MANY OBSTACLES TO US INTELLIGENCE GATHERING IN SOVIET UNION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000201100029-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 6, 2010
• Sequence Number: 29
• Publication Date: October 24, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/06: CIA-RDP90-00806R000201100029-6
ARTICLE APffAKD
ON PAS
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
24 October 1986
Many obstacles to US intelligence
gathering in Soviet Union
Conspicuous Americans are closely watched; then there are double-agents
Washington
The day after the United States announced a mass
explusion of Soviet diplomats accused of espionage, the
Soviet news agency Tass spat out a bitter epitaph.
Adolf 'Iblkachev, one of the Soviet Union's leading
aeronautical engineers, had been executed, Tass said, for
"spying ... as an agent of US intelligence."
The dispatch underlined one likely reason that the
Reagan administration decided on a mass expulsion of
Soviet spies now. It could be that the Soviets cannot hit
back hard in Moscow, because the US has few intelli-
gence assets left to lose in the Soviet capital.
Edward Lee Howard, a disgruntled former CIA em-
ployee who defected to Moscow, has helped the KGB to
devastate American intelligence-gathering efforts in
Moscow and Leningrad. Mr. Howard is believed to have
provided information that not only allowed the KGB to
identify Mr. Tblkachev and other Soviet collaborators,
but also a number of US intelligence agents operating
under diplomatic cover.
Howard is also thought to have identified some of the
"dead drops" where US agents left messages, and to
have exposed some of the elaborate methods they used
to communicate with one another.lblkachev, according
to some accounts, was responding to a spurious sum-
mons from his US Embassy contact, and instead found a
KGB agent waiting for him at the rendezvous point.
Is the US now going for broke with the mass expul-
sions, because its own intelligence effort in Moscow is in
tatters? "We don't have any comment on that," a US
official says.
In fact, intelligence gathering in Moscow is surpass-
ingly hard, even without the risk of exposure by double-
agents. The Russian language is difficult to master, and
few Americans manage to speak it without an accident.
Diplomatic cars have special red-and-white license
plates that make them easy to spot.
Nor can an agent easily blend into the cityscape by
hopping in a cab or riding the subway. Because the US
Embassy and the compounds where diplomats live are
guarded around the clock, tailing is fairly easy, and the
KGB is well schooled in the art.
Sometimes it uses more sophisticated methods. Last
year the American Embassy protested when the KGB
applied a special tracing chemical, NPPD, to surfaces
likely to be touched by American diplomats.
The American Embassy has, in the past, eaves-
dropped on conversations between the Kremlin and mo-
bile phones in limousines used by high party officials,
prompting the Soviets to scramble the signals. Also, the
KGB has at times bombarded the communications-inter-
cept antennas on the top of the embassy with radio
waves in order to disrupt the eavesdropping.
When the KGB is particularly miffed, American diplo-
mats in Moscow, even those with no apparent connection
to intelligence-gathering operations, soon find their tires
slashed or their cars vandalized.
America's spies in the Soviet capital will doubtless be
particularly cautious in the weeks and months ahead, to
avoid the fate of their Soviet counterparts who have
been sent packing.
- Gary Thatcher
STAT
STAT
J
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/06: CIA-RDP90-00806R000201100029-6