CRAWLING WITH BUGS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706970003-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 13, 2011
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: April 20, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706970003-3
ARTICLE
ON PAGE
~1 4'
TIME
20 April 1987
Crawling with Bugs
The embassy spy scandal widens, affecting Marines and diplomats
/_71\ Where would it end? The
e s
l th
i
d
M
n
ar
py scan
a
at
had started with a lonely
U.S. embassy guard con-
fessing he had succumbed
to the charms of a beautiful
Soviet receptionist in Mos-
cow had escalated into what appeared to
be one of the most serious sex-for-secrets
exchanges in U.S. history. Not only had
the Marine's partner been charged with
helping him let Soviet agents prowl the
embassy's most sensitive areas but last
week a third Marine sentinel was accused
of similar offenses. A fourth Marine, sta-
tioned at the Brasilia embassy, was taken
to Quantico, Va., for grilling about espio-
nage. Several others were recalled from
Vienna. More accusations of spying were
expected to be filed this week in the still
unfolding saga.
The latest jailing, of Sergeant John
Weirick, 26, spread the contamination to
the U.S. consulate in Leningrad, where
Weirick, too, allegedly permitted KGB
agents to enter at the urging of a Soviet
woman. That prompted the State Depart-
ment to cut off all electronic communica-
tions with the consulate and order the re-
call of the six-man Marine contingent in
Leningrad, as it had earlier recalled the 28-
man detail at the Moscow embassy. Omi-
nously, Weirick's alleged collaboration
with the KGB occurred in 1982, four years
earlier than the Moscow treachery, indi-
cating a long-standing security breach.
Weirick, who was arrested at the Ma-
rine Corps Air Station in Tustin, Calif., lat-
er served at the U.S. embassy in Rome,
where other members of the Marine guard
must now be questioned. As more than 70
gumshoes from the Naval Investigative
Service set about the numbing task of lo-
cating, grilling and polygraphing every
one of the more than 200 Marines who
have served at the Moscow and East Euro-
pean embassies in the past decade, they
discovered that all but a few of the first 50
they quizzed flunked questions about frat-
ernizing with local women.
The proud U.S. Marine Corps, whose
often heroic Leathernecks had long boast-
ed of being nothing short of the best, was
confounded. "We've now got to operate
on the thesis that this is possibly an en-
demic problem in the Marines," said a se-
nior officer at the Corps's Washington
headquarters. Declared another officer:
"I'm stupefied, flabbergasted. We just
never thought something like this could
happen." So battered was the Corps that
Marine Major General Carl Mundy re-
sorted to an otherworldly defense when
grilled by a House committee. He para-
phrased the optimistic-and now iron-
ic-Marine hymn: -If you look on heav-
en's scenes, you'll find the streets are
guarded by United States Marines."
As members of Congress expressed
bipartisan outrage. President Reagan or-
dered Secretary of State George Shultz to
protest the Soviet penetration of the U.S.
embassy directly to Foreign Minister
Eduard Shevardnadze when the two be-
gin talks this week on a treaty to eliminate
intermediate-range missiles in Europe.
The President also set in motion half a
dozen seemingly redundant investigations
into embassy security.
But Reagan and Shultz would not ac-
cede to a Senate resolution calling for the
Secretary to postpone his Moscow trip un-
til security problems were resolved. Shultz
conceded that the espionage throws a
"heavy shadow" over U.S.-Soviet rela-
tions. But Reagan declared, "I just don't
think it's good for us to be run out of
town." The Administration's priority, he
told the Los Angeles World Affairs Coun-
cil, is the "pursuit of verifiable and stabi-
lizing arms reduction." The President
even repeated his invitation to Soviet
Leader Mikhail Gorbachev to come to the
U.S. for a summit: "The welcome mat is
still out."
Nevertheless Shultz, who last week
accepted ultimate chain-of-command re-
sponsibility for the embassy problems,
was in the difficult position of flying into
Moscow accompanied by a special com-
munications van to help replace the com-
promised facilities at the U.S. embassy.
Even the "Winnebago," as it became
known, may not protect him. When
checking the supposedly secure trailer in
Washington for emissions at frequencies
believed used by the sophisticated Soviet
bugs planted in the U.S. embassy, techni-
cians found, according to one, that the
Winnebago "radiated like a microwave."
Similar vans have long accompanied U.S.
Presidents abroad, raising the possibility
that their communications back to Wash-
ington may have been overheard.
The pervasive spy scandal was an em-
barrassment for an Administration that
has proclaimed its security consciousness
tests among federal employees to protect
secrets at home. Administration officials,
and the State Department in particular,
displayed a curiously casual attitude to-
ward the vulnerability of its embassies to
Communist snooping.
Washington was aware of the prob-
lem: White House sources say the issue
has been raised repeatedly in recent years.
Before the Geneva summit in November
1985, the senior White House staff re-
ceived a National Security Council brief-
ing on the Soviet Union's techniques for
electronic surveillance and, for what is a
prudish culture, its blatant use of sexual
entrapment. The President's Foreign In-
telligence Advisory Board has issued at
least three reports on the subject and per-
sonally briefed Reagan last spring on the
vulnerability of the Moscow embassy. But
all these initiatives died. White House
aides contend, amid bureaucratic slug-
gishness and even outright resistance on
the part of the State Department.
Indeed, the high-tech proliferation of
miniaturized, and in some cases virtually
undetectable, eavesdropping devices
seems to have promoted a defeatist we'll-
have-to-live-with-bugs attitude. "Our se-
curity people have always looked upon
our buildings as loaded with bugs," ex-
plained a former foreign service officer,
who dismissed sexual entrapment as just
another professional hazard. Such com-
placency may have contributed to what a
high State Department official described
as this "first-class mess."
It will take months to assess the pre-
cise damage inflicted by the spying, but a
senior White House official has already
declared, "These cases taken together are
likely as significant as the worst hits of the
past." They were at least as serious, he
claimed, as the Navy's Walker-family spy
ring, the sale of secrets by the National
Security Agency's Ronald Pelton and the
defection of former CIA Employee Ed-
ward Howard. The damage could extend
far beyond matters related to the Soviets.
The Moscow embassy is on the distribution
list for a wide range of foreign policy mate-
rial, including details of U.S. negotiating
positions in the Geneva arms talks, back-
ground on Nicaragua policy, Middle East
affairs and relations between the U.S. and
its allies. The CIA has its own communica
tions facilities in Moscow, and the agency is
assuming that these too were compromised.
As the scandal spread, U.S. diplomats
were rendered almost mute in their en-
claves in Eastern Europe, reduced to writ-
ing sensitive messages in longhand. Even
in non-Communist countries, the uncer-
tainty of who might be listening turned
U.S. envoys into near paranoids. On a trip
Continued
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in Southern Africa, Assistant Secretary of As Republicans took the lead in berat-
State Chester Crocker refused to send any ing the Administration for the security fi-
reports to Washington until he could do so asco. Indiana's Senator Richard Lugar re-
personally. "It's incredible the impact of leased a report compiled by the Senate
this on all of us," said a State Department Foreign Relations Committee last year
official. In an age of wondrous globe- while he was chairman. It charged the
spanning communications, the superpow- State Department with "poor management
er that pioneered the technology found its and coordination" in protecting embassies
creations turned against it. against Soviet penetration. Lugar called on
The treasonous acts attributed to the the White House to suspend the construc-
Marine guards were bad enough. But most tion of new embassies in Bulgaria. Czecho-
or Washington was also belat-
edly aroused by the long-
known and festering problem
of the new U.S. embassy com-
pound in Moscow, which was
nearing completion when work
was halted in 1985. Built from
prefabricated sections pro-
duced off the site-and out of
sight of any U.S. inspectors-
the chancery, not surprisingly,
was found riddled with embed-
ded snooping gear. Charged
Texas Republican Congress-
man Dick Armey: "It's nothing
but an eight-story microphone
plugged into the Politburo."
Reagan vowed last week
that the Soviets will not be
permitted to occupy their new
embassy on Mount Alto in Washington
until security can be assured for the U.S.
in its new Moscow quarters. He conceded
that the red-brick U.S. chancery, whose
walls are already water-stained because of
its unfinished roof, may be so bug-ridden
that it will have to be demolished. The en-
tire complex, which includes 114 occu-
pied residential units and recreational fa-
cilities, had been budgeted at $89 million.
The cost when it is finished, apart from
the electronic cleansing, is now projected
at $192 million.
Former Secretary of Defense James
Schleps' ys due to report in June on what
should be done with the porous white ele-
phant. Reagan has appointed a commis-
sion headed by Melvin Laird, another for-
mer Defense Secretary, to suggest ways out
of both the new embassy dilemma and the
penetration of the current chancery. The
high-powered panel will include former
CIA Director Richard Helmand former
Joint Chiefs Chairman John Ves-
sey. Four other groups, including the Lp
eign Intelligence B d, are investigating
aspects of the scandal. Former CIA Official
BobbbIumAnJast week offered a novel so-
u on for the bugged building: Americans
should "very carefully" construct three se-
cure floors on top of it.
On Capitol Hill, Republican Senators
Robert Dole and William Roth introduced
a tough package of anti-espionage mea-
sures that would require the President to
negotiate a new site for the U.S. embassy in
Moscow by Oct. 31. If the Soviets did not
provide such a site, including security guar-
antees, they would be required to vacate
their entire new Mount Alto compound in
Washington.
China until the embassy security investiga-
tions are completed.
Congressional anger was dramatized
by a showboating but nonetheless reveal-
ing jaunt to Moscow by Democratic Con-
gressman Dan Mica of Florida, chairman
of the House Subcommittee on Interna-
tional Operations, and its ranking Republi-
can. Maine's Olympia Snowe. Accompa-
nied by a TV crew and four aides, they
barged into the old embassy around mid-
night and approached the Marine guard in
his glass cubicle. "May I see some ID,
please?" the sentry asked politely. Fie ex-
amined passports, logged names, made a
phone call, then issued visitors' ID cards.
"Is this the place where Lonetree worked?"
Snowe asked an embassy official. She re-
ferred to Sergeant Clayton Lonetree, the
first Marine to be arrested. The official hes-
itated, then offered a shrewd answer. "Er,
in principle, yes."
After a two-hour tour of the build-
ing and two days of interviewing,
the legislators proclaimed the em-
bassy not only "grossly inadequate
for security purposes" but a "firetrap."
Back in the U.S., Mica was blunter. "It's an
absolute security disaster," he told TIME.
Ever since Lonetree was arrested, he said,
embassy personnel have been
communicating secret infor-
mation in writing, often on
children's erasable slates. Even
then they shield their messages
from suspected hidden cam-
eras. Any notes on paper are
promptly shredded.
The embassy's security
"bubble" and its massive vault
have been declared off limits to
U.S. officials for classified con-
versations since these areas
were broken into by Soviet
agents. Two new secure rooms
have been hastily erected for
Shultz's use, one of them de-
scribed by Mica as similar to a
"walk-in cooler, 8 ft. by 10 ft.,
each with a folding table and a
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dozen chairs." Surprisingly, blueprints for
these new rooms had been posted openly
on an embassy wall. Mica estimated the
cost of clearing bugs and replacing com-
promised gear at more than S25 million.
After talking to a third of the 28 Ma-
rine guards, whose replacements have been
held up by Soviet delays in issuing new vi-
sas, Snowe found them "depressed, humili-
ated, surprised, angry." Many, she said, re-
alize that there had been a "total
breakdown in discipline." Security was lax
and "everybody at the embassy knew it,"
charged Snowe. If true. part of the blame
had to fall on Arthur Hartman, the Am-
bassador who left the post in February.
While admitting some of their own
failures, the guards claimed they were be-
ing used as scapegoats for the lackadaisical
attitude toward security shown by diplo-
matic personnel. Snowe said the Marines
had reported finding 137 violations last
year, including open safes and classified
papers left exposed. Conceded a Washing-
ton source: "One unfortunate result of this
mess will be further alienation of the Ma-
rines and the State Department types."
Some guards insisted that the embassy
civilians were also guilty of fraternizing
with Soviets. The rules against fraterniza-
tion in Soviet bloc nations require all em-
bassy employees, from the Ambassador to
the Marine guards, to report any "contact"
with a national of the host country in an
"uncontrolled" situation. The rule break-
ing allegedly made it easy for Violetta
Seina, a former receptionist at the U.S.
Ambassador's residence, to seduce Lone-
tree into letting the KGB enter the embassy.
He claimed to have met her on a Moscow
subway, although she attended the annual
Marine ball at the embassy. Galina (her
last name was not revealed), the cheerful
Soviet cook at Marine House, had easy ac-
cess to Corporal Arnold Bracy, the guard
she allegedly befriended. Amid widespread
rules violations, so far only Staff Sergeant
Robert Stufliebeam, 24, has been charged
solely with fraternization.
Family members and associates of the
accused embassy guards insist that military
investigators have vastly exaggerated the
espionage charges. "They are convinced
they've got a major Russian spy on their
hands," said one kinsman. "What they've
got is a horny Marine." In Santa Ana.
Calif.. Lawyer Michael Sheldon, who had
earlier represented Weirick on a drunk-
driving charge. said the accused spy "cer-
tainly didn't seem to be a man of great
means. He paid his fees on the slow-fee
plan. Sometimes he missed a payment."
In New York City, Bracy s parents
claimed their son had reported improper
advances by the Soviet cook Galina. "He
turned that woman over to his superiors
three times, but nothing happened." said
Theodore Bracy. "They're throwing my
son to the dogs." Bracy's mother Frieda
agreed, claiming, "They're making him a
scapegoat."
William Kunstler. the radical New
York lawyer who has defended Native
American activists, has volunteered to rep-
resent Lonetree, whose mother is a Navajo
and father a Winnebago. Kunstler claims
Bracy was offered immunity in the Navy's
attempt to build its case against Lonetree
but that Bracy had refused to accept it.
Navy investigators concede that their cases
have been built largely with lie detectors
and must be strengthened. Kunstler goes
further: "The case is a consummate hype
and fraud," he charged. "They're trying to
make Clayton and, I suspect, Bracy too
scapegoats for their lax supervision." He
said he wants the case taken away from the
military and handled in federal courts,
where, unlike a court-martial, there is no
death penalty for peacetime espionage.
"They want to hang Clayton," Kunstler
declared. "There's no question about it."
The Soviets denounced the espionage
allegations as "unfounded, clearly far-
fetched allegations." Displaying their new
fondness for press-agentry, Soviets in Mos-
cow responded with a press conference at
which snooping gadgets, including micro-
SECURE AREA/
AMBASSADOR'S ELECTRONIC
OFFICE ELECTRONIC
MAIN ENTRANCE
CULTURAL AND MARINES'
PRESS FORMER
D QUARTERS
. "VEHICLE
ENTRANCE
Continued
Facing charges: Lonetree and Bracy, top
Stufflebeam and Weirick
According to Navy investigators, Lone-
tree's pride in his love affair with Seina led
indirectly to his arrest. In this account, he
and an unidentified corporal visited Stock-
holm together last year and went on a
drinking binge in the Marine quarters at
the U.S. embassy there. The booze loos-
ened Lonetree enough for him not only to
describe his passion for Seina but also to re-
veal hints of a KGB connection. Later,
when the two drinking buddies met in Vi-
enna, where Lonetree was posted after
Moscow, they enjoyed another blast. This
time Lonetree allegedly mentioned Bracy's
involvement as well.
Weirick also was alleged to have been
led to the KGB by several women he en-
countered while stationed at the Leningrad
consulate. He left Leningrad in 1982 and
was transferred to Rome, where investiga-
tors contend that he bragged to a colleague
of having earned some $350.000 from the
Soviets.
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y
phones, optical devices and
transmitters were dis-
played. ALI. claimed Soviet
Foreign Ministry spokes-
men. had been retrieved
from Soviet missions in
New York. Washington
and San Francisco, some-
times even from bedrooms.
Quipped Deputy Spokes-
man Boris Pyadyshev
-The desire to know Soviet
citizens better is under-
standable-but not in the
bedroom."
At week's end the Sovi-
et diplomats in Washington
trumped their Moscow col-
leagues by offering an un-
precedented tour of the
Mount Alto facility to dis-
" /c/oli t know. Boswirk. maybe Moscow's ju it getting to me.
but hale you ever wondered about this ashtray?"
play what they said were American bug-
ging devices. As some 100 reporters and
cameramen crowded into an unfinished
embassy reception room. Embassy Securi-
ty Officer Vyacheslav Borovikov clam-
bered up a scaffold and pointed to a small
cavity in the marble facing where, he said,
a microphone had been planted. Similar
hiding places were exposed in two other
rooms: outside. the Soviets produced an
embassy car with a locator device hidden
in the dashboard.
Not amused by the Soviet show. Presi-
dent Reagan first responded to questions
about the U.S. hugging with a curt com-
ment: "If you want to believe them, go
Lion in California, he add-
ed, "I cannot and will not
comment on United States
intelligence activities."
Turning angry, Reagan in-
sisted, "What the Soviets
did to our embassy in Mos-
cow is outrageous."
Indeed it was. Yet spy-
ing is an old and nasty
game among ri%al nations.
The key issue in the sad and
still developing Marine es-
pionage scandal was not
whether the Soviets had
broken some urnvritten rule
of civilized snooping or
what American agents had
done to them. A more rele-
vant question was just why
American Marines and State Depart-
ment officials had permitted the Soviets
to compromise U.S. security so thorough-
ly-and so easily. On that point the
many investigations were very much in
order. -8y Ed Maarvson
Reported by Janes 0. /adksan/Moscowand&uca
van Voarst/Wishbr lon, sft,otherbureaw
Getting "Snookered"
Contrary to popular belief, the site of the new U.S. embassy
in Moscow is not a swamp. But that is one of the few favor-
able comments the State Department can make about the con-
troversial facility. According to a department report written
last year, the swamp legend resulted from "some drainage
problems during excavation" of the site.
Still, the new chancery is 30 ft. lower
than the old one, and evidence of eaves-
dropping devices has been found in its
walls and structural columns.
By most accounts, the project has
been jinxed from the time the U.S. and
the Soviet Union began discussing a joint
agreement to construct new embassies
24 years ago. Throughout the decades of
haggling over the plan, the U.S. consis-
tently got the short end of the deal. Says
Lawrence Eagleburger, an assistant to
the Secretary of State under Richard
Nixon: "Every Administration since
Johnson got snookered on this."
First came the squabbling over re-
ciprocal sites: The Soviets initially
balked when the US, offered a location
on Washington's Mount Alto, complain-
ing it was too far from the center of town.
The U.S. had a similar gripe about the
Soviets' suggested American embassy
site high atop the Lenin Hills. By the endr
of the decade, however, the Soviets had
accepted Mount Alto, the high ground
may have been for from the action, but it
did offer an ideal location for eavesdrop-
ping equipment. Meanwhile, the. US.
agreed to build in that soggy spot near
the Moscow River, primarily because it
was close to the old embassy and only smile from the Kremlin,
"It's a classic case of one part of the Government not talking to
the other," says former CIA Deputy Director Btu Ynmaa. "In
the intelligence community, we aware tin ten
rific advantage of the Mount Alto location. But the State De.
partment wouldn't listen."
Then commenced the extended bargaining over coostrur,
tion. By 1972 a compromise had taken shaper. The intericrdeeo-
New.wbas? Aswt$c ts/, anti lst
ration and finishing of each compound
would be overseen by the country's own
teams, but the major construction would-
be the responsibility of the host country.
The intelligence community balked at
allowing the Soviets to build the embas.
sy's walls. But President Nixon, who was
pursuing a policy of detente with Moe-
cow, instructed the State Department to
cut the deaL
Bickering continued over con-
struction details until a final protocol
was signed in 1977. Jimmy Carter's
cu director, Stansfie d Turner, want-
ed the Moscow em ybe uiiU '
only by U.S. citizens who would be
subject to lie-detector tests upon their
return home. Carter approved the
idea, says Turner, but the departments
of State and Defense blocked the plan.
"I gave them money out of the CIA
budget for security checks and poly-
graphs," says he, "and they never
properly used ii" Turner believes the
U.S. has a "cultural problem' with
Soviet espionage "Americans just
can't get it through their heads that
the Soviets will do anything to spy on
us," he contends. "Few people in
Washington are prepared to pay the
price for security."
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