BIGGER ROLE LAID TO SUSPECTED SPY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807490034-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 18, 2012
• Sequence Number: 34
• Publication Date: November 29, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/18: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807490034-0
~^r~t-- LOS ANGELES TIMES
tn! PAGE / 41
29 November 1985
Bigger Role Laid
to Suspected Spy
Ex-CIA Official Believed to Have
Given Top-Secret Reports to China
1 BY 110CHAEL WINES, 7Ymts Staff Writer
WASHINGTON-Accused spy Among other probable effects,
Larry Wu-tai Chin, far from being Chin's spying may account for the
merely a low-level translator for dismal results of U.S. espionage
the CIA, had access to virtually operations in China for some 20
every top-secret U.S. intelligence years and probably gave the Chi-
report on Asia for at least two nese an inside look at U.S. policy
decades and is thought to have during the Vietnam War, they said.
funneled most of them to the "He had access to all of it. He
Chinese government, senior U.S. photographed it and he gave it to
intelligence officials said Thursday. them," one intelligence source said.
Government documents filed .'It's a goddamn disaster."
since Chin was arrested last Friday
night and accused of spying for The officials said the case raises
Peking have described him simply further doubts about the effective-
as an interpreter and retired em- ness of American counterintelli-
ployee of the CIA's Foreign Broad- gence operations only weeks after
cast Information Service, which Q Soviet KGB defector Vitalx Yu-
monitors foreign government chenko dealt those operations an
broadcasts. eM6a 'amassing blow by returning to
But intelligence officials said Moscow.
Thursday that Chin also served as a
document-control officer during
much of his career, channeling
highly classified Asian reports
throughout the entire U.S. intelli-
gence community.
First Detailed Assessment
The officials, giving the first
detailed assessment of last week's
extraordinary string of espionage
arrests, said damage by Chin far
exceeds that by former National
Security Agency specialist Ronald
W. Peltt,gp, accused of spyj1 r
met Union, and accused
Israeli spy Jonathan J. Pollard.
Pelton, they said, is thought to
have compromised a multibil-
lion-dollar electronic espionage
project within the Soviet Union
that "just stopped working" in 1983
but not to have disclosed sensitive
NSA codes.
The FBI and CIA are continuing
investigations of the Chin affair,
and at least one more arrest is
possible, said intelligence and
law-enforcement officials who
spoke on condition that they not be
identified. But the damage already
has been found to be extraordinary
and lasting, they said.
Fooled CIA Officials
Chin, 63, so completely fooled
CIA officials during his 33 years of
work that the agency awarded him
its career intelligence medal for
superior service when he retired in
1981, officials said. The agency
then hired him as a part-time
consultant and tried to persuade
him to resume full -time work.
One of the few bright notes in the
case, they said, is that Chin's
alleged spying for the Chinese was
uncovered by a secret counterin-
telligence program.
The FBI had previously identi-
fied Chin as a translator in the
CIA's broadcast service, monitor-
ing Chinese-language publications
and broadcasts. But intelligence
sources said he also routed "fin-
ished intelligence products"
through the CIA, the Defense In-
telligence Agency, the White
House and the State and Defense
departments.
The work, which required
top-secret clearance and access to
code-word material, exposed Chin
to the entire realm of analytical
intelligence on all of Asia outside
the Soviet Union. '
Among the documents he saw-
and reportedly photographed or
copied for the Chinese-were in-
telligence estimates used to help
set national policy and reports on
Asia from throughout the govern-
ment sent to the CIA for review or
filing.
Moreover, because Chin was one
of the few CIA employees who
spoke fluent Chinese, the agency
routinely asked him to translate
documents pilfered from the Chi-
nese government. His knowledge
of where documents were being
stolen appears to have enabled the
Chinese to plug most intelligence
leaks to the United States for at
least two decades.
In court testimony Wednesday,
an FBI agent said Chin had sup-
plied Peking with classified docu-
ments so voluminous it took trans-
lators two months to process each
secret shipment.
Officials Disagree
Law enforcement officials told
The Times on Thursday that Chin
is not believed to have compro-
mised any CIA operations or agents
within China. But some intelligence
officials disagreed.
"Sad to say, we had very few if
any successful operations against
the Chinese communists for 20
years," one official said. "I think
you can assume that Chin played a
role in that."
Chin's operations were curtailed
when he became a consultant to
the agency in January, 1981, but he
kept his access to secret documents
and continued supplying them to
the Chinese at an "irregular" pace,
officials said.
Repeated efforts to reach CIA
spokesmen for comment Thursday
were unsuccessful.
Walker Case Recalled
Law-enforcement and intelli-
gence sources agreed Thursday
that damage from the Chin and
Pelton cases appears to be less than
that from this summer's Walker
spy ring, which betrayed vital
defense codes and documents to the
Soviets.
Senior intelligence officials said,
however, that "there is no question
that the Chinese themselves con-
sidered Chin their top penetration
in the United States government."
Law-enforcement officials,
while conceding the impact of the
Chin case, said Thursday that they
are still not convinced that the
Continued
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/18: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807490034-0
 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/18: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807490034-0
Pelton case is less serious. But
intelligence officials said the fallout
from Pelton's espionage appears
"well-defined, and the damage has
been done."
In particular, they said, Pelton
does not appear to have given the
Soviets invaluable ciphers used by
the NSA to code and decode some
of the nation's most sensitive intel-
ligence communications and satel-
lite data.
Spying Lodestesee
Ciphers are considered spying
lodestones because they are keys
that open the doors to translating
reams of coded data that would
otherwise be useless. If ciphers
were not disclosed, the damage
from the Pelton affair should be
"finite," one official said.
Instead, intelligence sources say,
the destruction of a hugely expen-
sive NSA espionage project appears
to be the single biggest American
loss from Pelton's alleged opera-
tions.
Pelton, 44, who quit the NSA in
1979, is charged with spying for the
Soviets from 1980 to 1985. The FBI
contends that he met Soviet con-
tacts in Vienna in 1980 and 1983
and disclosed "extremely sensi-
tive" information on an intelli-
gence-collection project targeted
at the Soviet Union.
Intelligence sources said the
project was an electronic espionage
venture, judged "a major opera-
tion" and costing billions of dollars,
that mysteriously ceased function-
ing in 1983.
'Soviets Stopped It'
"It just stopped," one official said.
"Nobody knew why. . . . What we
didn't know until Yurchenko came
out is that the Soviets were the
ones who stopped it."
The NSA project apparently was
briefly mentioned by Pelton's at-
torneys Wednesday during a court
hearing in Baltimore, but the dis-
cussion was silenced by the judge
moments after a code name, Ivy
Bells, was disclosed.
Yurchenko, the supposedly
high-ranking KGB defector who
returned to Soviet hands early this
month, has been named by the FBI
as the person who led U.S. counter-
intelligence experts to Pelton.
If Pelton's impact on U.S. defense
and intelligence capacities is indeed
largely spent, as intelligence offi-
cials appear to conclude, then that
may cast fresh doubts on Yurchen-
ko's battered credibility as a genu-
ine Soviet defector to the United
States.
Yurchenko is known to have
tipped the United States to at least
two Soviet spies, leading to the
arrest of Pelton and the identifica-
tion of a former CIA employee,
Edward Lee Howard, as a Soviet
agent. Howard fled the United
States and is believed to be in
Moscow.
Intelligence officials acknowl-
edge that Howard was of limited or
no use to the Soviets after he
reportedly betrayed a key CIA
contact in Moscow earlier this year.
Pelton was believed to be much
more valuable to the Soviets-and,
because of that, further proof that
Yurchenko was a genuine defector
and not a double agent.
But if Pelton gave the Soviets all
the secrets he was privy to, he
could have been "burned" by Yur-
chenko to boost Yurchenko's credi-
bility with the CIA, at little cost to
the Soviets.
The question of Yurchenko's
credibility is considered important
by some officials because he has
given U.S. intelligence experts oth-
er important assurances, including
a pledge that he knows of no Soviet
"moles" within the CIA hierarchy.
Staff Writer Ronald J. Ostrow
contributed to the story.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/18: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807490034-0