'WE STILL NEED SPIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00498R000100140012-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 20, 2007
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: June 26, 1978
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2007/06/20 :CIA-RDP99-004988000100140012-6
STAT
~iICLE np~P=.~~'~ NEWSL+~EK
26 June 1978
~~~ ~~~
n a supposedly sophisticated era of
electronic snooping, the affair did
seem somehow dated. There on page 5 of
Izvestia last week was a photograph of
an attractive young American woman
named l~iartha Peterson undergoing in-
terrogation at a KGB office is l~loscow.
Arrayed on a table before her were the
contents of a classic cloak-and-daggaz
spy kit: a minicamera, tiny microphones,
a supply ofrubles, gold--and two ampuls
of poison. Soviet secret police had alleg-
edly caught Peterson red-handed is aa.
Iowed~ut stone containing the po
and the other items-in a niche. ~
the police closed in, the paper said;
terson warned off her unidentified
tact by shouting, "I am a foreign
Peterson was arrested and interroga
but because she had diplomatic imm
ty, she was permitted to leave ~fos
on the first available plane. And
Izvestia broke the story last week,
bizarre incident was bushed up.
In the early days of the cold war, w
he herded the CIA, the late Alley D
occasion embasar listening devices sup-'.
posedly Picked up snatches of a convey-
. ration inside a Kremlin. limousine in
which Bn!zhner and former Soviet'
President Nikolai Podgoray discussed
the- merits of a masseuse n~ned Olga. E
That story may well be apocryphal, but ~
when a fire broke out in the upper $oors
of the embassy Iasi summer, Soviet fire- ~
men went out of their way to destroy as ~
much of the antenna network as they
could lay their aus tn.
TitVFO1L OM T}iE WALLS E
r
U.S. diplomats iia Moscow routinely
assume that all embassy offices with the
exception of "safe zooms-usuallywin-
dowlesschambers that appear to be wal~-
papered with tinf
il
b
d
I
-.are
o
ugge
.
n
1964, ahpproximaiely 4a eavesdropping
mrcr
d
:;An artist's conception of Peterson's arrest: Fnd of a double life ..
op ones were uncovere
atthe em-
bassy and some ol~cials believe as many
as 200 more simply went undiscovered.
(In 1952, a bug wan found in the beak of a
wooden eagle one the wall of the U.S.
envoy's residences) lrloze recently, in a
case leaked to the U.S. preen, officials ,.
conducting a mature seruritq check dir.
covered a tunnel beneath the embassy
boilding-any in the pr~ocesa conbcvnted
a startled Russian who mach a hasty
retreat The taaael was canncctrd to as ,
_ air shaft and a c3timney thatvrerz fotmd ';
to contain Soriet listenin
vi
d
g
e
ces.
espionage plot last summer ~aad, among " believed in dropping ~dercover agents Two years ago, h-response to U.S. pro-
otheztfungs,wanted toknowtheaameof behind the Izvn Curtain by parachute tests, the Soviets apparently reduced
the intended victim of the poison. L'.S._ ~: (most of them never to be heard from their microwave bombardment of the ~
consal Clifford Gross advised her to r~ - ~again)._ Those methods have been de- Moscow embassy. But eavesdsoppin3
pIy, Izvestia claimed, but Peterson told dared obsolete by Jimmy Carter's CIA continues. Like itr U.S. counterpart in ?
him: "Shntup: Gross toldhesinttrroga-._ boss, Adm. Staasfield Turner, a staunch I~ioscow, t3~e Soviet Embassy in Was}r
tors: "No nse asking her. She is only fete . advocaat of satellite reconnaissance, ington bristles with mysterioas antennas. '.
exectitar." This time, the gaper said, the electronic interepts, .microwave Iistea- No one knows precisely what the embar
"pretty CIA agent literally wand athim, _= ing devices and other space-age tools for sy's electronic egetipmentpicks up in the
'Shut upl"' _. ~? .- ,-.,-.J gathering information. U.S.orrelaysbadctotheKremlia.Butone .
Now back home in die U.S: and Iying - SPOOKS AMD TAf1VCtf COATS hrgh-level U.S. source maintains the So-
low, "Marty" Peterson, 32, had indeed ~ = vices used microwave gear dozing the
worked farthe CIA, officials in Washing ' ~ - ~ Even in the age of high-technology 19"i,3 Mideast war to listen is on White
ton conceded, although she was ostensi--~= 'spying, there is still a .basic need for House conversations wit3i the Pentagon,
bly empl~-ed in eha embassy's consuIaz what is known in the spook trade as the State Degartiment and then CL~-..
section. One warm July evening last' _ HU1~iP1T-human intelligence--and as Detente, with its easing of U.S, travel
year, according to Izvestia, Soviet police ,the bizarre Peterson case indicates, the restrictions on Soviet citizens, has made
tailed her as she pea.-aedrd by car, bus, .days of trench coats and lurking around Moscow's job easier. Last year alone,
trolleybus, subway and tau to a render- ~ 'comers arc not over yet As one U.S. some 6,000 Soviets visited the U.S_ as
vow at a bridges over the Moacov- River ' intelligence analyst puts it: "We still members of trades and. culhrral. delega-
(sketch).TheKGB Approved For Release 2007/06/20 :CIA-RDP99-004988000100140012-6 3ussiaa sailors took