Spy Wars

Grim headlines on the nation's front pages bore bad news for Western spooks. In the ongoing duel of spies, the Soviet Union seemed to be dealing the United States an embarrassing, if not lethal, series of blows.

In 1985, the FBI uncovered a treacherous nest of spies--ex-Navy man John Walker and kin, plus confederate Jerry Whitworth--that had sold top-secret codes to the K.G.B. for 17 years. That same year, a former CIA agent, Edward Lee Howard, eluded an FBI stake-out and stunned the intelligence community by becoming the first CIA defector to land in Moscow. Then Ronald Pelton, an ex-employee of America's giant listening post, the National Security Agency, was convicted of selling the Soviets NSA secrets.

There was worse news this year. A proud few Marine guards at the U.S. embassy in Moscow were charged with letting K.G.B. agents roam secret code rooms, tricked by alluring Soviet women called swallows. The embassy itself became an embarrassing debacle for the West. While the new American embassy is likely to remain unoccupied, thanks to tiny ingenious bugs implanted during construction, the new Soviet complex in Washington was built under the strict supervision of Soviet counterintelligence experts; perched atop one of the highest points in the nation's capital, it is in an excellent position to eavesdrop on the White House, the Pentagon and other Government offices.

What's going on here?

Have we grown lax in security? Is the U.S.--a country whose military now has a toll-free number for spy tipsters--simply less sophisticated than the wily Russians? How have we become such easy prey to spies and traitors? Or have we all been a bit misled by a headline-hungry press that jumps on naïve Marines seduced by Mata Haris?

Everything isn't quite what it seems. For starters, it's important to remember that in the spy game, the U.S. begins at a disadvantage; it is a great deal easier to collect information in an open society than in a closed one. All-important technical data, such as crop reports and production statistics, are virtually a matter of public record in the U.S. So is the status of key policy makers. "You need to know what the political dynamics are, what the ideas are, who wants to do what to whom," says former CIA director William Colby of the basic function of intelligence. "We write about that on our front pages. They don't."

The Soviets enjoy other opportunities here that we don't enjoy in Russia. In addition to moles--deep undercover agents who gather intelligence by burrowing into sensitive positions--Soviets can recruit spies from a large population of émigrés. A mere handful of U.S. citizens renounce their country to live in Russia; many, many times that number emigrate from Russia and the Eastern European bloc. An uncounted number of these so-called illegals are, in fact, trained and planted spies. Just such a man was Karl Koecher.

Koecher has never received much publicity outside the intelligence community--perhaps because he was never officially tried, perhaps because his case was so embarrassing for the CIA. A tall, lanky man of sour demeanor, Koecher arrived in the U.S. from Czechoslovakia in 1965 with his wife, Hana, who was ten years his junior, a sexy, vivacious blonde. The Koechers claimed to be political defectors and quickly faded into everyday life as he took a variety of New York teaching jobs; in 1973, he started work at the CIA, translating Russian and Czech conversations collected surreptitiously. He also worked after hours, his wife's sex appeal helping him infiltrate upper-class swing clubs in the Washington, D.C., area. The couple's fellow swingers included senior CIA officials, a prominent U.S. Senator, reporters from major newspapers and military officers.

Among the secrets Koecher may have passed to the K.G.B. was the identity of a Soviet mole working for American intelligence in Moscow--Aleksander Dmitrevich Ogorodnik, an official in the Soviet foreign ministry. He had been "turned" by the CIA in 1974; hours after the K.G.B. caught him photographing sensitive documents in Moscow in 1977, Ogorodnik committed suicide.

The Koechers were arrested in the autumn of 1984. But before they were brought to trial, they were quietly included in the 1986 swap that resulted in the much-publicized emigration from the Soviet Union of dissident Anatoly Shcharansky. "There are something like 1400 to 1500 Soviet émigrés who have security clearances working on classified Government contracts," says William Smits, a recently retired FBI counterintelligence expert who says he was "stunned" when he learned the number. "Some of these people are third-wave, more recent Soviet émigrés whose backgrounds simply could not be checked."

The sheer number of Communist agents certainly tilts the advantage toward the Soviets, not just among "sleeper" agents but also among spies who are largely known to U.S. intelligence--those in the diplomatic corps. Before Ronald Reagan ordered a reduction in Soviet personnel in the United States in March 1986, the Soviet Union had 279 nationals attached to its Washington embassy staff (compared with 190 Americans at the U.S. embassy in Moscow). Forty-one Soviets manned their country's San Francisco consulate (compared with 24 Americans in the U.S. consulate in Leningrad). And consider the United Nations, conveniently located in New York, where 275 Soviets staffed their UN delegation and 260 worked in the Secretariat. There is no UN in Moscow.

Not only are there more Soviets here but they've become a lot more adept at blending in. "We're getting a new generation of junior diplomats," says Dimitri Simes, an expert on Soviet-American affairs. "They are better educated, more sophisticated, more pragmatic and more comfortable with Western ways." Their role model these days is the Soviet embassy's second in command in Washington, Oleg Sokolov, who could easily be mistaken for an Ivy League-educated investment banker. Out are the polyester suits; in are blue blazers and gray slacks.

How many diplomats are actually spies? It's a safe bet that if a Soviet-embassy or UN employee has the freedom to pick up tabs at expensive restaurants to cultivate American friends and visit their homes, he is an intelligence operative. Then, too, Soviet journalists are not always what they seem: Stanislav Levchenko, a former K.G.B. officer who defected to the West in 1979, estimates that at least half of all Soviet reporters are paid intelligence officers. Another source has said that all Soviet newsmen are required to pass on information. Not that the CIA has remained free of copy ties with American foreign correspondents. But beginning in the mid-Seventies, a closer scrutiny by both the press and the intelligence community radically changed the rules--to such an extent that when American newsman Nicholas Daniloff was charged with spying last year, the accusation was largely viewed as a Soviet ruse.

The Soviets are also, quite simply, more attentive to security. Consider the fact that the U.S. embassy in Moscow, until recently, employed an astonishing 198 Soviets (compared with fewer than 200 Americans) and clearly did not adequately police staff members' mingling with locals--hence, the Marines' fraternizing with the swallows. In the States, most Soviet-embassy and mission staffers are urged to steer clear of the natives and must record all contacts with foreigners.

Not that our stance on security has always been casual. James Jesus Angleton, head of counterintelligence at the CIA from 1954 to 1975, was obsessed with uncovering moles and figuring out who owed his loyalty to which country. No one was beyond his suspicion, and some say his Byzantine plotting actually distracted the CIA from other, more important mandates. Furthermore, it's unlikely that even Angleton's obsessive quest would have unearthed the most lethal spy ring in recent history--arguably, ever.

Between 1968 and 1985, a Navy man named John Walker provided the Soviets with an extraordinary cache of ultrasecret information--communications codes and details of the internal workings of cryptographic machines that gravely compromised U.S. security. K.G.B.-watcher John Barron, in his book about that fiasco, Breaking the Ring, discloses that Walker and his gang provided the K.G.B. with documents that revealed Navy strategy on (continued on page 152)Spy Wars(continued from page 70) use of nuclear weapons, battle plans, vulnerabilities of the U.S. and the Soviet Union and secrets that would allow "the Soviets to achieve surprise and tactical advantage in combat." Had World War Three broken out in the late Seventies or the early Eighties, suggests a K.G.B. defector, the U.S. might well have lost.

Only the disgruntlement of Walker's ex-wife and the persistence of his grown daughter--both of whom had to prod the FBI into action--led to the discovery of the Walker ring. Hunting for the bright side amid such disaster, former CIA director Colby says, "The important thing to remember about the past couple of years is that the spies the Soviets have picked up in America are tawdry little people who sold their country for a few bucks. But the people who have come to us from the Soviet side are people of considerable stature who have decided they don't like the system anymore. The Philbys, the Burgesses, the Macleans and the Hisses were seeking a higher good by supporting the revolution. Now they're doing it for $20,000 or $30,000."

Actually, the figure is higher. Walker and his confederates, for example, received about $1,000,000, an indication of how much the Soviets valued his information. But does it really matter if security has been compromised with the help of a true believer or with that of a money-hustling traitor?

It is true that the West has landed some big fish of its own. In 1978, the undersecretary-general of the United Nations, Arkady Shevchenko, became the highest-ranking Soviet diplomat to defect to the U.S. He brought with him helpful information on K.G.B. operations in New York, as well as firsthand knowledge of some top Soviet officials.

Vitaly Yurchenko first came to the U.S. in 1975 as the K.G.B. officer whose responsibilities included policing Soviet-embassy personnel in Washington. Ten years later, he walked up to a Swiss guard in Rome's Vatican Museum, identified himself as a K.G.B. colonel and asked to be taken to the American embassy.

It was a major catch. In debriefings, Yurchenko alerted the FBI and the CIA to traitors, including Pelton and Howard. Pelton had delivered secrets of America's global eavesdropping techniques. Howard had compromised CIA operations in Moscow. Yurchenko also warned that the K.G.B. station chief in London, Oleg Gordiyevsky, who had secretly worked as a British agent for 19 years, was about to be unmasked. Yurchenko's information permitted Gordiyevsky to seek political asylum.

"If the CIA had had several of its senior officers defect to the Soviet Union over the past three or four years, we'd be in a state of panic," says Colby. "That's exactly what the K.G.B. has had happen."

The K.G.B., however, could take considerable solace in the outcome of the Yurchenko case. Unhappy and feeling alienated in the U.S., Yurchenko began drinking heavily. One November night in 1985, three months after his defection, he shocked his handler by walking out of a restaurant in Georgetown, traveling the short distance to the Soviet residential compound--and redefecting. Soon thereafter, the Soviets hosted a Washington press conference during which Yurchenko claimed that he had been drugged and tortured by the CIA. He was then hustled back to the Soviet Union before he could switch his allegiance again.

It's tempting to fault our own intelligence bumbling for that reversal: When he fled, Yurchenko was in the hands of a single CIA escort. Nor should we impute unusual cunning to the Soviets for some of their other coups; chance played a part. Walker, for instance, far from being actively recruited by the K.G.B., walked into the Soviet embassy off the street. On the other hand, the Marine betrayal might well be traced to lax security and general inattentiveness. This past April, Assistant Secretary of State Robert E. Lamb returned from a 36-hour inspection of the U.S. embassy in Moscow and described it as "sloppy, dirty ... and poorly maintained, [which] makes it very difficult to protect the national-security information that is in that building."

In assessing the larger picture--exactly how much damage has been inflicted by Soviet-spy successes--it's important to take a step back from the sensationalist headlines. Although the press blasted the Marine Corps for permitting K.G.B. agents to roam freely in the Moscow embassy, presumably snatching codes and documents at will, this past May, the most serious charges against the arrested Marines were dropped; they were deemed hearsay. That news did not make the cover of Time magazine.

Clearly, however, serious lapses have taken place; the sheer number of spies arrested--27 in the past two years--is unprecedented in peacetime. And some blame must go to inadequate resources and a generally casual attitude toward security. In the wake of Angleton's departure from the CIA, the counterintelligence staff was slashed from 300 to 80. The Defense Department cut its security roster almost in half, making crucial background checks far less feasible. Howard, for instance, was a notoriously high-risk person, both in the CIA and after he was dismissed; he had both a drinking and a drug problem and had committed petty theft. More rigorous investigation would surely have targeted him as a potential danger. Jonathan Jay Pollard, convicted of spying for Israel, was a ludicrously high risk; his background included heavy drug and alcohol use, and for years he pretended he was spying for Israel--when he wasn't. And it was due to Defense Department cost cutting, charges Barron, that John Walker was able to avoid a more rigorous standard five-year check--and to continue spying. Had the FBI or the CIA kept track of K.G.B. diplomat/spies, it might well have caught Walker, who left thousands of documents at prearranged drop sites where K.G.B. agents retrieved them, before 1985. But the FBI doesn't have the manpower to follow every suspected secret agent. In Moscow, on the other hand, every Westerner considered to be an intelligence operative is watched by Soviet security forces around the clock.

Why aren't the so-called diplomats expelled if we know they're spies? In part, because of international protocol. Histori-g cally, the U.S. has allowed spies to oper-s ate here because we spy in their countries. Furthermore, when old faces are replaced e by new ones, counterintelligence agents must learn to identify another cast of char-t acters. Says one veteran counterintellingence agent, "Better the Devil you know s than the Devil you don't know."

But the Walker case and the Soviet t arrest of Daniloff have changed the clitmate of opinion. An angry Reagan Administration chose to make a forceful p statement and last year drastically cut the, size of Soviet delegations in the U.S. Tar-e geted were K.G.B. and G.R.U. (military i intelligence) officers, a total of 105 diplormats ordered home from their UN mission n post. The reductions will be complete by t April 1, 1988.

A mere gesture? Not quite. In addition to disrupting Soviet business as usual, the shake-up may have affected communication between spies and their handlers.

"Will the K.G.B. be able to recoup these operations?" asks Smits, the former FBI counterintelligence expert. "The K.G.B. makes some contacts overseas, and this won't harm those arrangements. What will hit the K.G.B. worst is the people they were developing who were not yet completely recruited."

A top priority of Soviet intelligence these days is catching up with the U.S. in the high-tech race. K.G.B. agents from the technical division, known as Line X operatives, try to cultivate sources in such places as the Silicon Valley, outside San Francisco, and high-tech research corridors near Boston, Dallas and Washington. Once, the Soviets wanted to acquire sophisticated semiconductors; now they want to know how to manufacture their own. And although the K.G.B. has had some success with spies, the Soviets don't necessarily have to recruit traitors to succeed. They can pluck telephone conversations between researchers out of thin air. "The hardest thing to do," says Smits, "is to get an American who has lived a free life, who has felt safe talking on the telephone, to understand that the Soviets intercept conversations. It's the singularly most damaging area of all."

Naturally, the CIA, for its part, intercepts private Soviet conversations. It's often a chore of sheer drudgery--and rarely makes headlines or the stuff of propaganda coups. Only years after the Soviets had made the discovery, for example, did Americans learn that the CIA had listened in on Kremlin leaders while they rode around Moscow in limousines. The West, naturally, is reluctant to boast of such achievements in public. Given the spate of recent spy reversals, one can only hope that there's a bit more bragging going on in private.

"'The spies the Soviets have picked up are tawdry people who sold their country for a few bucks."