THE YEAR OF THE SPY--AGAIN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302350001-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: April 19, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302350001-1
WASHINGTON POST
19 April 1987
I Philip Geyelin
The Year of the Spy ---Again
A headline in the New York Times hollers:
"U.S. OFFICIALS FIND IMMENSE DAM-
AGE IN ESPIONAGE CASES." In his regular
Saturday radio address, President Reagan
sounds a stern warning: "The free world is
today confronted with some of the most so-
phisticated, best-orchestrated efforts of theft
and espionage in modern history." A headline
in The Post heralds: "THE YEAR OF THE
SPY."
The year was 1985.
So what else is new? Not much, alas. A
mere 14 months after Ronald Reagan was
telling us that the unmasking of the Walkers,
the Pollards, Edward Howard and all the rest
"should alert us to the danger we face" and
saying "how necessary it is to maintain top-
quality counterintelligence efforts," we con-
front yet another security breakdown in the
same old, nearly hysterical way.
No more business as usual with the Soviets,
we are advised; George Shultz cannot go to
Moscow, we were told; the Russians have
broken the rules; the damage is irreparable;
the heads of the responsible American officials
must roll.
Rep. Daniel Mica (D-Fla.), chairman of the
House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on in-
ternational operations, had barely arrived in
Moscow on an inspection tour to assess the
damage at the U.S. Embassy before pronounc-
ing judgment: "A security, diplomatic and
intelligence disaster of the first magnitude."
He and the senior Republican on the subcom-
mittee, Rep. Olympia Snowe of Maine, in-
stantly demanded an "accountability review
board" to affix blame.
That's fair enough. The president has al-
ready set in motion a three-pronged investiga-
tion into what went wrong. The guilty should
be punished, and obviously every effort should
be made to tighten up security. But a little
perspective is in order, all the same, if we are
not going to delude ourselves into believing
that there was something essentially new
about the current espionage flap?something
that can be identifiedond dealt with in a neat
and airtight way.
That is precisely what the congressional
scape-goating and the second-guessing of the
administration would have us believe. The
same may be said for the administration's
efforts to slip the congressional punches by
lambasting the Soviets for going "beyond the
bounds of reason" (Reagan) or "the limits of
unacceptable activities" (Shultz).
But history is not helpful if you are trying to
put your finger on what's "reasonable" or
"acceptable" in what is by definition a dirty,
dangerous game. The technology gets ever
more exotic. But the basics remain remark-
ably the same.
The interaction of the world's second-oldest
profession with the first did not even originate
with Mata Hari. Not even the seduction of
Marine guards to allow KGB agents into
secret recesses of the Moscow embassy is
without precedent: that same number was
done on Marine guards in our Warsaw embas-
sy 38 years ago.
Secretary Shultz complains that "they
broke into our embassy?they invaded our
sovereign territory, and we are damned upset
about it?! Well, it is upsetting, and the conse-
quences could be severe. But planting bugs in
embassies surely requires some sort of inva-
sion, and that practice?by both sides?is
nothing new (though bugging in the course of
construction is a new twist).
In 1960, our United Nations representative,
Henry Cabot Lodge, went before the U.N.
Security Council to show the whole world how
the KGB had wired the Great Seal of the
United States that hangs hi the office of our.
ambassador in Moscow. In April 1984, Rich-
ard Nixon reminisced on "60 Minutes": "Both
in this country and in the Soviet Union,:ye
attempt to bug each other's embassies. As a
matter of fact, there is also evidence to the
effect that Brezhnev's car was bugged." ? .
None of this is to excuse treasonable ado,
whether we are talking about U.S. Marines or
the spies of 1985. Nor does it relieve security
officers, ambassadors or State Department
officials of responsibility for breaches of sew,
rity. There are things that plainly need fixing:
U.S. control over the assembly of the new
embassy building was hopelessly inadequate.
A case can be made for . fewer Soviet
employees, better-trained, professional sea-
rity guards and a higher level of alert" all
around.
But the record of KGB bugging, and- of
entrapment of Americans in Moscow--jar-
nalista, as well as officials, both civilian ad
military?since World War 11 suggests Olt
"outraged" protests and threats of no mare
business as usual' are empty bombast. The '
relentlessly inventive practice of espial*
and counterespionage is business as aid
between us and the Soviets.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302350001-1