SPY HYSTERIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403570002-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: April 17, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT ~ S.
fr Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : C IA- RID P90-00965 R000403570002-4
.7 Charles Krauthammer
Spy Hysteria
Remember the Soviet brigade in
Cuba? In the summer of 1979, Presi-
dent Carter submitted the SALT II
treaty to the Senate for ratification.
At which point Sen. Frank Church,
chairman of the Foreign Relations
Committee, discovered a Soviet bri-
gade in Cuba. To meet the "crisis,"
Salt II hearings were postponed. The.
president was put on the defensive,
the atmosphere was poisoned, the
treaty was delayed and then sunk by
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Then it turned out that the brigade
had been there for 16 years. It was
the nonissue of the decade. But it did
its damage.
Every decade has its bogus Cuban
brigade. Now we have ours: the em-
bassy spy hysteria.
The greatest deliberative body in the
world is again in an arms control mood,
pushing for treaties-test ban, SDI,
even a revived SALT II-from a weak-
ened president. So, a weakened presi-
dent, desperate to shore himself up
politically and within sight of a Eurom-
issile treaty, prepares to dispatch his
secretary of state to Moscow for cru-
cial arms control talks. And what hap-
pens? The Senate discovers that the
Soviets have been spying on our em-
bassy in Moscow and that our new
embassy there is riddled with bugs.
Shocked, it passes a resolution urging
George Shultz to cancel his talks with
the Soviets if they don't agree to a
last-minute change of venue, something
they plainly would not agree to.
The Soviets called the American re-
action to the embassy story "spy hyste-
na." The Kremlin is not often right. This
case is an exception. Hysteria it is.
There is absolutely nothing new here.
The Soviets have been building their
hill-top, spy-nest Washington embassy
for 10 years. Anyone who drives by can
see the forest of antennas atop the
buildings from which the Soviets can
listen in on any conversation they
please. And we have long known that
our new Moscow embassy was bugged
right down to the concrete foundation.
Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan, for one, has
been complaining about the embassy
problems for years. Every administra-
tion since Nixon has ignored it. What
happens? A couple of U.S. Marine .
17 April 1987
guards in Moscow are alleged to have
betrayed their country and let in the
Soviets in exchange for the favors of a
KGB Mata Hari, and Washington goes
bonkers.
"Whereas the Soviet Union has to-
tally compromised the security of our
embassy in Moscow ..." intoned the
Senate, 70-30. Not exactly. The Ma-
rines did the compromising. The Sovi-
ets merely walked through an open
door. For that they are vilified.
"Sordid tricks," an "affront," an "as-
sault on U.S. embassy security," com-
plained The Wall Street Journal. A
"rape of our national privacy," gasped
William Satire. This country is
"damned upset," claimed Secretary
,Shultz. The Soviets have trespassed
"beyond the bounds of reason,"
agreed the president of the United
States. And my favorite: Evans and
Novak bravely called for "a full-scale
exposure of Soviet [spy] practices
whatever the impact on arms con-
trol." Since they generally view arms
control as an infection in need of a
vaccine, they win the 1987 Br'er
Rabbit ("Please please please don't
fling me in dat briar patch") Award.
"The Soviets," complained Law-
rence Eagleburger, "just go too far."
Really? The FBI tried to tunnel into
the basement of the Soviet consulate
in San Francisco in the early '70s. I
wish they had made it. If FBI counter-
intelligence is not trying to seduce,
blackmail and "turn" Soviet agents in
this country, it should have its appro-
priations rescinded. Espionage does
not play by Miss Manners. No wonder
the Soviets, who operate generally by
conspiracy, believe that American na-
ivete must be feigned and there are
darker reasons for the spy hysteria.
Even the shocked acknowledge,
rather illogically, that the story is old.
A decade old, admit Evans and Novak.
The Wall Street journal, allowing its
indignation to be contradicted by its
pride, boasted that it had run the
bugged embassy story last October.
Yet Washington has reacted as if the
Soviets had, say, taken over a small
Central American country. (Bad exam-
ple: Washington is fairly calm about
that prospect. Say, as if the Soviets had
cheated at Olympic hockey.) The Sen-
ate, ~n.&ed by a bevy of columnists,
ur,,,.s Shultz not to go to Moscow for
arms control talks. Why? Because the
embassy is not secure? But it has never
been secure. To register a protest
against Soviet "penetration" of our em-
bassy (an unfortunate metaphor, given
the circumstances)? But in fact we are
just protesting their success at a game
'both of us play. I've even heard it said
that our plans at Reykjavik were com-
promised. But until last week, at least,
the conventional wisdom in Washington
was that Reykjavik was a wreck pre-
cisely because we had no plans there.
To his credit, Shultz went to Mos-
cow and made considerable progress.
The hysteria will now shortly blow
itself out. What will remain are ques-
tions not about American security but
about American seriousness. If Con-
gress pretends to making high nation-
al policy on such things as arms con-
trol, it had better stop these absurd
about-faces. Just when negotiations
are heating up, to suggest boycotting
talks over an issue that would be
utterly peripheral if it were not phony
is a demonstration of high unserious-
-ness. Good thing the Cuban brigade
syndrome strikes only once a decade.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0403570002-4