SPYING TO CLOSE THE GAP

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000201100025-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 6, 2010
• Sequence Number: 25
• Publication Date: October 27, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2010/07/06: CIA-RDP90-00806R000201100025-0
1,RiICLE AP EA
ON PAGE
WASHINGTON TIMES
27 October 1986
MAX LERNER
Spying
to close
the
gap
he story of the expulsions of
55 Soviet "diplomats" - in
reality, technical spies - is
a story of trying to control
the high larceny of high technology.
The weepers and moaners on the
media panels - including the Soviet
"journalists" - stress'the "tit for
tat" aspect as an escalation game.
They worry about imperiling the
post-Reykjavik "climate" for arms
talks.
This is to miss the point of Soviet
and American purposes. Ronald
Reagan wants a good climate for
talks but sees no reason for buying
it by playing down the espionage is-
sue, which stands on its own.
Soviet Secretary General Mikhail
Gorbachev has to think of "link-
ages;" because he is in a weaker bar-
gaining position on technology. So he
speaks softly because he doesn't
carry a big technology stick.
In his latest speech, he chides
President Reagan for the unnamed
"circles" in Washington who are hos-
tile to a Soviet agreement. But in fact
he needs the arms talks to get an
agreement, and he needs his spies in
order to reach a position of greater
strength.
He is hurt badly by the lopping of
his United Nations, Washington, and
San Francisco spy staffs. So he "re-
taliates" in token fashion by sending
five more American diplomats home
and pulling out the entire Russian
substaff of workers at the Moscow
Embassy (who have also been spy-
ing).
The key term in the political vo-
cabulary of the fearing liberals has
become "sensitive." We must be
"sensitive" and "sensitized" to the
feelings of the Soviets, lest we dis-
turb them and hurt the chances of
"peace."
The counterculture of the '60s in
America had much that has lasted,
but its psychological "touchy-feely"
phase is a poor substitute for a tough-
minded politics of the Great Powers.
Americans should feel relieved
that finally, after an intolerable de-
lay, their government has awakened
from its slumberous inaction about
Soviet technology-stealers masquer-
ading as "diplomats."
The new American criterion is al-
most sweetly reasonable, and even
"symmetrical." Let there be equality
of numbers. Let the Soviet and
American embassies - and prime
consulates - be limited to a staff of
251. This still gives the Soviets their
huge U.N. delegation (now some-
what cut) as their extra technologi-
cal guerrilla warriors.
S oviet diplomacy today is domi-
nated by the technological im-
perative. It is fair to sum up
Mr. Gorbachev's current policy as
"negotiate and spy, spy and negoti-
ate"
He is driven to both by the sad
backwardness of Soviet technology.
He has to keep spying in order to
narrow the gap between American
and Soviet science and technology.
But he also has to keep negotiating
for the same reason - to restrict the
Strategic Defense Initiative to lab-
oratory research and keep it from
moving ahead while he jogs the So-
viet economy out of its almost cata-
tonic inertia.
If you dig deep enough,
archeology-wise, to turn up layer
after layer, you reach the vast cur-
rent distance between the two cul-
tures.
The Soviets, who once boasted of
being revolutionaries, are mired in a
curious conscrvatism. Their party
bureaucratic planners distrust
change and seem incapable of it. Ev-
ery bead of their blood cries out
against innovation. They are suffer-
ing an angst about computers, fear-
ful of putting them into the homes of
the people lest they lose control over
them. It is the Americans who are
the revolutionaries of today.
How the gods of history must
laugh when they see the army of So-
viet technicians, high in their Wash-
ington embassy at Mount Alto in
Georgetown, spying on the tele-
phone and microwave telecommuni-
cation system of America, while
they themselves fear to establish one
for their own industry and people!
Max Lerner is a nationally syndi-
cated columnist.
V
Approved For Release 2010/07/06: CIA-RDP90-00806R000201100025-0