SPY WATCHERS OUTMANNED BY COMMUNIST OPERATIVES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302410012-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 15, 2012
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: August 4, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/15: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302410012-2
WASHINGTON POST
4 August 1985
Spy catchers Outmanned
By Communist Operatives.
FBI Tracks About 1,300 Agents
By John Mintz
MaoMuyto" Pod Staff wrtur
FBI agents who keep track of
about 1,300 intelligence operatives
from Communist countries in the
United States are overworked and
sometimes overwhelmed in their
efforts to prevent espionage, ac=
cording to intelligence experts and
members of Congress specializing
in intelligence.
Times have changed since the
1950s. when there were only a few
hundred Soviet bloc personnel in
the United States, and the FBI had
approximately as many counterin-
telligence agents on the street as
there were known agents of the
KGB, the Soviet intelligence agen-
cy. Nowadays, according to a
spokesman for the Senate intelli-
gence committee, the ratio of our
agents to the number of people they
have to watch is "unquestionably
unfavorable" for the United States.
"From the [Senate intelligence]
committee's point of view, there's
no question we've not recovered
sufficiently from the time a few
years ago when we cut back on our
intelligence efforts, at the same
time the Soviets were increasing
their numbers here; a committee
staff member said. ,
Even a one-to-one ratio, designed
to ensure ability to follow each hos-
tile agent, "doesn't begin to answer
the problem," said Rep. Lee Ham-
ilton (D-Ind.), the House intelli-
gence committee's chairman. "The
problem is monumental .... We
have some catching up to do."
For their part, FBI officials say
they are handling the workload.
"We can use more people and
resources, but we're certainly not
overwhelmed," said Edward ).
O'Malley, chief of the FBI's intel-
ligence division. "We're not daunted
by it"
The exact numbers of FBI c01111-
agents is classified,
and O'Malley UK week described
as "grossly understated" published
reports that there are only 300 to
400 such agents. The FBI has sub-
stantially beefed up its budget for
counterintelligence agents in the
past five years.
The Walker spy case, in which
retired Navy warrant officer John
A. Walker Jr. and three associates.
are charged with espionage, has
prompted a new round of concern
on Capitol Hill, where the Senate
and House Intelligence Committees
have been holding doseddoor bear-
ings for several weeks on the Unit-
ed States' spy-catching effort.
"The Walker case illustrates the
FBI's dri5cultes," said Sen. Patrick
Leahy (D-Vt.), the Senate Intelli-
gence Committee's vice chairman.
"The number of Soviet and East
European officials in this country is
simply too great for the FBI to
monitor their activities adequately."
An VIl~ilg10f011i Job
Foreign counterintelligence, or
1.6.," which seeks to locate spies
and neutralise or manipulate them,
and sometimes arrest them. is a
complex and mistrustful line of
work, replete with false defectors,
double agents and other trickery.
But it is far from the glamorous
portrait of spies and counterspies
painted by many movies and novels,
"The business of counterespio-
nage is a Dantean hell with 99 cir-
cles, and the men who dare its enig-
mas without exception have thick
glasses, a midnight pallor, stomach
ulcers, a love of fly fishing, and fret-
ful wives." wrote journalist Thomas
Powers in a book about the CIA.
Most of the work of FBI counter.
intelligence agents is quite hum-
drum,, involving almost 24-hour-a-
day monitoring of agents of the
KGB and intelligence agencies of
other Communist countries. Using
high-technology gear, FBI agents
tap their telephones, listen in to
their offices and cars, intercept
their coded messages, photograph
visitors to their embassies, and
"tail" the intelligence officers in
cars wherever the agents go.
"The basic idea of counterintel-
ligence is to make it riskier and
more time-consuming for the other
service to operate," said one retired
ranking FBI counterintelligence
official. "You get awfully good at
crossword puzzles, and eating in
your car."
There are the constant decisions
whether to assign agents to watch,
for example, the Polish diplomatic
couple driving across country for
vacation or the suspicious Soviet
scholar at the trade conference,
they said.
"One continuing fact of counter.
intelligence is you're almost always
behind," one said. "You're always in
a sense pushing to narrow that
gap."
Starting with the era of peaceful
coexistence in the 1960s, the num-
bers of Communist nations' officials
in this country-including embassy
and consular employes, United Na-
tions representatives, trade officers
and journalists-has shot up. It has
doubled to almost 4,000 in the past
decade, the FBI's O'Malley said.'
He, and other intelligence experts,
estimate that one-third of them are
trained intelligence agents.
Most FBI surveillance cars have
at least two agents each. More sen-
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/15: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302410012-2