MOONLIGHTING IN MOSCOW?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605790006-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 3, 2012
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: April 6, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
' Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/07/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605790006-2
NEWSINEEK
6 April 1987
Moonlighting
in Moscow?
Two Marine guards are accused of allowing Soviet
KGB agents to roam the U.S. Embassy at night
They met on the Moscow subway. The
young Marine, Sgt. Clayton Lonetree, 25,
recognized the woman as a fellow worker at
the U.S. Embassy. She was a Soviet citizen,
a translator named Violetta Seina-28
years old, 5 feet 7inches, brown hair, agood
figure and a wardrobe of uplift bras. He
walked her home. They met again, secretly
because of rules against fraternization.
They became lovers. Then Violetta intro-
duced Lonetree to her Uncle Sasha. His real
name was A leksei Yefimov, and'he was an
agent of the Soviet KGB. "Uncle Sasha"
wanted a lot of information.
nd that, as investigators describe
it, was the start of yet another
American spy scandal. Lonetree
was detained last December and
accused of providing the Soviets
with secret information about the U.S. em-
bassies in both Moscow and Vienna, where
he served as a member of the elite Marine
guard. Last week the government disclosed
the detention of another Marine, Cpl. Ar-
nold Bracy, 21, who also had a Soviet girl-
'A Marine's Marine':
Corporal Bracy's mother,
Frieda, at the family
home in New York City
with a portrait of her
21-year-old son (above)
friend and was suspected of acting as Lone-
tree's accomplice. They were the first
Marine guards ever accused of espionage.
A Marine Corps charge sheet suggested
that the alleged espionage could be far
more serious than it originally appeared.
The corps charged that Lonetree and Bracy
let Soviet agents into the embassy at night
on "numerous" occasions and gave them
access to cryptographic equipment and se-
cret documents. The charge sheet also
claimed that Lonetree gave Bracy cash
"payments" of about $1,000.
In damage to the United States, the sex-
and-money espionage case may rival or
even exceed the betrayals of such recent
spy teams as the Walkers or the Pollards.
"It's as bad as you can imagine," says one
well-informed U.S. official. Unless Ameri-
can officials are overstating the case, the
Soviets may now have the ability to deci-
pher secret messages sent from the embas-
sy-and even to break U.S. codes elsewhere
in the world. As a result, administration
sources told NEWSWEEK, the embassy has
been forced to cut off a large part of its
communications: written messages sent by
radio and "secure" telephone calls. The
embassy was left with only the diplomatic
pouch and insecure phone lines. The com-
munications nightmare could get worse
when Secretary of State George Shultz
comes to Moscow on April 13 to discuss
arms control-and will need to talk in con-
fidence with President Reagan back in
Washington. U.S. officials also told NEWS-
WEEK that the case may involve more mon-
ey than has been disclosed so far. A State
Department source charged that "tens of
thousands of dollars" were paid to Lone-
tree and Bracy by the KGB.
Lonetree was formally charged with es-
pionage, while Bracy was still being held
on suspicion of spying. One or both of the
men will be tried by court-martial, where
(unlike a civilian court) a conviction on
espionage charges could lead to the death
penalty. So far, nothing has been proven.
Lonetree's lawyer, Michael Stuhff, said his
client "would absolutely deny" last week's
charges. The sergeant's family-his father
is a Winnebago Indian and his mother a
Navajo-also has denied that he engaged
in espionage.
'He's no spy': Bracy's father, a subway
engineer in New York City, described his
son as "a Marine's Marine" and insisted:
"He's no spy." Theodore Bracy charged
that his son was a "fall guy" taking the rap
for someone else. As the elder Bracy told it,
his son did have a "friendly relationship"
with a Soviet woman but informed the em-
bassy of a possible security breach when
she began to ask for sensitive information.
Last week Bracy reportedly recanted his
initial confession. According to Stuhff,
Bracy now says that "neither he nor Lone-
tree were engaged in espionage activity."
Investigators charge that while Lone-
AP
Love and espionage? Violetta
Seina, a Soviet citizen
and former translator at
the U.S. Embassy, and
her ex-boyfriend, Sgt.
Clayton Lonetree
Continued
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/07/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605790006-2
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/07/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605790006-2
HIBON-SYGMA
Riddled with Russian bugs: The old chancery building
tree was involved with Violetta Seina,
Bracy had a romance with another Soviet
employee at the embassy, a cook named
Galya. Sources told NEWSWEEK that Bracy
was busted from sergeant to corporal for
fraternizing. Lonetree's defense team com-
plained that although fraternization was
forbidden, Soviet women employees were
invited to the annual Marine Ball.
The'lookout': Marine investigators charge
that Lonetree gave the Soviets the names,
addresses and photographs of covert U.S.
agents and blueprints of the U.S. Embassy
in Moscow. The charge sheet also claims
that Lonetree allowed Soviet agents to en-
ter the embassy at night from January to
March last year and gave them access tosen-
sitive areas such as the defense attache's
office and the communications center, al-
lowing them to examine "instruments, ap-
pliances, documents and writings" con-
tained therein. The charge sheet said that
Bracy "acted as a lookout" and silenced
alarms that the Soviet agents set off. .
According to Robert Lamb, assistant sec-
retary of state for security, the embassy's
security officers noticed that alarms went
off quite frequently when Lonetree and
Under siege: A Soviet security guard at a side door to the U.S. Embassy
Bracy were on duty together at
night. But the two Marines
were not subjected to a lie-de-
tector test in Moscow. Instead,
the security officers accepted
their explanation that the
warnings were false alarms.
"It's a very old building, with a
lot of potential explanations for
false alarms," said Lamb. In the
end, he said, the security men
decided "to rely on the trustworthiness of
the individuals."
When Lonetree was transferred to Vien-
na in March of last year, Uncle Sasha
promptly introduced him to a local contact
named George, who claimed to be a KGB
general. (Seina eventually went to work for
the Irish Embassy but quit the job after
Lonetree's arrest.) Lonetree allegedly gave
the Soviets sensitive information about
the Vienna embassy, including floor plans
and office assignments. His defenders say
Lonetree turned himself in to a CIA officer
at an embassy Christmas party last Decem-
ber. "He said something like, 'I'm in some-
thing over my head. I need to talk to you
about it'," says Lake Headley, an investiga-
tor for Lonetree's lawyers.
Headley says Lonetree hoped to act as a
double agent in order to expose a KGB
general. The sergeant apparently was al-
lowed to meet with Soviet agents in Vienna
twice after his arrest, but he didn't play the
double game for long. For some reason, it
took U.S. investigators four months to get
around to looking up Bracy, who tipped
them off to the most damaging aspects of
i the affair. Lonetree's lawyers claim their
client's real problems began only after
Bracy confessed, implicating Lonetree in a
plot to admit Soviet agents to the embassy.
"He denies letting people into the embas-
sy," Headley says of Lonetree. "He was
never accused of that before Bracy."
Free rein: Intelligence officials maintain
that the two Marines gravely damaged U.S.
security. "If you offer a team of KGB guys
free rein in the embassy at regular inter-
vals," says one source, "the potential for
trouble is enormous." The intelligence ana-
lysts speculate that Lonetree and Bracy
may even be responsible for some of the
security breaches that were previously
blamed on CIA defector Edward Lee How-
ard. Now that the damage has been done,
multiple investigations are underway. And
administration sources have told NEWS-
WEEK that all 28 Marines in the embassy
soon will be replaced.
The embassy's security problems won't
be solved overnight. All of its Soviet employ-
ees were withdrawn by the Kremlin during
the tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions last
fall. But the chancery building is thought to
be riddled with Soviet listening devices.
Construction work on a new embassy has
been halted, partly because of shoddy Sovi-
et workmanship and partly because of a
suspicion that the new chancery is being,
bugged from the ground up. At a critical
juncture in U.S.-Soviet relations, Ameri-
ca's listening post in Moscow has been se-
verely crippled, and the work of diplomacy
will be hampered for months to come.
RUSSELL W AT SON with RICHARD SAND Z A and
ROBERT B. CULLENin Washington, JOYCE
B A R N A T H A N in Moscow and bureau reports
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/07/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605790006-2