U.S. ARMY/DOUBLE AGENT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000600420035-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 27, 2005
• Sequence Number: 35
• Publication Date: April 6, 1984
• Content Type: TRANS

y CBS MORNING NEWS
Approved For Release 26O i1Ol 1-7 i` S4-RDP9'11
U.S. ARMY/ SAWYER: It is a spy story worthy of John Le Carre. A
DOUBLE AGENT U.S. spy goes bad, sells out to the Soviet Union, and
blows the cover of an American double agent who had
apparently infiltrated the KGB itself, but it is not a
novel. Richard Craig Smith, a former Army
counterintelligence agent, has been charged with selling
the name of a fellow spy to Moscow, but it is not known
what became of that agent, known only as 'Royal Miter.'
We asked Maria Shriver to trace his roots in his hometown
of Salt Lake City, and she joins us this morning. Good
morning, Maria.
SHRIVER: Good morning, Diane. Craig Smith is Utah's
first spy, and his arrest came as a big surprise to this
Mormon state. The son of a Mormon bishop and the father
of four children, he was a faithful church-goer who
neither drank nor smoked and gave 10 percent of his
earnings to the church. Nobody thought he was the kind of
man who would sell his country's secrets to the Russians.
Many people here in Salt Lake City knew Craig Smith was a
spy. After he grew up and went to school here he went off
and joined the Army intelligence. When he returned he
started a video business, promoting Utah to Japanese
investors. SCOTT MATHESON (Utah Governor on Smith's
promotion tape): It is my pleasure to provide you with a
look at a very exciting area, the state of Utah.
SHRIVER:
But
it was his spy tales that made him well
known.
CARMEN
BORROWUM (Neighbor): We just asked him if
the spy
novels
were fairly true-to-life, and he said,
'More so
than
most people would care to know.'
SHRIVER: His company went bankrupt and he lost his home.
Yet he continued to make trips to Japan and it was there
the government says he took $11,000 from the KGB for
blowing the cover of an American double agent operation.
Yet Craig Smith continued to have money problems. Three
months ago he moved himself and his family into his
parent's home in Bellview, Wash. KENT SMITH (Friend): I
know the guy so well and I feel so badly for him because
he's had some financial duress and backed himself in the
corner and couldn't get out.
SHRIVER: This city is abuzz with memories of how Craig
Smith was always talking about putting some big money deal
together. Dynamic, outgoing,. enthusiastic, hard-working,
but seemingly always'a step away from making his fortune.
In Bellview, Wash., his mother said, 'I know he was ,a good
.son, and he is still a good son.' Diane?
Continued
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a.
SAWYER: Thank you, Maria. Smith is the fifth American
arrested this year on charges of espionage. U.S. agents
say this case, however, may hurt more than the others
because the information sold endangers the safety of a
number of U.S. double agents. For a perspective on the
damage, we asked former CIA Director Adm. Stansfield
Turner to join us from Dallas this morning. Adm. Turner,
thanks to you for coming in. What do you think when you
read this in the newspaper? TURNER: Well, you have to
think that Craig Smith is a dangerous spy because he's
what we call a mole. He's somebody inside our own
intelligence organization burrowing around and getting
information for the Soviets. That uncovers our other
intelligence operations and exposes the lives of agents
and such forth. On the other hand, Craig Smith was part
of Army intelligence, not the real core of our human
intelligence activities, the CIA.
SAWYER: Eleven thousand dollars, though, to sell out for
$11.000? TURNER: Terrible.
SAWYER: How can those of you who recruit agents for the
United States, how can you begin to anticipate which
people will sell out and which ones won't? TURNER: Well,
to begin with, you have to screen people very carefully
when they come into intelligence, then you have to monitor
them all along the line and watch for abnormal behavior.
It's a lot more difficult with somebody like Craig Smith,
who left the Army intelligence and went out into the
civilian world because in our country we don't believe in
following and trailing and surveilling people unless
there's some cause for that, some indication of abnormal
behavior.
SAWYER: One thinks, though, of Lenin's maxim that the
capitalist nations will argue over the price of the rope
with which they hang themselves. Is money the predominant
reason that American agents turn, or it's not ideology, I
assume? TURNER: Well, it's not ideology as much as it
was in the 1930s and '40s, perhaps, when communism still
had some ideological appeal around the world. That's
really dropping off. Money is one, but there's been
another case'of people wanting to spy just for the. kicks,
just for the fun of it. We had two young boys in
California a number of years ago named Boyce and Lee, and
the best analysis of why they did it is they were sort of
bored with life and they wanted to do something exciting,
and-that's very disturbing.
SAWYER: How worried are you about the respective
comparisons of American and U.S. spy operations in each
other's countries? It seems to me that we're forever
reading about the apprehension of a KGB agent in the
United States. Their numbers are enormous, aren't they?
'continued
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TURNER: Well, you know, the KGB really makes a tremendous
effort at human intelligence, and so when we catch them
that indicates that we've got good counterintelligence.
So there are two sides to this story. At the same time,
from my observation of these people we catch, they aren't
getting that much more information out of us than I think
we're getting out of them. Their human intelligence
operations are bigger than ours. I think ours are
probably a little more astute. So I'm not too worried
about the balance of activity here.
SAWYER: And the electronic abilities? Ours are better?
TURNER: Ours are much better than theirs. When you come
to collecting intelligence, you collect it by human spies
that we've been talking about, but you also collect it by
satellites, by electronic surveillance systems and such.
Because American technology is so far ahead of Soviet
technology, we're way ahead of them there.
SAWYER: Admiral... TURNER: And finally, we're ahead of
them on interpreting the information you get from either
human spies or electronic gadgets.
SAWYER: Adm. Turner, our thanks to you. TURNER: Thank
you.
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