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- WORLD, Page 50COVER STORY: Moscow StationHow the KGB penetrated the American EmbassyBy Ronald Kessler
-
-
- After the spy scandal among Marine guards at the U.S. embassy
- in Moscow burst onto front pages two years ago, Ronald Kessler,
- former investigative reporter for the Washington Post and the Wall
- Street Journal, spent months interviewing Marines, diplomats,
- Government investigators and intelligence sources to find out what
- had happened. The author of three previous books (including Spy vs.
- Spy: Stalking Soviet Spies in America), Kessler discovered that
- Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger had been correct when he
- described the Soviet penetration of American security as "massive."
- At a diplomatic mission with a striking lack of security, female
- KGB agents seemed to have little trouble luring lonely Marines into
- spying. In a cover story and numerous articles, TIME made a similar
- assessment. But as suspects recanted their confessions, only one
- Marine, Clayton Lonetree, was convicted of espionage. Embarrassed,
- U.S. Government agencies took to minimizing the damage, contending
- that the KGB had not looted the embassy of its secrets after all.
- The spy furor quickly faded away. Yet, as Kessler details in the
- following excerpts from his book Moscow Station: How the KGB
- Penetrated the American Embassy, the security breach was even worse
- than originally feared.
-
- GUARDING THE JEWELS
-
- The jewels to the CIA's Moscow station were shielded by a metal
- shack behind a vault door on the ninth floor of the American
- embassy. Known as the Communications Programs Unit, or CPU, the
- shack was a metal chamber within a room as large as the Situation
- Room of the White House, roughly 30 ft. by 20 ft. Made of
- galvanized steel, the CPU looked like a huge walk-in refrigerator.
- A dozen CIA, National Security Agency and State Department code
- clerks worked inside it, protecting some of the U.S. Government's
- most sensitive information.
-
- Within the CPU was the CIA's code room, the inner sanctum of
- the mustard-colored beaux arts embassy building on Tchaikovsky
- Street. Here, gleaming gray cipher machines encoded and decoded
- messages transmitted by commercial satellite at 9,600 characters
- a second between Moscow and CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. These
- machines were the most precious commodity at Moscow station.
- Through them flowed top-secret details of CIA operations targeted
- against the Soviet Union. Other crypto machines in the CPU
- transmitted the results of National Security Agency eavesdropping
- on Kremlin communications, as well as instructions from Secretary
- of State George Shultz to Ambassador Arthur Hartman on dealing with
- the Soviets. If the Soviets could read the messages, they would
- know how to counter American arms-negotiating strategies and evade
- NSA eavesdropping techniques. Most damaging of all, they would be
- able to identify the CIA's informants in the Soviet Union. For such
- informants, this would almost certainly mean execution.
-
- The CIA was supremely confident that the codes couldn't be
- broken. Yet in recent years the KGB's efforts to penetrate the
- embassy had grown from a drizzle to a downpour. By 1984 the KGB had
- managed to implant bugs in 13 IBM Selectric typewriters used in the
- Moscow embassy and the consulate in Leningrad. The bugs recorded
- the movements of the typing balls and transmitted the information
- in coded bursts to a KGB listening post in an apartment next to the
- embassy. As a result, all of the highly classified data prepared
- on the bugged typewriters -- including names of CIA officers
- stationed at the embassy -- found their way to the KGB's
- headquarters.
-
- But bugging typewriters and breaching the inner chamber of the
- CPU were entirely different matters. All the ingenuity and
- technical resources of U.S. intelligence agencies had been
- marshaled to make sure the embassy's communications were secure.
- Beyond that, U.S. Marines were there to guard the jewels with their
- honor and their lives. The Marines were the front line of defense.
- Of all the services, they had the reputation of being the fiercest,
- the most patriotic, the toughest.
-
- But their adversary was shrewd. Ever since the U.S. and Soviet
- Union had established diplomatic relations in 1933, the Soviets had
- been trying to compromise embassy employees and gain access to U.S.
- codes. What better way to do that than by having KGB officers and
- informants work in the embassy right alongside the Americans? It
- seems inconceivable that the Americans would allow such a thing.
- Certainly neither the CIA nor the State Department would ever
- permit a Soviet national to work at their headquarters in
- Washington, not even to sweep the floors. Nor had the Soviets ever
- let an American work inside their embassy in Washington.
-
- Yet over the years the KGB had woven such a cocoon around the
- Americans in Moscow that they actually wanted Soviets to work in
- the U.S. embassy. When Americans came to Moscow, they found that
- everything from looking up a telephone number to hiring a plumber
- took an inordinate amount of time. It was easier and cheaper to
- employ Soviet nationals at the embassy to cut through Moscow's
- bureaucratic jungle. And only Soviets supplied by UPDK, a state
- agency controlled by the KGB, could work in foreign embassies in
- Moscow.
-
- So the Americans used the Soviets to drive them to the ballet,
- cut their hair, fix their radios, answer their phones at the
- embassy switchboard. A would-be defector had to talk first to a
- Soviet before he could plead for help from an American. The KGB had
- 206 Soviet informants working in the U.S. embassy, outnumbering the
- Americans.
-
- SOME FUZZY RULES
-
- For the Marines stationed there, arriving in the Soviet Union
- was like stepping onto another planet. Driving from Sheremetyevo
- International Airport, they were impressed by how shabby everything
- seemed. The embassy, a ghastly yellow, looked more like a grubby
- warehouse than an office building.
-
- The Marines entered the embassy through Post 1, which controls
- access to the building. To the left of the entrance, just inside
- the door, the post was enclosed in bulletproof glass. It was the
- size of a highway toll booth. Video monitors and switches lined
- the cubicle. Keys dangled from hooks on the walls. The post guarded
- the central wing of the embassy that housed offices and some
- residences. The south and north wings housed mostly residences.
- Including the Marines, roughly 100 Americans lived within the
- embassy.
-
- On the second floor of the north wing was part of the Marine
- House, a depressing area that included a bar, pool table and
- kitchen. Yellow, peeling linoleum barely covered the floor. The
- Marines actually lived on the second, third and fourth floors of
- the central wing. The seventh and higher floors of the central wing
- were the embassy's secure areas. The CIA was on the seventh floor,
- along with the State Department's political section.
-
- More than half of the ninth floor was taken up by the CPU. On
- the rest of the floor were the offices of the ambassador, his
- deputy and the regional security officer, or RSO. On the tenth
- floor were NSA employees, who eavesdropped on Soviet
- communications, and the military attaches, who gathered information
- on Soviet military strength. An attic contained sending and
- receiving equipment and a shredder and incinerator.
-
- To get to the secure floors, the Americans had to take the main
- elevator to the ninth floor. There, in a small anteroom, was Post
- 3, the most critical guard post in the embassy, a platform
- surrounded by a high, horseshoe-shaped Formica counter. Anyone who
- wanted to enter the CPU or the ambassador's office, or the other
- secure floors, had to pass by the Marine at Post 3.
-
- According to the rules, Marines could have female guests only
- in the lounge area in the north wing. Another rule said Marines
- "will not fraternize with foreign nationals of either sex from any
- of the following countries: Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary,
- Czechoslovakia, Poland, the U.S.S.R., Yugoslavia or East Germany."
- Any contact, except at an embassy function, was to be reported to
- the noncommissioned officer in charge. At the same time, a Navy
- rule said any "form of contact, intentional or otherwise, with any
- citizen of a Communist-controlled country . . . must be reported
- to the Naval Investigative Service."
-
- This placed the Marines in an ambiguous position. The NIS had
- no representative in Moscow. Moreover, a State Department rule said
- contacts should be reported to the RSO. Worse yet, many Marines
- felt they could get in trouble for reporting any contacts. As a
- result, each Marine had his own interpretation of what should be
- reported.
-
- One of the Marines' most important functions was to write up
- embassy employees who violated the rules on safekeeping of
- classified documents. A violation could lead to suspension or
- dismissal. Yet when the Marines issued violations, Richard H.
- Klingenmaier, the RSO, would often refuse to ratify them.
-
- The Marines were also unhappy about the video monitors they
- were supposed to watch to determine whether they should let cars
- enter the embassy's courtyard. If they did not recognize the
- drivers, they were not supposed to let them in. But the cameras
- produced blurry pictures, froze up or didn't turn on at all. "You
- could barely make out if it was a car or if it was a Soviet or an
- American," said one Marine sergeant.
-
- Another concern was Ambassador Hartman's approach to security.
- An avuncular man with thinning white hair, blue eyes and a round
- face, he was one of the brightest officers in the Foreign Service.
- He knew little about security, nor was he supposed to. But he was
- convinced he knew more than the experts.
-
- When Master Gunnery Sergeant Joey Wingate arrived in Moscow,
- he was shocked to learn that Hartman did not allow the Marines to
- wear weapons. "He said, `I just don't want an incident where we
- shoot a Soviet,' " said Wingate. "I felt he'd rather have a Marine
- killed." Wingate finally got Hartman to agree to let the Marines
- wear guns -- unloaded. The ammunition was to be kept at their guard
- posts in a drawer. "One of the things you're there for is to make
- contact with (Soviet) society, not to cut yourself off," Hartman
- would say. "If the idea is to build a bunker, you might as well
- close it down."
-
- The same reasoning led Hartman to say he preferred Soviets over
- Americans for certain tasks. "I'd rather have a basic number of
- them doing things like running my car and a few other jobs, and
- they would find out no more than the guys watching us from the
- windows," he said. He maintained he wanted the Soviets to hear most
- of what he was saying anyway. "I wanted them to know my view of
- what was going on. We would go in the (secure) room on sensitive
- stuff."
-
- PROMOTING A LOSER
-
- Given the well-documented tactics of the KGB, the last thing
- anyone would want to do is send a young, immature, single man to
- Moscow. Almost perversely, that is what the State Department and
- the Marine Corps had been doing since 1934. And of all the
- candidates sent there, it would be difficult to imagine anyone less
- qualified than Clayton Lonetree.
-
- Self-pitying, naive and impudent, Lonetree had unrealistic
- expectations of himself, a consuming need to be loved and barely
- enough intelligence to fire a weapon, let alone defend himself
- against the sophisticated onslaught of the KGB.
-
- Not that he did not come from a distinguished family. His
- grandfather had been chief of the Winnebago Indians of Wisconsin.
- His great-uncle Mitchell Red Cloud, a descendant of Chief Fighting
- Bull, had won the Congressional Medal of Honor during the Korean
- War. His father Spencer Lonetree, a Winnebago and Sioux, was active
- in Indian affairs and had gained the respect of a number of local
- politicians. But he was also a stubborn, vain man, and Clayton felt
- he had a drinking problem.
-
- Spencer never married Clayton's mother Sally Tsotie, who is
- part white and part Navajo. When Clayton was eight, his mother took
- him and his younger brother Craig to New Mexico, where she worked
- as a cook in an Indian mission. After four months she returned to
- the Navajo reservation, leaving the children at the mission. Asked
- why she did so, she replied that Spencer "didn't give me money to
- pay rent or buy food. Men never pay." Clayton never recovered from
- the hurt of being rejected.
-
- Spencer Lonetree took the children to Minnesota. At Johnson
- High School in St. Paul, Lonetree handed his American-history
- teacher a notebook with a swastika and the inscription "Hitler
- Lives" on the cover. His teacher returned the notebook to Lonetree.
- Later Lonetree handed in the notebook again with the inscriptions
- "Holocaust is a lie" and "Adolf Hitler." Inside he wrote, "Jews are
- our misfortune" and "Hitler had the right idea."
-
- In the summer of 1980, Lonetree enlisted in the Marines, in
- part to get away from his father. He was one of the smaller
- recruits at 121 lbs. and 5 ft. 7 1/2 in. tall. After making
- corporal, he decided to become a Marine security guard. He said he
- wanted to become a guard because he was "looking for a little
- adventure."
-
- Many excellent Marines had served in the program, but by
- Lonetree's day it was known as a dumping ground. Between 1980 and
- 1987 no fewer than 545 Marine guards -- 10% of the total on duty
- during that time -- had been removed for infractions including
- black-marketeering, rape, fraternizing and drug use. If there ever
- were a case for dropping Marines as embassy guards, it was
- contained in those records.
-
- Almost from the beginning of his Moscow assignment in 1984,
- Lonetree, then 22, was in trouble. Usually it only took a few
- drinks for him to become unruly. One night he locked himself out
- of his room, passed out on the floor and showed up 7 1/2 hours late
- for guard duty.
-
- It was a mystery to Wingate how Lonetree had ever got into the
- guard program. "He was a loner, not very articulate, borderline in
- the mental category," he would say later. Yet within several months
- of his arrival, the Marine Corps promoted Lonetree to sergeant.
- Wingate objected but was overruled.
-
- In the summer of 1985, a Navy officer found Lonetree asleep on
- guard duty. Wingate recommended that he be sent back to Quantico,
- reduced in rank to corporal and removed from the guard program.
- Again he was overruled. Having made the mistake of sending Lonetree
- to Moscow, the Marine Corps now compounded the error by ignoring
- evidence that he was unfit to guard a grocery store, let alone the
- CIA station in Moscow.
-
- ONE-NIGHT-STANDS AND SWALLOWS
-
- Five embassy wives, dubbed by the Marines "the home wreckers,"
- routinely picked up Marines at Uncle Sam's, the embassy disco, on
- Friday nights. Typically, one wife would sit with a Marine and
- mention that another wife was interested in him. "If he wants her,
- she's up for grabs," was the not-so-subtle line leading to a
- one-night stand. One young State Department employee made it a
- practice to sleep with as many Marines and Seabees as she could.
- In September she took on three Marines in one of their rooms.
-
- In a hostile environment like Moscow, the affairs invited KGB
- blackmail. Yet Wingate was less concerned with the home wreckers'
- activities than with the number of Marines seeing Soviet women. One
- guard had been going with a well-built Soviet woman for six months,
- leaving her pregnant. Her father was an intelligence officer
- formerly stationed in Washington.
-
- For months Lonetree had had his eye on a 25-year-old Soviet
- woman who worked in the embassy. To Lonetree, she had everything:
- 5 ft. 9 in., 130 lbs., fair skin, high cheekbones, good figure,
- large gray eyes, sandy brown hair cut to her neck. She dressed
- stylishly, wore makeup well, spoke almost perfect English. UPDK,
- the Soviet agency that supplied workers, had sent her to the
- embassy in May 1985. Initially, the woman, Violetta A. Seina, was
- a receptionist for the ambassador. Hartman's wife Donna took an
- immediate dislike to her: "She was like a pussycat, always waiting
- and watching." Hartman had Violetta reassigned to the customs area,
- where she worked no more than 10 ft. from Post 1. Lonetree could
- not help noticing her.
-
- Lonetree loved to ride Moscow's marble-floored, chandeliered
- subways, which cost five kopecks -- about 6 cents. In September
- 1985, he saw Violetta on the subway. He thought the meeting was a
- chance encounter; most likely the KGB had set it up. Lonetree had
- just gone through disciplinary proceedings and was known to become
- boisterous after only a few drinks -- a ripe target. The two
- chatted for a few minutes, then parted.
-
- He saw her again on a subway train in October. After she missed
- her stop, they got off at the next one and took a walk. They met
- again at the Marine Corps ball on Nov. 10. Violetta showed up with
- two women, Galya and Natasha, who worked at the embassy; the CIA
- later identified them as KGB officers. Lonetree danced with
- Violetta several times. He was hooked.
-
- Lonetree met Violetta at a subway station again in December,
- and she invited him to her home. She showed Lonetree books, records
- and her childhood photos. They discussed the fact that the embassy
- had just fired her and that UPDK had assigned her to work at the
- Irish embassy.
-
- Lonetree began having sex with Violetta in January 1986, and
- the KGB began stepping up the pressure. Some weeks later, Violetta
- introduced Lonetree to a man she said was her Uncle Sasha. Sasha,
- 33, was 6 ft. 4 in. tall and had a large frame and graying brown
- hair. According to CIA files, Sasha in fact was Aleksei G. Yefimov,
- a KGB officer.
-
- Pretending he did not speak English well, Yefimov asked
- Lonetree about life in America. It seemed to Lonetree that Yefimov
- treated Violetta like a daughter. Lonetree did not suspect that
- Yefimov was anything other than her Uncle Sasha.
-
- Now the KGB moved in for the kill. Violetta told Lonetree that
- Uncle Sasha wanted to see him again. Already subject to blackmail
- and eager to continue seeing her, Lonetree agreed to meet him early
- in February 1986. This time, Yefimov's English had improved; he no
- longer needed Violetta to translate. She had previously told
- Lonetree the Soviets wanted peace, and Lonetree empathized with
- that view, saying he was a friend of the Soviet Union.
-
- Now Yefimov said, "If you are a friend of the Soviet Union,
- you will help me and Violetta."
-
- "How is helping you going to help her?" Lonetree asked.
-
- "She's your friend, but you would also be helping the Soviet
- people."
-
- Yefimov pulled out a list of questions he said had been
- prepared by a friend who was a KGB general. Was Michael Sellers,
- a second secretary of the embassy, in the CIA? Lonetree did not
- always know for sure. But from the locations of staffers' offices
- and whom they associated with, he could make a few deductions.
- About a month later, the Soviets expelled Sellers for allegedly
- engaging in spying. It is likely the Soviets knew about Sellers and
- were testing Lonetree to see if he would confirm the CIA identity.
-
- Yefimov next asked about Murat Natirboff, widely known to be
- the CIA station chief. Lonetree confirmed that he was. Yefimov
- asked Lonetree if he could plant bugs in the offices of Natirboff
- and Hartman. Lonetree said he would not.
-
- The fact that Yefimov did not ask Lonetree to place bugs in the
- CPU is significant. Indeed, nearly all his questions had to do with
- the seventh floor, where the CIA was located, rather than the ninth
- floor, site of the CPU. In retrospect, this raised the question of
- whether the Soviets already had bugs in the CPU.
-
- Yefimov asked Lonetree if he could get the plans to the seventh
- floor, and he said he would try. From having an affair with a
- Soviet woman, Lonetree had passed over the line to espionage.
-
- A few weeks later, Lonetree brought along floor plans that he
- stole from the embassy. Yefimov produced a folder containing photos
- of more than 300 embassy personnel. He asked Lonetree to arrange
- the photos to show who was married to whom. Lonetree did so.
- Yefimov pulled out an embassy phone book and asked about the
- functions of each person. Besides Sellers and Natirboff, Lonetree
- disclosed the names of two other CIA employees who were never
- expelled.
-
- Turning to the floor plans, Yefimov asked Lonetree to mark
- sensitive spaces, secret doors and security devices on the seventh
- floor. Lonetree told him how the alarm systems worked and how the
- Marines reacted to them. Yefimov was particularly interested in
- Hartman's desk. Several times he asked Lonetree to describe it,
- presumably so the KGB could design a listening device for it.
- Repeatedly, he asked if Lonetree would place listening devices in
- the embassy, and repeatedly Lonetree declined.
-
- Lonetree tried to tell himself that the nature of the visits
- had not changed, that they were still social, that Violetta had no
- connection with the KGB. If he had admitted to himself that she
- was a KGB plant, he would have to face up to the fact that she did
- not love him. She gave him the love he had craved as a child, and
- that was more important to him than their four sexual encounters.
-
- Transferred to the Vienna embassy in March 1986, Lonetree
- received love letters from Violetta ("Clay, I'm just scared to
- death of losing you"). He also continued to meet with Uncle Sasha,
- giving him information on Vienna embassy personnel and floor plans.
- But he was in an alcoholic fog much of the time.
-
- Confused and apprehensive, Lonetree approached the CIA station
- chief at an embassy Christmas party on Dec. 14, 1986. Edging the
- man toward a crackling fire, Lonetree said he had been seeing
- Soviet government officials in Vienna.
-
- For the next ten days the CIA debriefed Lonetree. Since the CIA
- is not a law-enforcement agency, it was not interested in
- preserving evidence or making sure he would talk in the future --
- only in how much damage Lonetree had done and whether he might be
- used as a double agent. These deficiencies reveal a weakness in how
- the U.S. Government handles espionage by Americans overseas, a
- weakness that would haunt the CIA later.
-
- Thick-skulled to the end, Lonetree said he bore no ill will
- toward Violetta. He told a CIA officer, "If Sasha was really her
- uncle, then she was somewhat obligated to support him."
-
- A STRAIGHT-UP MARINE
-
- After Hartman in early 1986 decided to cut the size of the
- Soviet work force in hopes of minimizing complaints about the
- security dangers it posed, two Soviet cooks were dismissed. Nina
- Sheriakovo, the senior cook, was blond and busty and, at 40, wore
- low-cut dresses. But the Marines did not think she was particularly
- attractive, partly because she did not bathe often.
-
- Her assistant, Galina N. Golotina, had been with the embassy
- since January 1985. More petite than Nina, Galya was 28, weighed
- 115 lbs. and stood 5 ft. 3 in. tall. She had green eyes and brown
- hair. The Marines made fun of Nina, claiming she made a habit of
- offering to show them her breasts. But they liked Galya, a divorcee
- with an eight-year-old son.
-
- As the noncommissioned officer in charge of ordering food
- supplies, Corporal Arnold Bracy had the most contact with Galya.
- Several times a week, the 6-ft. 1-in. Marine consulted her to find
- out what food the cooks needed. Bracy was a straight-up Marine. The
- fact that he did not drink or carouse with girls made him an
- unlikely candidate for recruitment. But Bracy had one weak spot:
- he had obviously developed a fondness for Galya.
-
- Certainly there was nothing in Bracy's background that would
- lead one to suspect that he could be compromised. Born on Nov. 28,
- 1965, he grew up in a religious family in Queens. His father,
- Theodore R. Bracy, is a subway motorman and an evangelist deacon
- at Calvary Full Gospel Church in Woodside, N.Y. Both he and his
- wife Frieda have bachelor's degrees in theology.
-
- After high school, Bracy joined the Marines in June 1983. He
- later signed up for security-guard school and chose Moscow as his
- first post. There he at first retained his prim view of sex. While
- he had previously dated a few girls, he had remained a virgin
- because of his religious convictions. Before Marine parties,
- several women would change clothes in Bracy's room in front of him,
- hoping to attract his attention. He would walk out so he wouldn't
- see them naked.
-
- But Galya was different. She was not pushy and did not run
- around with other men. Bracy admired that. Her English was not
- good, and that made him feel protective toward her. In the months
- before Galya was fired, several of the Marines noticed that she and
- Bracy seemed to have become quite close. Sensing the same thing,
- Wingate warned Bracy about fraternizing. He appeared to see her
- less after that. But many of the Marines thought the relationship
- had not cooled.
-
- Frederick Mecke, who had succeeded Klingenmaier as regional
- security officer, was at the embassy on Sunday, June 29, 1986, when
- Bracy asked if he could talk with him. They went into the secure
- "bubble" on the ninth floor, and Bracy began unraveling a bizarre
- tale. He said he had run into Galya in a park near the Kosmos
- Hotel, and they began chatting. By then she was working as a nanny
- for the family of Philippe Duchateau, the embassy's deputy press
- secretary. After some pleasantries, she blurted out that someone,
- possibly from the KGB, had asked her to bring Bracy to a certain
- apartment. The idea was to entrap him sexually. If she did not
- cooperate, she told Bracy, UPDK would fire her. After ten minutes,
- Bracy went back to the embassy. Or so he told Mecke.
-
- Mecke reported the incident to State Department security. He
- decided Galya should not be fired as the Duchateaus' nanny; after
- all, she had reported the KGB attempt. But Mecke let Bracy know he
- should have nothing to do with her.
-
- Mecke was in his office on the afternoon of Aug. 20, 1986, when
- Duchateau came in with a strange tale. He and his wife had let
- Stephen Wright, an ABC-TV sound man, and his wife stay in their
- apartment while they were away on vacation. When the Duchateaus got
- back, Wright told them a black Marine and Galya were having sex in
- the bedroom as they arrived at the apartment. Flustered, the Marine
- told the Wrights he had been inspecting the place. He quickly left.
-
- Bracy's report of nearly two months earlier flashed through
- Mecke's mind. He checked the liberty log for the day when the
- Wrights arrived at the Duchateaus' apartment. Bracy was the only
- black Marine who had signed out.
-
- Mecke immediately called him in. Bracy seemed nervous. He said
- he had been in the apartment with Galya but denied having sex with
- her, claiming he went to the apartment because the former embassy
- cook was pressuring him to cooperate with the KGB. He wanted to
- tell her he would have no further contact with her. Mecke did not
- believe a word of it. Why would anyone visit someone to say he
- would not see her?
-
- The next day Mecke told Hartman about it, saying of Bracy: "He
- is very vulnerable. It's in our best interests to get him out of
- the country immediately." Hartman agreed. On orders from Mecke,
- Duchateau fired Galya.
-
- That night Corporal Robert J. Williams went to see Bracy in
- his room at the Marine House. Williams later informed the Naval
- Investigative Service that Bracy told him he had fallen in love
- with Galya and had given the Soviets classified documents in
- exchange for thousands of dollars. Williams subsequently recanted,
- saying the NIS coerced him. Bracy also denies making the comments.
-
- Yet others have said Williams told them essentially the same
- thing. His former girlfriend, Taina Laurivuori, a Finnish citizen
- who worked as a nanny to a U.S. embassy employee, said she
- accompanied Bracy and Williams to the airport four days after
- Duchateau reported the incident in his apartment. Laurivuori said
- Bracy looked sad, and she asked Williams what was wrong with him.
- Williams said a Soviet girl had set Bracy up.
-
- Later, after Bracy was arrested, Williams called Laurivuori
- from Vienna, where he was then based. Recalling the ride to the
- airport with Bracy, Williams said to her, "Don't tell anybody, but
- the day before we went to the airport, Arnold told me he was doing
- that spy stuff."
-
- Lance Corporal Philip J. Sink, a Marine security guard
- stationed in Vienna, also said Williams told him that Bracy had
- confessed to him. Sink quoted Williams as saying, "Bracy came to
- me one night and was crying and telling me he was in over his head.
- He had done things he shouldn't have done, and he didn't know what
- to do." Williams said something about a $1,000 payment.
-
- Bracy was demoted to corporal and sent to the Air Ground Combat
- Center at Twentynine Palms, Calif.
-
- "WE'VE GOT ANOTHER SPY!"
-
- On Dec. 22, 1986, after Lonetree's confession in Vienna, the
- NIS began an investigation of security breaches at Moscow station.
- The NIS would interview 487 Marines and 1,285 other people and
- administer polygraph tests to 260 people.
-
- As espionage cases go, it should have been easy. Lonetree had
- already confessed to taking $3,500 from the Soviets in return for
- classified information. He was still talking. It remained for the
- NIS to warn Lonetree of his rights, take his confession and tie up
- a few loose ends.
-
- But the NIS proved to be as good at investigating espionage as
- the State Department was at protecting security. In fairness, the
- FBI normally handles espionage investigations. Only when the target
- of the investigation is a military man and no civilians are
- involved do the military services have exclusive jurisdiction.
-
- NIS agents took Lonetree to a suite in the Strudlhof hotel near
- the Vienna embassy. After waiving his right to a lawyer, he held
- forth about his escapades with Violetta and Sasha. He almost seemed
- to be enjoying the attention. At one point, Lonetree told the
- openmouthed agents that he knew Yefimov liked him because of the
- way he smiled at him.
-
- The next morning, the agents flew Lonetree to London, into the
- Holiday Inn near Heathrow airport. After 2 1/2 days of interviews,
- Thomas E. Brannon, an NIS polygraph agent, talked with Lonetree for
- six hours. The following day he began administering polygraph
- tests. After Lonetree signed a second statement based on what he
- told Brannon, he began registering deceptive responses on the
- machine. Brannon thought the Marine was holding something back.
-
- Brannon decided Lonetree must have taken documents from the
- embassy in Vienna and began pressing him. Lonetree continued to
- deny taking any documents. As Brannon increased the pressure,
- Lonetree finally said, "Do you want me to lie to you?" "Yes,"
- Brannon replied.
-
- Lonetree said he stole three top-secret documents from the
- embassy's fourth-floor CPU and 200 secret documents he was supposed
- to burn at the embassy. Then he began hyperventilating and went
- into the bathroom to splash cold water on his face. When he
- returned, he said he wanted a lawyer.
-
- Slow as he was, Lonetree saw no point in talking to someone
- who told him to lie. Within 48 hours the NIS established that he
- had in fact lied: the secret documents never existed, nor had he
- been on watch when he said he took them. But the damage had been
- done. By pressing Lonetree too hard and losing his confidence, the
- NIS had lost the cooperation that is so vital in an espionage case.
-
- By March 1987 the NIS had interviewed 200 Marines, CIA
- officers, diplomats and military attaches who might have known
- anything about Lonetree. Still the NIS had not interviewed Bracy.
- He was thought to be a 5.0 Marine -- the perfect performance score
- -- and was low on the interview list.
-
- That changed on March 16, 1987, when veteran NIS agent David
- Moyer was in Vienna to discuss Lonetree's case with the CIA station
- chief. Now Moyer learned something startling from the chief:
- Lonetree had mentioned that Bracy told him in Moscow he was
- secretly seeing the Soviet cook, Galya, and that she wanted to
- introduce him to her uncle. Recognizing that the KGB might have
- recruited yet another spy, Moyer cabled NIS headquarters and said
- Bracy should be interviewed immediately in California.
-
- The last thing to do at this point was to interview Bracy. In
- any investigation, all the facts must be assembled before the
- target is confronted. Had the NIS gone about its job properly, it
- would have done a thorough background investigation into Bracy's
- history and character. But NIS special agent R. Michael Embry in
- Twentynine Palms was ordered to interview Bracy immediately. He
- began doing so on March 18, 1987.
-
- Embry felt Bracy was lying when he said he had not had sex with
- Galya. But he did not think Bracy had committed espionage. The next
- day, two NIS polygraph agents took Bracy to a motel near Twentynine
- Palms for lie-detector tests. When the operators told him he was
- registering deceptive reactions, Bracy began changing his story
- about his meeting with Galya in the Duchateaus' apartment. In a
- statement he signed after the test, he said, "She moved closer to
- me and initiated the sexual contact, and we began making out. After
- a short time she suggested we go to the bedroom, where we had sex.
- After having sexual intercourse, she told me that they had been
- putting pressure on her family so she would arrange for me to meet
- `Uncle Sasha.' She implied that he really was not her uncle but
- that was what she was supposed to tell me." She said her uncle
- would be interested in learning "who was leaving the embassy and
- who was going to replace them, and the names of the people working
- for the CIA."
-
- The following day, Bracy signed another statement, one that
- would rock the intelligence community. According to that statement,
- Bracy ran into Lonetree one night in the kitchen of the Marine
- House in January 1986. Lonetree "was very drunk," Bracy said. "He
- was obviously pretty worked up and mad at the system and how the
- Marine detachment was run. He remarked that he was paying them back
- in his own way. I asked him what he meant, and he said, `I've been
- letting people in the embassy.' I knew he was talking about
- Russians. He said he had done it many times."
-
- About two weeks later, Bracy said, he saw Lonetree escorting
- a Soviet man into the courtyard one night and on another night saw
- him escorting someone through the embassy itself. "I felt sort of
- sorry for him, so I decided not to report what he had told me,"
- Bracy said. "He told me at that time that this had been going on
- all the time. I had been standing duty with him, and if I did not
- cooperate, I would be just as guilty as he was."
-
- Beginning in February, Bracy said, he agreed to turn off the
- alarms while Lonetree brought Soviets into secure areas. He also
- warned him if the sergeant-of-the-guard was coming. He said he
- helped let Soviets into the CPU three times for an hour each time.
- Bracy said Lonetree gave him $1,000 for helping him.
-
- Bracy signed this final incriminating statement on Friday,
- March 20, 1987. At that point, he overheard the agents talking
- outside the room. One of them said, "We've got ourselves another
- spy!"
-
- As soon as he heard the comment, Bracy told the agents he
- wanted to retract his statement. They told him he could be charged
- with perjury for swearing falsely under oath. He said he would
- rather go to jail for perjury than espionage. The next day, Bracy
- said he wanted a lawyer. He never talked to the NIS again. The NIS
- then compounded its blunders by arresting Bracy on the spot. After
- he retracted his statement, the NIS had no evidence to hold him on.
-
- IGNITING A FIRE STORM
-
- When I interviewed Bracy at the coffee shop outside the
- Quantico Marine base, he said that the NIS agents got him to
- implicate himself by telling him that the statements would only
- help in their investigation of Lonetree. According to Bracy, the
- agents came up with the scenario that Lonetree and Bracy let the
- Soviets into the embassy. He said they asked him hypothetical
- questions, then wrote the answers as fact.
-
- But it was one thing to implicate others in crime and another
- to confess to espionage himself. Unless he had been tortured, it
- was difficult to see why Bracy would confess -- unless he was in
- fact guilty. What made me decide he was telling the truth when he
- confessed to letting the KGB into the embassy was the fact that his
- subsequent accounts clashed repeatedly with the accounts of other
- witnesses I interviewed. Indeed they even clashed with Bracy's own
- version of the events. I was to find that every time he opened his
- mouth, Bracy told a different version of what took place between
- him and Galya.
-
- Also persuasive was Bracy's detailed knowledge of how easily
- the guard at Post 3 could let the KGB into the CPU at night. As
- Bracy told me, the Marine at Post 1 guarding the main entrance left
- at 11:30 p.m. At that point, the Marine at Post 3 on the ninth
- floor controlled access to the entire embassy through video cameras
- and intercoms. That Marine could not only let the KGB through the
- front door; he could also let the KGB into the secure areas and
- provide combinations to the CPU vault.
-
- To be sure, the combinations were encased in plastic pouches.
- After sealing them, a CPU communicator wrapped them in tape that
- he signed. If a pouch were opened, it could not be resealed. The
- next morning, a communicator checked to make sure it was intact.
- But it would have been relatively easy for the KGB to substitute
- a pouch complete with tape and forged signatures.
-
- The one defense against a surreptitious entry -- the CPU alarm
- system -- was useless. When the CPU alarms were triggered, a buzzer
- sounded, and a red light went on at Post 3. By flipping a switch,
- the Marine could silence the buzzer and turn off the red light. A
- yellow light then went on to show that the alarm had gone off. Only
- a communicator from the CPU could turn off the yellow light by
- resetting the alarms. But the system did not show when the alarms
- had been triggered. The Marine on Post 3 could easily let the KGB
- into the CPU at 2 a.m. Then at 6 a.m. he could tell the CPU
- communicators the alarms had just gone off.
-
- In the end, the answer to the puzzle lay in Bracy's six-page
- confession. Most Marines did not realize, as Bracy did, that they
- could silence the alarms in the CPU and lie about when the alarms
- had gone off. When CIA officers read his statement, they felt it
- was authentic.
-
- On the other hand, there was an air of unreality to Bracy's
- description of Lonetree's involvement. The two were not close. It
- was unlikely the reclusive Lonetree, even if drunk, would tell
- Bracy he was letting the Soviets into the embassy.
-
- Ultimately, it became clear even to the NIS that Bracy had made
- up the story that Lonetree let the KGB into the embassy. Bracy had
- claimed he helped Lonetree let the Soviets into the CPU in February
- 1986. But the two stood posts together at night only twice -- in
- October 1985 and in November 1985. Lonetree passed lie-detector
- tests on his statement that he had not conspired with Bracy.
-
- Bracy's confession was like a picture of a human face drawn by
- a schizophrenic. One side was real, the other -- relating to
- Lonetree's actions -- was not. But what if Lonetree were taken out
- of the picture? What if Bracy let the Soviets in by himself? Then
- the face became whole.
-
- According to this version, Bracy first began having sex with
- Galya in January 1986, as he confessed. Galya then introduced him
- to her "uncle." Afraid that he would be found out, Bracy began
- letting the Soviets into the CPU in February. The report of seeing
- Galya in the park in June 1986 was a ruse to throw off suspicion.
-
- When the NIS confronted him, Bracy realized that the agents
- were after Lonetree, not him. To clear himself, he made up the
- story of Lonetree's involvement, thinking he would shift the blame.
- He may not have realized that a co-conspirator is just as culpable
- under the law as the perpetrator.
-
- Most compelling is that this version of events conforms with
- Yefimov's demands of Lonetree. The KGB officer asked Lonetree to
- place bugs in the offices of the CIA station chief, the ambassador
- and the regional security officer. He did not ask him to place bugs
- in the CPU, which should have been the KGB's first target -- unless
- the KGB had already penetrated it.
-
- By this scenario, the KGB was not trying to recruit Bracy to
- replace Lonetree. It was the other way around. By the time Yefimov
- began meeting with Lonetree in early February 1986, the KGB had
- already recruited Bracy, according to Bracy's statement.
-
- The NIS, wedded to the idea that two or even three Marine
- guards were needed to let the KGB into the embassy, never came to
- this conclusion. Recognizing that Lonetree had not conspired with
- Bracy, the NIS spent countless hours trying to fit other Marine
- suspects into the conspiracy.
-
- Unlike the NIS, the FBI concluded that only the guard standing
- Post 3 was needed to let the KGB into the CPU. In fact, the FBI
- decided that security was so lax that the KGB could have got into
- the CPU by simply distracting the Marine at Post 3, possibly with
- a girl.
-
- Ultimately, this was the most scandalous fact of all: that the
- security of Moscow station and the protection of many of America's
- most important global secrets depended on the integrity of a single
- young Marine stationed on the KGB's home turf.
-
- "I didn't let anybody in the building," Bracy told me. "If I
- did anything, I'd be in the brig like Lonetree. I'm out of the
- brig, so it didn't happen."
-
- Bracy's confession ignited a fire storm in Washington. Now it
- seemed there was no question that the KGB had got into the jewels
- at Moscow station. There was only one problem: Bracy had recanted.
- Nor was there any corroboration for his story.
-
- The Marines announced Bracy's arrest on March 24, 1987, saying
- he was suspected of espionage. Two days later, the Marines
- announced that additional charges had been filed against Lonetree.
- According to the new charges, Lonetree let the Soviets into the CPU
- and other sensitive areas of the embassy while Bracy acted as
- lookout. The new charges were based solely on Bracy's confession.
- Suddenly the Marine security-guard scandal was front-page news.
-
- Unfortunately, interrogations that brought out allegations of
- espionage tended to collapse as soon as the Marines left the
- interrogation rooms. On April 19, 1987, Williams retracted his
- statements against Bracy. The Marine Corps charged Williams with
- making false statements. On May 10, 1987, Bracy formally retracted
- his statements, saying they were coerced by the NIS. Five days
- later, the Marine Corps dropped the charges against Lonetree that
- had been based on Bracy's confession. Finally, on June 12, the
- Marine Corps dropped espionage charges against Bracy.
-
- In recommending dismissal of the charges, Bracy's prosecutor,
- Major Charles A. Ryan, admitted there was no corroboration for his
- confession but said he still believed Bracy was guilty. Unless
- there was "significant coercion," he wrote in a memo, "there is no
- conceivable reason why any Marine would ever confess to a crime
- such as espionage unless he had actually engaged in this conduct
- against his country. The inescapable conclusion I am forced to draw
- is that Corporal Bracy was involved in espionage." (Bracy, no
- longer a Marine, nonetheless still lives on the Marine base at
- Quantico, Va.; he married a woman in the service.)
-
- As for Lonetree, he was convicted by a military jury of 13
- counts of espionage and sentenced to 30 years in prison. This was
- later reduced to 25 years. He will be eligible for parole after
- serving a third of his sentence. Even as he sat in the brig at
- Quantico because of the trap Violetta Seina had laid for him,
- Lonetree pined away for her. He asked his father to find her and
- tell her he was O.K. Insisted Lonetree: "I believe she loves me."
-
- A CHILLING DISCOVERY
-
- By the end of 1987, the State Department had begun leaking
- stories that no evidence of a penetration of the embassy in Moscow
- had been found. The stories overlooked the fact that the KGB had
- penetrated the embassy by introducing bugged typewriters into
- secure areas and obtaining secret information about the embassy and
- its employees from Lonetree.
-
- What the State Department and the press did not know is that
- evidence of a penetration had been found -- but the CIA and the NSA
- covered it up. In the summer of 1987, the State Department shipped
- the entire CPU and all the communications equipment from both the
- Moscow and Leningrad missions -- 120 crates from Moscow alone --
- to Virginia. After the FBI took custody of the material, some 20
- NSA technicians began examining each part, using X-ray,
- spectroscopic and infrared analysis.
-
- In August 1987 the NSA made a chilling discovery. The power
- line to the CPU in Moscow had been replaced. That meant the KGB
- could have diverted signals from cipher machines within the CPU to
- the outside. Next the NSA found that 8-in. by 14-in. circuit
- boards, along with chips the size of quarters, had been replaced
- in the printers. The new components appeared to be diverting
- uncoded signals from the "red side" of the communications circuits
- to the power line. The NSA later found similarly sinister devices
- in the CPU from Leningrad.
-
- The KGB had turned the CPU into a gigantic listening device.
- Because the Soviets could compare the uncoded "red side" signals
- with the encoded "black side," they most likely could replicate the
- cipher keys -- the unique data that was needed to decipher the
- messages -- used by other American embassies throughout the world.
- That raised the possibility that the KGB had been listening in on
- communications not only from Moscow and Leningrad but also from
- Vienna, Helsinki and London. Since equipment in the CPU had been
- replaced in 1984, the penetration of the jewels to Moscow station
- could have gone back that far.
-
- Only a dozen people, including President Reagan, were told of
- the findings. In deciding to keep the findings secret, the CIA and
- the NSA could always claim that there were legitimate national
- security reasons for doing so. But there was another reason for the
- secrecy. "There's a cover-up to hide embarrassment, to cover ass,"
- said one intelligence official.
-
- According to these sources, the result of the communications
- penetration was the decapitation of the CIA's operations in the
- Soviet Union. Nearly a dozen CIA officers have been expelled, and
- at least 25 Soviets have been executed in the Soviet Union since
- 1983 on suspicion of collaborating with the CIA. At least two of
- those executed were, in fact, Soviets working for the CIA. The rest
- were innocent.
-
- While Edward Lee Howard, the former CIA officer who defected
- to the Soviets, was responsible for several of the executions, he
- knew CIA agents only by their code names. Intelligence sources
- believe the majority of the damage to CIA operations was caused by
- a penetration of Moscow station communications.
-
- The same ineptitude that led to the security breaches in the
- first place now conspired to protect the perpetrators. Bracy, who
- probably would not have been the first Marine to let the KGB into
- the embassy, got off scot-free. As the scandal faded from the
- newspapers, the cover-up became complete.
-
- It was the ultimate irony that Ronald Reagan, who came to
- office with a mandate to strengthen the nation's defenses, wound
- up presiding over the worst intelligence debacle since the CIA's
- abortive 1961 invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.