SOVIET EXECUTIONS OF SIX INFORMERS FOR U.S. REPORTED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807490002-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: April 11, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/09 :CIA-RDP90-009658000807490002-5
11 April 1987
Soviet Executions
of Six Informers
for U.S. Reported
f By MICHAEL WINES and RONALD J. OSTROW, Times Staf f Writers
WASHINGTON-At least six Russian citizens working secretly for U.S.
intelligence agencies within the Soviet Union have been arrested and
executed since late 1985, appazently because of security compromises at
the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, government sources said Friday.
The deaths, which American of -
ficials say they leazned about dur-
ing the course of more than a yeaz,
effectively ended some of the Unit-
ed States' most productive and
well-placed intelligence operations
inside Soviet borders, those sources
said.
And those operations were caze-
fully "wrapped up and disposed of"
by the Soviet secret police, in ways
that diverted U.S. suspicion away
from the embassy as a source of the
devastating intelligence leaks,
American investigators studying
the Moscow spy scandal now sus-
pect.
"It was all managed in a way to
.lead us away from the embassy,"
one official said, "even as some of
our most sensitive Soviet opera-
tions were going belly-up."
An Asonizini Position
Thus for more than a yeaz, U.S.
counterintelligence experts appar-
ently were in an agonizing position:
seeing their Russian sources
snuffed out one by one, despite
desperate but misdirected Ameri-
can efforts to find what now ap-
pears to have been the fatal breach
in security-the appazent actions
of two Marine guazds who let
Soviet spies into the Moscow em-
bassy.
The final damage assessment,
which includes estimates from a
variety of intelligence agencies and
other offices, is faz from complete,
according to that source, but the
losses aze grave.
"It will take us at least 10 years
to recover from this," another U.S.
official agreed, "and we better not
get into a waz during that period,
either: I'm guilty of a little hyper=
bole, but not much." accused spy, former CIA agent
In a related development, U.S. ~j Edwazd Lee How~d, who had fled
e m e fates m September,
19ffi.
CIA Contact lxecuted
Howard is known to have led the
Soviets to one CIA contact, Moscow
aerospace engineer A.G. Tolka-
chev, in the summer of 1985. The
Soviets said last year that they had
tried and executed Tolkachev for
spying.
Three knowledgeable U.S. offi-
cials said Friday that a series of
U.S. contacts and operations began
to fold up within months of How-
ard's disappearance, continuing
through 1986 and, by one account,
into 198?.
But American alarm over the
losses began to grow sometime last
year, when "lights began going out
in a way that couldn't be linked to
Howard," one official said.
Word of the Soviet executions
has surfaced at a time when U.S.
specialists are beginning to believe
that the Moscow spy cases, regard-
ed as fairly minor last winter, may
be among the most damaging intel-
ligence blows to the United States
in decades.
Names Given to BGB
Besides giving the KGB the
names of U.S. contacts within the
Soviet Union, officials said, the
security lapse allowed the Soviets
to intercept most of the embassy's
communications during the last
year and to gain access to the State
Department's "most sensitive"
documents.
' Investigators consider the exe-
cutions to be the moat serious loss
to flow from the Moscow embassy
fiasco, followed closely by the
"compromise of communications"
and the loss of top-secret docu-
ments,one official said.
Experts "sweeping" the Moscow
embassy for eavesdropping equip-
ment have found and removed a
number of sophisticated Soviet lis-
tening devices in recent days, one
official said. Yet with only days
remaining before Secretary of
State George P. Shultz arrives in
Moscow for arms-control talks, it is
faz from clear that all of the "bugs"
have been uncovered.
In Washington, analysts have
now confirmed evidence reported
earlier that KGB agents penetrated
all of the embassy's most heavily
secured areas, including secure
safes and document files in the
office of the CIA's Moscow station
chief, as well as the offices of
former U.S. Ambassador to the
Soviet Union Arthur A. Hartman
and the embassy's coding and com-
municationscenter.
sources said a top FBI counterin-
telligence expert gave President
Reagan and other senior Adminis-
tration officials a devastating cri-
tique of Moscow embassy security
after secretly conducting atop-
to-bottom sweep of the outpost in
1983.
Delivering a lecture and slide
presentation that stunned some
U.S. officials, the FBI expert re-
portedly said embassy security was
so slipshod that the KGB could
have penetrated the mission's
three "secure" floors even then,
avoiding both guards and alarm
systems.
The report, however, had little
impact on the embassy's approach
to internal security, some sources
said.
The Russian citizens who were
executed by the Soviets-"U.S.
assets," in the jargon of the intelli-
gence community-may include
inforriers for American military
intelligence agencies as well as the
CIA, one source said.
Although the growing losses of
Russian agents caused serious con-
cern among U.S. intelligence offi-
cials, it was only last month-with
the espionage-related arrest of Ma-
rine Cpl. Arnold Bracy at the
Moscow embassy-that U.S. atten-
tion focused on the embassy as the
likely source of the problem.
Embassy security breaches were
still believed to be minor when the
first Moscow Marine guard to be
arrested, Sgt. Clayton J. Lonetree,
was taken into custody last Decem-
ber.
At least some of the string of
intelligence losses in the yeaz pre-
ceding Lonetree's arrest may have
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/09 :CIA-RDP90-009658000807490002-5
 Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/09 :CIA-RDP90-009658000807490002-5 e~ .
Paper Reports )bceeutious
The Washington Times, which
reported "a number" of Soviet
executions of CIA contacts in a
Friday article, quoted unnamed
Administration officials as saying
the Marine spying case had com-
promised U.S. intelligence opera-
tions outside as well as inside
Soviet borders.
That report could not be inde-
pendently confirmed, but investi-
gators are known to be studying
American missions in Rome and
Eastern Bloc nations as well as in
Moscow and Leningrad, the focus
of the spy probes.
The 1983 analysis of embassy
security problems helped spur a
proposal to remove hundreds of
Soviet nationals from jobs as em-
bassy secretaries, housekeepers..
and other functionaries.
But by one account, resistance in
both the State Department and the
U.S. intelligence bureaucracy con-
tinued to slow efforts to beef up the
embassy's counterespionage' de-
fenses.
One source said the FBI expert
attempted to present the analysis
to Hartman but was not allowed to
do so during a private meeting with
the ambassador four years ago.
That account could not be con-
firmed Friday.
The FBI expert was dispatched
to Moscow only after repeated
warnings about Moscow embassy
security from the super-secret Na-,
tional Security Agency had gone
unheeded by both the State De-
partment and the White House, one
knowledgeable official said.
The NSA, which manages most
communications security and intel-
ligence gathering for the govern-
ment, reportedly issued warnings
in 1977, 1979 and the early 198()s
that the KGB had established an
information beachhead within the
mission.
In 1984, a surprise inspection of
Moscow embassy office and com-
munications equipment turned up
highly sophisticated miniature
transmitters, concealed in hol-
lowed-out meta! frames of electric
typewriters.
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/09 :CIA-RDP90-009658000807490002-5