SECURITY--IN THE BREACH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000301890010-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 25, 2012
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: April 8, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

I I
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301890010-3
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WASHINGTON POST
8 April 1987
a- Rowland Evans and Robert Novak 7"
Security in the Breach
No high-level diplomat from Secretary of
State George Shultz on down has yet noted
that the seduction of Marine guards in Mos-
cow is an almost exact replay of what hap-
pened in the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw in
1959, with both seductions compromising
U.S. national security.
? That suggests the crazy diplomatic sloppiness
over security that endangered our country 28
years ago was forgotten almost as soon as it
happened. At issue here is not the Marines so
much as the oversight they need but did not get
from diplomatic security officers.
Beyond that, the insistence of every secre-
tary of state since the Nixon administration in
clinging to the nightmarish deal on new em-
bassies for the United States and the Soviet
Union has finally ignited into the roaring
Soviet scandal carefully kept under cover all
these years.
The embassy deal imperils U.S. state se-
crets here because the new Soviet Embassy
sits on a. hilltop, ideal position for electronic
the White House, CIA and
other government ? Ices. It also exposes U.S.
secrets in Moscow because the new embassy
was constructed under Soviet, not U.S., su-
pervision. The woodwork reeks with sensors
and" electronic bugs.
But unlike the new Soviet Embassy here, ours
in Moscow endangers no Kremlin secrets. It sits
in aMoscowthe worst of all
locomu87,7 WI I WI ".
years on 77.1 , this unequal
treaty on the home away from home has sud-
denly erupted into headlines, as it should have
more than a decade ago. The exchange gave the
Soviets the doughnut, the United States the
hole. So brazen have Soviet operations become
in our new embassy that FBI Director William
Webster privately informed the White House
months ago that the United State probably
should never take possession.
The result is a diplomatic watershed for
George Shultz. Although totally innocent in the
doughnut-for-hole embassy deal arranged 15
years ago, he knows the present U.S. Embassy
is now so penetrated by electronic devices,
partly thanks to lack of supervision over the
Marine guards, that he cannot talk openly there.
His words would flow straight to the KGB.
One top-rank former diplomat says privately
that Shultz should insist that his mid-April anus
control talks be held outside the Soviet Union.
Whatever importance the secretary attaches to
his new round of arms control talks, notifying his
hosts that the United States will not tolerate
such uncivilized behavior should have a higher
diplomatic priority today.
The great Marine seduction of 1959 was
revealed to the United States by an tinder-
ground ime4_EPorisli officer v/ho defected
to the rears ter, a report
to the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee
from the State Department's Bureau of Security
had haieth
Em-
busy _ whirl was brought to light in 1959. It
was first revealed to the Department by the n
defector IMichalleniewsld. A number of
US. employees, ro-Wlarine guards,
wire"imolicated."
In his book "The Ordeal of Otto Otepka"?
about the then controversial State Department
security officer ?William J. Gill wrote in words
that could be lifted from today's newspapers:
"The Marine guards ... had simply proved easy
prey for the girls, all prostitutes on the secret
police payroll, who made the embassy their
headquarters, coining and going virtually at wit
The defector reported, that the girls had turned _
over valuable embassy documents to their Com-
munist masters."
But criminal prosecutions never resulted.
The State Department simply reported to
Congress in April 1964, in an unsigned memo-
randum, that the Marines "were disciplined
and returned to the United States."
As for embassy officials, the memorandum said
that only in a "single case ... was there reason to
believe that an officer of the Embassy staff may
have been implicated in espionage. The individual
was discharged.... [T]here was insufficient legal
evidence to support criminal proceedings against
the suspected individual." In addition, it said "the
behavior of some [other] employees was suffi-
ciently questionable to warrant letters of repri-
mand which will seriously impair their future in
the U.S. Government"
Maybe so. But the department's reprimands
were not sufficient to "seriously impair" the
repeat performance that has put George Shultz.
so woefully on the defensive. Needed now is no
mere reprimand, but a full-scale exposure of
Soviet practices, whatever the impact on aims
control, followed by an investigation and a
crackdown that would echo far into the future.
01987, North America *Wks* lac.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/25 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000301890010-3