. Industrialist Armand Ham-
mer, according to former Carter
officials, traveled to Moscow to
make that point personally to
Brezhnev.
In September, with arms control
negotiations proceeding, Carter
administration officials -were some-
what surprised when the Soviets
decided to put Crawford on trial a
month before the start of their own
spies' trial in the United States.
Crawford was convicted and given a
suspended sentence, all in one day.
The next day he was put on a plane
and sent back to the United States.
A month later, the two U.N. So-
viets were convicted and each given
sentences of 50 years in prison. In
the ensuing six months, negotia-
tions took place between Carter
national security affairs adviser
Zbigniew Brzezinski and Dobrynin
over a swap. Meanwhile, the two
Soviets were free on bail and even
allowed to travel to the Soviet
Union for a visit.
With the SALT II agreement al-
most complete, the Soviets finally
agreed to trade the two for five So-
viet dissidents and a pledge not to
execute` one of the CIA's Soviet
agents. The Soviet decision was
hailed by the Carter officials as
helpful to the SALT II negotiations.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/03 :CIA-RDP90-009658000605100036-4