BUREAUCRATS RESIST EFFORTS TO FIGHT BACK AGAINST SPIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302310016-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: May 4, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000302310016-9 STAT
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE
T
Bureaucrats
resist efforts
to fight back
against spies
By Bill Gertz
THE NMSHINGTON TIMES
When a Romanian intelligence of-
ficer defected to the United States in
1978, U.S. officials said he made a
startling disclosure: The wife of an
American ambassador posted to an
Eastern bloc capital had been se-
duced by an undercover operative
posing as the ambassador's chauf-
feur.
According to the State Depart-
ment, an investigation revealed the
tryst had not compromised U.S. se-
crets. But to protect the ambassador,
the department withheld all details
of the affair from senior Reagan ad-
ministration officials.
The Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, which confirmed the
mbassador for posts in 1981 and
98# also was not informed.
"The files were sealed to prevent
viofi~tting privacy laws," a State De-
artment official said last week in
confirming the affair. "People in this
Administration didn't even know
about it."
During a 1985 confirmation hear-
ing, the ambassador was asked a
standard question about whether
#nything in his past might embar-
tass the United States, and he told
the panel "no," according to congres-
iional sources.
State Department handling of the
incident has been cited by adminis-
tration security officials as an exam-
le of the "systemic" bureaucratic
apposition to counterespionage and
security efforts stretching back for
decades.
In the past, such "hardball tac-
tics.. by Soviet intelligence services
were used to blackmail diplomats,
military officials and journalists.
But State Department colleagues
vvho defended the current ambassa-
fior to Chile, Harry G. Barnes Jr.,
regard his wife's indiscretion while
he was ambassador to Romania as
pothing more than "a personal trag-
edy" and not a security vulnerabil-
ity, according to U.S. officials.
WASHINGTON TIMES
4 May 1987
Bureaucratic resistance extends
beyond individuals or agencies and
Is So strong that prospects for cor-
ecting the problem in government
(remain dim despite the current pub-
lic outcry over the Marine security
uard sex-and-espionage scandal
hat began unfolding in Moscow late
last year, according to several ad-
;ministration security officials.
"The main problem is that, in gov-
trnment, there is a basic aversion to
fiounterintelligence;' said one offi-
cial. "It's the least popular yet the
most difficult aspect of intelligence
because you're dealing with the dark
side of human nature - betrayal,
revenge and lust."
During the past six years of the
Reagan administration, which
vowed in 1980 to rebuild U.S.
counterintelligence capabilities, the
State Department and its Foreign
Service successfully resisted White
House attempts to initiate counter-
espionage reforms, according to of-
ficials involved in the debate.
Another intelligence official said
the recent security breakdowns and
loss of national secrets in Moscow
represent "the tip of the iceberg" in
a governmentwide problem stem-
ming from a weak counterintelli-
gence capability and failure to im-
prove it.
"This subject has been studied to
death;' the,official said. "Yet realis-
tic appraisals of [U.S. government]
security vulnerabilities have been
largely ignored."
The President's ^ oreinn Intelli-
gence Advtso oarda group of
e s from outside the adminis-
tration, made more than 100 recom-
mendations for improving counter-
intelligence in a 1985 report, the
official said.
These included banning foreign
nationals from working at U.S. em-
bassies in the Soviet bloc, reducing
the thousands of hostile spies oper-
ating in the United States, develop-
ing countermeasures against elec-
tronic espionage targeted at U.S.
agencies and individuals, and pre-
venting the loss of U.S. technological
data, the official said.
Robert Lamb, the State De-
partment's diplomatic security
chief, said in a recent interview that
past Foreign Service resistance to
counterintelligence policies re-
flected a general distate for secrecy
and a suspicion about spying shared
by American society as a whole.
"We live in a very open society, we
trust our neighbors and it is very
difficult to transplant a person with
this very typically American atti-
tude into a place that is as very di-
rectly and systematically hostile,
from an intelligence point of view, as
the Soviet Union;' Mr. Lamb said.
As a result of the Moscow em-
bassy failures, the department has
begun a review of its security pro-
gram "from top to bottom;' he said.
Security lapses at U.S. embassies
have led to numerous sexual entrap-
ment operations in communist coun-
tries and widespread electronic
eavesdropping on embassy facili-
ties, officials said.
Two Marine guards once posted in
Moscow were charged earlier this
year with allowing Soviet agents in-
side the most sensitive areas of the
U.S. Embassy. The Marines appar-
ently were seduced by female Soviet
agents employed by the embassy.
esides being
U. diplomatic outpost, the Moscow
em ss serves as one of the most
important US. intelligence collec-
ion facilities in the world, officials
said,
Administration security officials,
who agreed to discuss the issue on
condition of anonymity, placed most
blame on the White House for its
failure to overcome bureaucratic op-
position to strong counterespionage
policies.
President Reagan, the officials
said, delegated authority freely to
Cabinet subordinates and fre-
quently deferred to Secretary of
State George Shultz on the issue of
embassy security.
It was Mr. Shultz, according to the
officials, who set the tone for State
Department anti-security attitudes
in 1985 by threatening to resign in
protest against a National Security
Council counterintelligence plan to
require departmentwide lie-detec-
tor tests.
Last week, Ronald I. Spiers, un-
dersecretary of state for manage-
ment, defended Mr. Shultz in
testimony before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee. He said Mr.
Shultz has backed security reforms
over the past several years.
As part of a counterterrorist secu-
rity program set up in 1984, the State
Department opened the Bureau of
Diplomatic Security, expanded its
recruitment of security officiers
and collaborated with U.S. intelli-
gence agencies to counter electronic
espionage, Mr. Spiers said.
He said the State Department
"took steps to change the Foreign
Service culture to increase the secu-
l~?ntt,"1 t
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000302310016-9
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000302310016-9
2.
rity sensitivity of our colleagues,
many of whom felt security contra-
dicted the traditional mission of the
State Department, mainly to get out
and make contacts and penetrate
other cultures and societies."
But an administration intelli-
gence official said Mr. Shultz op-
posed the 1983 counterintelligence
operation that flushed out Soviet
electronic "bugs" planted inside
typewriters at the U.S. Embassy in
Moscow
"Sweepers" from the National Se-
cure Agency, the supersecret intel-
ligence agency responsible f
countering electronic sn in were
dispatched to Moscow to ferret out
e suspected- pewriter bugs, the
official said.
The NSA agents discovered tiny
transmitters hidden inside IBM
typewriters, including one in the
embassy suite of then-Ambassador
to Moscow Arthur Hartman, that
were able to read the most sensitive,
typewritten diplomatic messages.
Mr. Shultz reacted to the opera-
tion by complaining to the White
House that the search "was like al-
lowing foxes inside the henhouse,"
the official said.
White House intelligence off'
then confronted Mr. Shultz, s~yine.
"Wait a minute, isn't the KGB the fox
and we're all the chickens?" the offi-
ce said.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000302310016-9