SPYING'S DECLINING STAKES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201200001-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 19, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: April 1, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

~Sl Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201200001-9
WASHINGTON POST
1 April 1987
Richard Cohen
Spying's Declining Stakes
The spy John Walker Jr. sold the
Soviets blueprints of American coding
equipment. The damage to U.S. secu-
rity was profound. "If there had been a
war, we would have won it," remarked
Vitaly Yurchenko, the KGB official who
defected to the United States and then
defected back to the Soviet Union.
Yurchenko was characteristically con-
fused. If there had been a war, no one
would have won.
Three former Marine guards at the
U.S. Embassy in Moscow are now under
arrest. Two are charged with allowing
Soviet agents virtual free run of the
embassy, including the most secure
rooms on the building's seventh floor.
One of the Marines, Sgt. Clayton J.
Lonetree, reportedly admitted that he
fell for a Soviet employee who worked at
the embassy and then cooperated with
her "uncle," a man named Sasha. In such
a way did the Philistines give Samson a
haircut.
For the United States, the arrest of
two alleged spies is an almost common-
place event. In the last year or two, a
gaggle of them has been shipped off to
the clink. Walker, his son, his brother and
an associate, Jerry Whitworth, were
among the first. A former employee of
the top-secret National Security Agency,
Ronald Pelton, sold information to the
Russians. Jonathan J. Pollard spied for
Israel and Larry Wu-Tai Chin spied for
communist China.
All these operations have a few things
in common. Either at the time of the
arrest or just before sentencing, a high
U.S. official-often a U.S. Attorney-es-
timated the damage as incalculable.
Sometimes this was echoed by a high
administration official. Defense Secretary
Caspar Weinberger offered such an as-
sessment in the Pollard case.
Second, none of the alleged or con-
victed spies turned traitor for ideological
reasons. These were not the contempo-
rary equivalents of the communist spies
of the 1950s. Pollard comes closest, but
even he apparently just wanted to help
Israel, not harm the United States. For
him, the Soviet-U.S. struggle was totally
extraneous. No matter. Based on the
Chicken Little statements of the prose-
cutor and Weinberger, a judge sentenced
Pollard to life-the same sentence given
to spies who sold information to Russia,
our so-called mortal enemy.
Third-and maybe most interesting-
all these operations seem to embody a
nonconformist wisdom. It's hard to know
precisely what's in the mind of a spy, but
the actions and statements of some of
them add up to a rebuttal of the remark
made by Yurchenko-"If there had been a
war, we would have won it." What the
spies seem to be saying is, "Nonsense.
The stakes were never that high."
Experts concede they have a point.
That hardly means that the information
spies peddle is not important, maybe
critically important. But none of it can
essentially change the Soviet-U.S. equi-
librium. Neither side can win the next
war. One side may be able to survive it
better than the other, but winning-as
the word has always been used-is no
longer possible. What we are talking
about, instead, are degrees of losing a war
after which, as someone has remarked,
the living would envy the dead.
That reality makes spying less dam-
aging than it used to be. There is no
single piece of information-mobilization
plans, railroad capacities-that can sub-
stantially affect the outcome of the next
war. The era of Mata Hari and Benedict
Arnold is over. Only in newspaper head-
lines and the sentencing of judges does
spying retain its old importance. The
spies, it seems, know better. What they
do is too damaging to be called a game,
but it has elements of one. We spy, they
spy, but nothing fundamentally changes.
None of this excuses spying, which is
treason by another name. It just puts it
into a contemporary perspective-one
that prosecutors, judges and administra-
tion officials seem to lack. The tip that
armies are on the move now comes from
satellites, and scholars discern from pub.
lished papers in libraries what femmes
fatales used to get in the boudoir. The
last romantics of espionage turn out to be
government officials who, for budgetary
or career reasons, imbue spies with an
importance they don't have. Like their
counterparts in Moscow, they have a
stake in insisting that the latest spy
caught represents the most severe, dam-
aging breach of security since-well,
since the last breach of security.
Handcuffed and hang-faced, the
wretched spies go off to jail, retaining
their ultimate secret: their notoriety is
only partly deserved. Not so their jail
sentences.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201200001-9