U.S. SUSPECTED EMBASSY SPYING FOR YEARS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000707060009-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 19, 2011
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: April 3, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

(Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000707060009-6
Moscow Security Breach Thrived on Red Tape STAT
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Staff Reporter of THE WALL. STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON - U.S. officials sus-
pected more than three years ago that So-
viet spies had penetrated the American
Embassy in Moscow, but serious security
problems at the post were never fixed be-
cause of bureaucratic resistance and turf
battles between agencies, according to in-
telligence sources and administration offi-
cials.
Intelligence officials said a 1985 survey
of security at the embassy in Moscow con-
cluded that some of the embassy's locks
didn't work and that some alarms were
miswired and had never been inspected.
Investigators also found that the em-
bassy's Marine guards made no random
patrols, that some windows and skylights
weren't protected and that State Depart-
ment couriers sometimes checked diplo-
matic pouches as baggage on flights to
Moscow.
"The Soviets repeatedly 'lost' U.S. dip-
lomatic pouches, usually for several
days," said one intelligence official.
A year earlier, armed with convincing
evidence that the Soviets had gained ac-
cess to U.S. secrets in Moscow, then-Cen-
tral Intelligence Agency Director William
Casey. former National S urity wiser
I bert McFarlane and other high-ranking
intelligence officers persuaded President
Reagan to approve a secret plan for the
surprise removal of thousands of pounds of
communications gear, copying machines,
electric typewriters and other equipment
from the Moscow embassy, intelligence
sources said.
The team found ingeniously bugged
typewriters. U.S. counterintelligence ex-
perts later uncovered other security lapses
at the Moscow embassy, and they found
conditions at a new U.S. Embassy under
construction in Moscow even worse than
expected. Among other things, the Soviets
had wired the steel reinforcing bars in the
building's concrete structure together to
form a giant antenna.
"The new embassy is such a state-of-
the-art listening device that we ought to
tear that thing down and start all over
again," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, (D., Vt.),
a member of the Senate Intelligence Com-
mittee, which last year released a report
critical of security at the Moscow em-
bassy.
One intelligence source said the secu-
rity lapses add up to "a horror story of im-
mense proportions"-transcending the re-
cent arrest of two Marine guards who al-
legedly became involved with Soviet
women and allowed Soviet agents to roam
around the rambling yellow apartment
building that houses the U.S. mission to
Moscow.
WALL STREET JOURNAL
3 April 1987
ted with tiny magnetic sensors that "read"
the position of the typing ball as each ke?
was struck, intelligence sources said. TbSTAT
By JoHN WAI.Go'rr
Intelligence officials said the Soviets
may have bugged the aging offices of the
current embassy so thoroughly that nor-
mal communications now have been shut
down and virtually all the equipment in the
embassy will have to be replaced. They
said Secretary of State George Shultz may
be forced to use the radios on his airplane
to report to Washington when he visits
Moscow April 13 to meet with Soviet For-
eign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze.
"To the KGB (the Soviet intelligence
agency), the U.S. Embassy in Moscow has
to be like a candy store," said Sen.
Leahy.
Officials said that at a meeting last Fri-
day of the administration's top-level Na-
tional Security Planning Group, Vice Pres-
ident George Bush was "furious" at what
he considers State Department resistance
to tougher security measures. The officials
said Mr. Bush was particularly disturbed
by a cable sent by U.S. Ambassador to
Moscow Arthur Hartman, in which Mr.
Hartman argued that fears about security
at the Moscow embassy were exagger-
ated.
Although administration officials cau-
tion that estimates of the damage done to
U.S. security represent a worst-case
analysis, senior intelligence officials said
the problems probably aren't unique to the
Moscow embassy. Intelligence sources said
similar, though less serious, breaches of
security have been uncovered at U.S. Em-
bassies in Eastern Europe and else-
where.
Under the 1984 plan approved by Presi-
dent Reagan, an undercover team of intel-
ligence officers was dispatched to the So-
viet capital. To prevent the Soviets from
discovering the operation, the U.S. Em-
bassy wasn't told the team's real mis-
sion.
But as the secret team slapped a round-
the-clock guard on the equipment officials
suspected might have been bugged, a State
Department communicator fired off a mes-
sage to Washington demanding to know
what was going on. Shortly thereafter, one
intelligence source said, the embassy be-
gan experiencing power shortages, which
the source said "might have been a coinci-
dence."
When the suspect gear was returned to
the U.S., technicians from the National Se-
curity Agency, the super-secret electronic
intelligence and communications agency,
discovered that some of the embassy's
IBM Selectric typewriters-including one
used in Ambassador Hartman's office-
had been bugged, apparently while the ma-
chines were being shipped, unguarded, to
Moscow, beginning a decade ago.
An aluminum frame inside some of the
typewriters had been hollowed out and fit-
sensors were connected to a microproces-
sor and a device called a "burst transmit-
ter," which stored and encrypted the sen-
sor readings, then transmitted them to a
listening post in short bursts, either
through the air or through the typewriter's
power cord and the embassy's electrical
wiring.
Despite such discoveries, intelligence
and congressional sources and administra-
tion officials said, State Department offi-
cials have strongly resisted efforts to re-
duce the number of Soviet citizens working
at the embassy in Moscow, to triple the
size of the Marine guard force there, and
to improve the existing embassy's physical
security.
"There has been an attitude that there
is no way to ensure secrecy," said Sen.
William Cohen (R-- Maine), the vice chair-
Yffgii t Ie Senate Intelligence Commit-
tee.
Intelligence officials conceded, how-
ever, that the State Department and the
Marine Corps don't deserve all the blame
for the latest intelligence fiasco. They said
President Reagan hasn't resolved long-
standing rivalries among the CIA, the
NSA, the Pentagon and the State Depart-
ment that have frustrated efforts to de-
velop comprehensive security plans in
Moscow and elsewhere.
"State would rather run the risk of hav-
ing the KGB read their stuff than have the
NSA read it," said one senior intelligence
official. "Somebody's got to be in charge.
You cannot have a successful CIA station
where the State Department operation has
been penetrated, or vice versa."
DAVID ROGERS
CONTRIBUTED TO THIS ARTICLE
STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000707060009-6
Suspected Embassy Spying for Years
U.S.