IT'S NO HOLDS BARRED IN THE WORLD OF SPIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605470002-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 1, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: April 12, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/01 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605470002-1
BOSTON GLOBE
12 April 1987.
It's no holds
barred in the
world of spies
Diplomatic etiquette stops
at the doors of both embassies
y-Jeffrey-R-i-cheson?_
Special to the Globe
Collecting intelligence about foreign
countries is often a no-holds-barred
enterprise - particularly with regard
to potential enemies. Diplomatic pro-
tocol may stipulate that diplomatic
communications be confidential, that diplomatic
pouches be inviolate and that an embassy be a
refuge for a nation's diplomats. Intelligence agen-
cies, however. do not adhere to diplomatic proto-
col.
The basic truth is that both superpowers ex-
ploit their embassies for intelligence collection
and try to penetrate each other's embassies.
Take the Soviet embassy in Washington,
which serves as the headquarters for the chiefs of
the KGB and GRU networks in the United States
- and for their agents, who account for more
than one-third of all the Soviet personnel there.
The embassy is also used to conduct a large-scale
communications interception operation, with a
high-frequency rooftop antenna pointed toward
the Pentagon and State Department. Another an-
tenna is focused on a CIA. communications facili-
ty in Virginia, while other antennae are capable
.of monitoring telephone conversations, police
and FBI communications and government car
phones.
Interception activity from the embassy is not
directed- exclusively at military, law-enforcement
and foreign-policy institutions. Intercepts of De-
partment of Commerce, Agriculture and Trea-
sury conversations can also be of great value. In
the early 1970s, the Soviets monitored all tele-
phone calls to the Department of Agriculture so
as to be well-informed about the state of the US
grain market. They used this information to ne-
gotiate a 1974 grain deal that is referred to by
American farmers as the "great grain robbery."
New Soviet embasay.ln Washington
Soviet embassy interception capabilities will
improve when they occupy their new embassy -
an event that may be delayed, given President
Reagan's declaration that the Soviets would not
be allowed to move in until the United States was
able to move in to a new and bug-free embassy in
Moscow. The new Soviet facility is located on
Mount Alto, at an elevation of 300 feet. At that
height. Soviet interception antennae will have a
virtually unimpeded "electronic view" of the na-
tion's capital.
Similarly, the US embassy in Moscow serves
as the center for US espionage operations in the
Soviet Union. The CIA chief of station and his
intelligence officers operate under the cover of the
Foreign Service. It is these individuals who have
handled the important sources recruited by the
CIA within the Soviet government.
Among those sources were GRU Col. Oleg
Penkovsky - who passed on thousands of
pages of documents detailing Soviet mili-
tary and economic capabilities
- and Adolf G. Tolkachev, an electron-
ics specialist at a military-aviation insti-
tute in Moscow. who saved the United
States billions of dollars in development
costs by informing the US government
about the nature of Soviet military avi-
ation efforts.
The United States also uses its Mos-
cow embassy for communications inter-
ception purposes. Targets of the oper-
ation include Soviet government commu-
nications, including those of the military
and KGB. It is known that In the late
1960s and early 1970s, an embassy an-
tenna was employed to intercept the car
radio-telephone conversations of Soviet
Politburo members - including General
Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, President Ni-
kolai Podgorny and Premier Alexei Kosy-
gin - as they drove around Moscow. The
"take" from the operation did not Include
information of the invasion of Czechoslo-
vakia or other military and political se:
crets. According to a CIA official involved
in the operation, known as GAMMA GUP-
PY, the data were "very gossipy - Brezh-
nev's health and maybe Podgorny's sex
life."
The US and Soviet use of their embas-
sies for Intelligence purposes is one factor
in making them intelligence targets. One
purpose of suborning the Marine guards
at the US embassy in Moscow was to gain
access to areas that might yield informa-
tion on the identitites of CIA officers un-
dercover. their Soviet contacts, US knowl-
edge of Soviet intelligence and security ca-
pabilities and the target of both human
and electronic intelligence operations. Ad-
ditionally, the penetration of the embassy
can yield diplomatic secrets on negotiat-
ing positions for arms-control talks, the
Interpretation placed on Soviet actions by
US officials in Washington and Moscow
and presidential instructions on how to
deal with the Soviets on a variety of im-
portant Issues.
It should not be surprising, then, that
the KGB would go to great lengths to gain
access to the embassy - by suborning Ma-
rine guards, bugging rooms. taping phone
lines, inserting KGB agents among the
Soviet employees there and bugging the
portions of the new US embassy that the
Soviets were permitted to, build
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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/01 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605470002-1
selves. Such activities were first noticed
in 1952, when an eavesdropping device
was discovered inside a US seal on the
wall of the ambassador's office. Between
that time and 1960, the United States,
found over 40 such devices in the embas-
sy. In 1978. bugs were found in an embas-
sy chimney as well as embassy typewrit-
ers.
Nor should it be surprising that the
United States also conducts such oper-
ations. The same type of intelligence that
leads the Soviets to seek to penetrate the
US embassy in Moscow is available to the
United States if it wishes to penetrate the
Soviet embassy in Washington. In 1979,
the United States tried to implant eaves-
dropping devices in apartment buildings
at the new Soviet complex under con-
struction in Washington. The FBI moni-
tors people coming and going from the So-
viet embassy and routinely taps its phone
lines. A conversation recorded several
years prior to his trial was employed by
the prosecution in their case against for-
mer National Security Agency employee
Ronald Pelton, who was eventually con-
victed of selling sensitive information on
US communications intelligence activi-
ties to the Soviets.
Spying a worldwide practice
Attempts to penetrate each other's em-
bassies are not restricted to Washington
and Moscow, but a worldwide practice.
Harry Rositzke. a former CIA operative.
has noted that "a one- or two-year pene-
tration of a Soviet embassy can provide
classified information going far beyond
the parochial concerns of the embassy it-
self: broad policy reports from the Soviet
foreign office; party correspondence from
the Central Committee; new directives
from KGB or GRU headquarters."
Another former CIA officer, bavid
Phillips, defined what would constitute
complete penetration of a Soviet embassy:
"at least one spy within...; the ability to
read the mail to and from the embassy;
being able to listen to telephone calls: at
least one microphone broadcasting se-
crets from within; the capability of ob-
taining photographs of everyone working
.in the e>;ilbassy and nearly everyone who
visited: and access to its trash."
The Soviet embassy in Mexico City is a
particularly high-priority target. In the
1960s, the CIA established two observa-
tion posts In front of the embassy to cover
the entrances, while a third post was
placed opposite the back of the embassy
to provide coverage of its gardens. All the
observation posts were used for taking
photos of personnel and visitors as well
as the license plates of visiting cars:' At
one point, films were made of Soviet dM '
cials talking 'in the garden ares, but hp=
readers were unable to decipher the conms
ttrsations.
Other opet-at1Wns, involved the, fiiof'i::
taring of Soviet telephones and the run-
ning of agents against Soviet personnel.
The targeted personnel included the Sovi-
et press attache, a TASS correspondent
and the embassy's administrative officer.
During a visit to a nearby grocery store
(whose owner was on the CIA payroll), the
administrative officer was introduced to a
Mexican girl recruited by the CIA. An af-
fair followed, as planned, with the CIA re-
cording and photographing the events.
It is important to keep the events in
Moscow in perspective. The Soviet ac-.
tions should not be taken as some espe-
cially hostile act perpetrated against In-
nocents. Those actions are part of the es-
pionage game played by both sides.
Hence, the president was quite correct in
not letting those actions interfere with
arms-control negotiations.
It is also important not to exaggerate
the degree of damage. The functioning of
the embassy will certainly be disrupted,
as will US intelligence operations in Mos-
cow. But whatever diplomatic secrets the.
Kremlin may have gained are unlikely to
be exploitable in such a way as to serious-
ly damage the United States - simply be-
cause the course of US-Soviet relations is
essentially determined by each nation's
leaders' perceptions of their national in-
terest and the existence of strategic par-
ity, rather than by gleaning inside infor-
mation
Arid- while .the Moscow-based inteili:
gence operation may suffer, that is only
one means of gathering intelligence about
the Soviet, Union. Of greater iihportance
are the satellites. atrcraft,listening posts
and other technleai means Of intelligence.
collection thatI operate outside Soviet ter-
ritory..
Toils: the events of the last several
weeks' are likely, to be more important as
the a talyst .for a much-needed irripr6ve-
ment, III .security procedures. rather than
as . vent. that significantly -alter history
to'.the detriment of the United States,
Jeffrey Richelson, an assistant professor of
government at American University, is author
of "American Espionage and the Soviet Tar-
get. "
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/01 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605470002-1