BEHIND EMBASSY AFFAIR: COMPLACENCY ON SPYING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201820009-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 20, 2012
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: April 8, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201820009-3
U14 F'AGE NEW YORK TIMES
8 April 1987
Behind Embassy Affai
Complacency on Spying
WASHINGTON, April 7 - While spy
versus spy is an accepted part of the
relationship between the United States
and the Soviet Union, American offi-
cials believe a combination of Soviet
persistence and American compla-
cency has given Moscow a
distinct advantage in the
game in recent years.
Analysis Indeed, many officials
say that the most disturb-
ing aspect about the spate
of recent American lapses at the em-
bassy in Moscow and here at home is
the far-reaching, systemic weaknesses
they reveal in security procedures.
American intelligence agencies were
too complacent, they say, both about
Soviet abilities in technical intelligence
gathering and about the need for rigor-
dus personnel security procedures.
A wide variety of explanations for
this complacency have been advanced,
including an unwarranted contempt for
Soviet technical abilities, the generally
more relaxed atmosphere in interna-
tional relations that followed the period
of detente in the early 1970's, and a re-
luctance to intrude on the civil liberties
of Government employees, in reaction
to past abuses in the name of national
security.
Seduction of Marines
Some dubbed 1985 "the year of the
spy" and expected the lessons of the
highly publicized cases of that year -
including that of Edward Lee Howard,
a former Central Intelligence Agency
analyst who fled the country after
being identified as a spy by a Soviet de-
tector - to be acted upon.
Now 1987 has brought charges that
some of the Marine guards who were
supposed to keep Soviet spies out of the
Moscow embassy instead let them-
selves be seduced into allowing agents
of the K.G.B., the Soviet state security
agency, into its most secret rooms.
Failure to fully appeciate or react to
Soviet technical abilities has been con-
sistent in the last decade.
In the early 1970's, for example, at a
time when the United States was mak-
ing major strides in technological sur-
veillance, many intelligence officials
incorrectly assumed the Soviet Union
Was unable to produce advanced eaves-
dropping devices.
Listening Devices In Structure
That myth was shattered when offi-
cials discovered a decade later, after
the Soviet Union was allowed to do
.much of the construction work on a
mew American embassy building in
Moscow at a closed site, that Soviet
;agents had planted electronic surveil-
lance equipment in the steel frames of
The building.
At a news conference today, Presi-
rdent Reagan said the new building
;would not be occupied until he is as-
sured that it is safe and secure.
By STEPHEN ENGELBERG
Spedal to The New York Time
Senior American officials seemed, in
the mid-1970's, to hold a view of Soviet
espionage that was frozen in a period
20 years before, when Soviet agents
wore Ill-fitting clothes and spoke Eng-
lish poorly.
There also appeared to be an as-
sumption that no American working
with highly sensitive data was likely to
be susceptible to recruitment by a
Communist country. The various
American security agencies took com-
paratively few precautions with mil-
lions of Government employees who
handled classified information.
For years, most of these employees
were allowed to leave their offices
without ever worrying about the possi-
bility of even a random inspection of
briefcases. Initial investigations before
hiring were cursory, and little time
was spent re-investigating people.
An Increase in Arrests
In the last two years, however,
Americans have been arrested on es-
pionage charges on the average of once
a month, many of them Government
employees.
All of this is not to suggest that the
West has not scored similar successes.
On rare occasions, the United States,
has recruited agents in the Soviet
Union who had access to highly secret
technical information.
Although it has not made much stream of penetrations. In those days
progress in cracking Soviet coding sys- there was no dispute about it.,,
tems, the National Security Agency has All of these factors created institu-
eavesdropped on senior Soviet officials tional biases against those who favored
speaking on their car telephones. It. I better security. These were matched
also ran an operation that harvested by a tendency in the military and else
tions from undersea cables.
In addition, Soviet agents have been
trapped several times in "sting"
operations in which the American they
were recruiting actually worked for
the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Effects of Detente
But American officials generally
failed to realize the Soviet Union was
improving its intelligence capabilities
in the early 1970's.
United States-Soviet relations in that
period were improving, and those who
raised security concerns were seen,
sometimes justifiably, as using them to
undermine the policy of detente.
The Nixon Administration agreed in
1972 to allow the Soviet Union to occupy
one of the highest points in Washington
- an ideal site for conducting elec-
tronic interception - for its new em-
bassy. And it allowed the new Amer-
ican embassy building in Moscow to be
built by Soviet workers without thor-
ough American inspection.
e'
merc of the to be and
C.I.A. were r
I amok.
Both agencies were implicated d r-
in
g
the
Congressional n
vesti ations of
the 1970's in arse-scale efforts t0 Spy
against Americans. Further. the
C L
A.'
s counterm
telligence
operations
run
by
James J.
were offi-
. an oVii-
cial who
wa
s so
obsessed with ferreting
out Soviet agents that his activities
some tended, ended up harming the
very agency he was trying to
-
the C.I.A.. Mr.
An?le-
ton's ideas about counterintelligence
and his With re and for the Soviet abil-
itv to penetrate a
level o Govern-
m
ment. are ese days ism_ iss-_ As
"sick thin "
Mr. Angleton said today in a tele-
phone interview that "we were within
"
19
our mandate
from the executive
branch when the surveillance was
done.
As to the suggestion that he might
have been obsessed with Soviet efforts
to penetrate the United States Govern-
ment, Mr. Angleton it'emarked: "I
would say that any student of Amer-
ican counterintelligence going way
back would know there was a steady
where to treat security as a secondary
consideration, one of the first things toI
suffer when budgets are cut.
From the mid-1970's until well into
the 1980's, the United States placed ex-
traordinary faith in the reliability of its
Government employees. The affair of i
the Marine guards at the Moscow em-1
bassy is only the latest example of the
extent to which this country has put its
faith in the trustworthiness of individu-!
als.
Continued
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201820009-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201820009-3
a
Esprit de Corps Not Enough
The television monitors that watched
sensitive areas at the embassy, for in-
stance, were fed back to a Marine com-
mand post, suggesting that no one ever
dreamed the Soviets could succeed in,
compromising Marine guards.
The embassy had no electronic sys-
tem for recording how long secured
doors were left open, and it is not clear
whether surprise inspections required
by State Department procedures were
ever carried out.
"What we relied on too much was the,
fact that we had a small unit of people
with esprit de corps, and if an individ-
ual went astray in the group we
thought we had a means of finding
out," Arthur A. Hartman, the former
Ambassador to Moscow, recently told a
Congressional subcommittee. "Weil
were wrong."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201820009-3