SPILLING SOME VERY BIG BEANS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00561R000100120008-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: June 9, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/24: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100120008-0
ON PAGE TIME
9 June 1986
Nation
Spilling Some Very Big Beans
Ronald Pelton's trial brings intelligence secrets to light
court and is expected to conclude this
week. Observers were amazed by the
Government's willingness to discuss pub-
licly the various means used by the U.S. to
intercept and analyze Soviet communica-
tions, spy-craft capabilities that had never
been openly acknowledged. Said James
Bamford, who wrote the authoritative
1982 study of NSA (The Puzzle Palace):
"This is the furthest the Government has
gone in any case."
For weeks the Administration has
forcefully been pressuring the press to
withhold information strikingly similar to
what was being openly disclosed in the
Baltimore court. As the trial got under
way. NSA Director William Odom and
CIA Director William Casey issued an ex-
traordinary statement admonishing that
the information revealed at the trial
should not be a pretext for further disclo-
sures about intelligence methods. Citing
the "competing interests" of prosecutorial
revelations and the need to protect the na-
tional security, the two intelligence chiefs
warned reporters against "speculation
and reporting details beyond the informa-
tion actually released at trial." Allan Ad-
ler, legislative counsel of the American
Civil Liberties Union, called the state-
ment part of a campaign "to cow the
press in national security reporting." Said
Washington Post Executive Editor Benja-
min Bradlee: "How the press covers this
T he defendant, said Federal
Prosecutor John Douglass, was
nothing short of a walking "gold
mine" of U.S. intelligence capabili-
ties. He knew how the U.S. was
able to intercept the Soviet Union's
"command and control" commu-
nications, which contained mili-
tary instructions from "the highest
level" of the Kremlin to the next
echelon of authority, according to
the defendant's former supervisor.
He was familiar with a top-secret
program for processing encoded
Soviet messages and aware that it
was being given an "upgraded ca-
pability" that would maintain its
usefulness into the 1990s. He was
the author of a 60-page "encyclo-
pedia" on Soviet communication
signals that set forth which ones
were to receive top U.S. decoding
priority and how quickly each had
to be analyzed.
All of these data, said Doug-
lass, were passed to the Soviet
Union by Ronald W. Pelton, 44, a
former middle-level analyst for the
super secret National Security
Agency, which specializes in gath-
ering electronic intelligence. Pel-
ton's espionage trial opened last
week in Baltimore's U.S. district
CIA Director Casey NSA Director Odom
Balancing two "competing interests. "
trial is a matter for the press to decide, not
the Government."
While the amount of detail presented
at the Pelton trial was unusual, it was
far from complete. Federal prosecutors
charged that Pelton sold the Soviets infor-
mation about five U.S. communication
"projects." but they were identified merely
as A through E and the way they func-
tioned was described only cryptically. Hu-
bert Atwater, a former co-worker at NSA,
testified that Project A involved equip-
ment that intercepted "a particular Soviet
communications link." The Post reported
that the operation used U.S. submarines
operating in the Sea of Okhotsk, off the So-
viet eastern coast. Another ex-colleague
identified Project B as an "ongoing opera-
tion" to upgrade equipment used in col-
lecting and analyzing Soviet communica-
tions. An FBI agent, David Faulkner, who
questioned Pelton before his arrest, testi-
fied that Pelton said Projects A and B were
the only ones that appeared to be of inter-
est to the Soviets.
By Faulkner's account, the cir-
cumstances that led to Pelton's
turncoat decision are distressingly
banal. Mired in debt, Pelton de-
clared bankruptcy in 1979. Then,
realizing that he would be consid-
ered a security risk because of that
action, he quit his $24,500-a-year
job, ending 14 years with NSA. Af-
ter failing to make a go of two oth-
erjobs, he decided "almost sponta-
neously" in 1980 to offer intelli-
gence to the Soviets. He simply
called the Soviet embassy in Wash-
ington and asked if he could come
by. Although that call was inter-
cepted by the FBI (tapes of two con-
versations were played at the trial
last week), the bureau at the time
did not or could not identify Pelton
and intercept him. His contact at
the Soviet embassy in Washington,
according to the U.S., was none
other than Vitaly Yurchenko, later
to become the high-ranking KGB
defector who caused a sensation by
unexpectedly defecting back last
fall.
To contact Pelton, the Soviets
had him wait for a call at the pay
phone of a suburban Virginia piz-
zeria at 9 p.m. on the last Saturday
of every month. In late 1980 a call-
er directed him to another pay phone,
where he picked up $2,000 in a hidden
magnetic box and received instructions to
travel to Vienna. There, according to the
FBI. he was escorted to the Soviet embas-
sy, where he answered lists of written
questions. He repeated the process in
1983, receiving a total of $35,000. plus up
to $5.000 in expenses.
Pelton made a third trip to Vienna
last year, Faulkner testified. but his Soviet
contact there failed to recognize him.
probably because Pelton had lost 75 lbs. in
the interim. His weight loss was not the
only change in Pelton's life. By then he
had separated from his wife, become in-
volved with a new girlfriend and acquired
heavy drinking and drug habits. He was
also beginning to have second thoughts
about his undercover career. "He said."
Faulkner testified, "that when he walked
into the Soviet embassy on Jan. 15. 1980,
it was the biggest mistake of his life."
Faulkner also quoted Pelton as saying,
"The Soviets got more out of me than I
wanted to give up."
The prosecution contends that au-
thorities started closing in on Pelton after
a former NSA colleague recognized the de-
fendant's voice on a five-year-old tape of
intercepted phone calls to the Soviet em-
bassy. There have also been leaks in
Washington that the mysterious Yur-
chenlco, during his brief defection to the
~~?~dU11~
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/24: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100120008-0
 Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/24: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100120008-0 2 ,
U.S., helped finger Pelton. The FBI inter-
rogated Pelton for about five hours in an
Annapolis hotel room last November.
then made the arrest.
Pelton's attorney is Fred Bennett,
who also defended convicted Navy Spy-
master John Walker. Bennett contends
that Pelton was not informed of his con-
stitutional right to remain silent during
the interrogation and was discouraged
from calling an attorney. In a pretrial rul-
ing, Federal District Judge Herbert Mur-
ray decided that Pelton's statements to
the FBI were admissible.
In the past, the Government has de-
clined to prosecute similar cases for fear
of exposing too much about U.S. intelli-
gence capabilities. But some experts spec-
ulate that the Administration. deeply con-
cerned about the raft of recent spy cases,
decided the time had come to set an ex-
ample. Philip Lacovara, a former deputy
solicitor general, suggested that the Ad-
ministration wanted "to demonstrate to
the thousands of people with access to se-
crets that if they do sell out, the Govern-
ment will prosecute. They've decided to
make Pelton a case study."
In any event, CIA officials insist that
there was no serious dispute between the
intelligence community and the Justice
Department about what should be re-
vealed. "Everything stated by the U.S.
prosecutor at Pelton's trial was coordinated
in advance between lawyers and the NSA."
CIA Director Casey told TIME last week.
Given the curious combination of
unprecedented revelations and unusual
warnings to the press, some wondered
whether the U.S. intelligence community
might be playing a complicated game of
disinformation and confusion. The disclo-
sure that the FBI had recorded Pelton's ini-
tial conversations and that it was Double
Defector Yurchenko who fingered him
could well make Kremlin intelligence ana-
lysts wonder about the validity of what
they have been told by both men. When
asked about this last week, Casey said
nothing. -BY WllllamR.Doeimer.Reportedby
Anne Constable and David Hahvy/Washbgton
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/24: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100120008-0