TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/042390/04230013.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 11.6 KB | 241 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 40

New Trench Coats?


The cold war may be over, but intelligence agencies are still
fighting for bigger budgets as they redeploy forces and shift
priorities

By HOWARD G. CHUA-EOAN -- Reported by Jay Peterzell and Bruce
van Voorst/Washington and Elizabeth Tucker/Moscow, with other
bureaus


    The practice of deception is the art of survival for spies.
For the past three years, a West German cryptographer named
Heinz-Helmuth Werner worked in the very heart of NATO
headquarters in Brussels, dealing with the codes and secret
signals that masked the classified information of the Western
alliance. No one questioned his reliability. Two weeks ago,
however, his cover was blown. Acting on a tip from West German
intelligence, Belgian police searched Werner's home in a
Brussels suburb and found transmitting devices and
false-bottomed suitcases, as well as top-secret NATO documents.
Werner is suspected of having been a spy since 1969, relaying
the workings of NATO and Bonn to his masters in East Berlin.

    A year ago, the Werner caper would have produced headlines
around the world. Today, with East and West Germany on the verge
of merging into one country, the case is overshadowed and
treated as a footnote to history, an almost quaint reminder of a
vanishing John le Carre world in which secrets about NATO
military maneuvers were of supreme importance to a Warsaw Pact
nation. As Eastern Europe breaks free of Moscow's grip and the
Soviet Union itself enjoys unprecedented openness, the espionage
world is undergoing its own momentous changes.

    Soviet newspapers and magazines are publishing details
about life in the U.S.S.R. that once would have crowned a CIA
officer's career. Czechoslovakia's President, Vaclav Havel,
discloses how much Semtex, a lethal plastic explosive, Prague
has sold to Libya over the years (1,000 tons), while East
Germany disbands its dreaded secret police. Soviet and other
East bloc officials are still trying to sponge up information
from the West, but they have widened their scope and deepened
their activities; as Moscow tries to pump up perestroika with
the technology and expertise of the West, its agents are busier
than ever researching U.S. Government policy in the Library of
Congress and cozying up to capitalists to absorb their
management secrets.

    Washington and Moscow, however, are not about to retire
from the spying business. In both capitals, intelligence circles
are exploring new ways of gleaning information and emphasizing
the prudence of increasing their budgets and staffs. Both
agencies are discussing how to redirect funds and manpower to
meet fresh challenges. Says Oklahoma's Democratic Senator David
Boren of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: "As the
arms race is winding down, the spy race is heating up."

    Washington and Moscow still work hard at maintaining
up-to-date inventories of each other's arsenals, but that job is
already done by satellites and computers. Meanwhile, both sides
are hungrier for information in areas that require human
analysis and hands-on, close-up espionage. "If anything," says
CIA Director William Webster, "the changes introduced by
Gorbachev make it more important for the Soviets to get
intelligence on key foreign policy matters, congressional
intentions, defense and advanced technology." As for the U.S.,
it will need as much information as possible on the players in
the unpredictable dramas of Central and Eastern Europe, as well
as in the volatile Third World. Says former CIA Director
Stansfield Turner: "If we don't build a worldwide information
network today, we won't have it ten years down the road when we
need it."

    There is already evidence that the KGB is increasing, not
cutting back, its espionage activity. Says Webster: "We see
signs that the Soviets are more aggressive, more robust; there
are more pitches being made." He adds that there is a greater
Soviet effort to recruit agents both in the U.S. and in Europe.
One recent Soviet defector has disclosed that the KGB's
Department T, which specializes in industrial espionage,
illicitly gathered 25,000 technical documents and 4,000 pieces
of machinery from 1984 to 1988. Several African intelligence
services are cooperating with the KGB in their countries in
attempts to steal U.S. secrets abroad. "Soviet intelligence is
more aggressive than it's been at anytime in the last decade,"
argues Oliver Revell, the FBI's associate deputy director in
charge of investigations.

    For its part, the KGB is complaining that the number of
Soviet citizens abroad who were approached by foreign services
tripled between 1985 and 1988. According to press reports in
Moscow, the KGB has "unmasked" some 30 Soviets engaged in spying
for the West in the past four years. This year alone, 100,000
Soviets are expected to visit the U.S., giving the CIA
unprecedented access to ordinary citizens. Intelligence experts
suggest that the U.S. would be foolish not to take advantage of
opportunities to recruit agents in the Soviet Union as well, if
only to establish a network that could be deployed in case
glasnost evaporates.

    In the immediate future, the paramount concern for both
Washington and Moscow will be monitoring compliance with
arms-control agreements. By the end of the year the U.S. and the
Soviets will most likely sign five arms agreements, including
a new START treaty. All will probably require permanent on-site
monitoring of U.S. and Soviet defense facilities, providing many
potential listening posts from which to observe and steal
classified data from either Soviet military researchers or
American defense contractors. With perhaps two dozen START sites
involved, in contrast to the one site each called for in the
1988 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, additional
manpower will be needed to track the inspectors. Says the CIA's
Webster: "We don't hear where the resources are coming from."

    In fact, the major challenge for the U.S. intelligence
establishment is to prove to congressional budgetmakers that it
can shift its goals and change its methods as the Soviet
military threat recedes. "In general, both House and Senate
members agree that we do not have a net decline in our
challenge," says Gary Foster, who heads the CIA's new office for
planning and coordination. "They want us to show responsiveness
to what's going on, but they are not necessarily saying `Get
smaller.'" Says Oklahoma Congressman Dave McCurdy of the House
Intelligence Committee: "What we have to ask is whether the
Soviet analyst in the CIA who's been counting submarines in the
Baltic Sea is the same person who should be analyzing political
stability in Estonia or Latvia."

    These changes will lead to some significant reallotments
within the estimated $30 billion U.S. intelligence budget. Funds
for counterintelligence and arms-control monitoring are likely
to go up. However, it should be possible to save some of the
enormous resources currently spent by U.S. military
intelligence. These include the expensive listening and
cryptographic programs that keep track of the Soviet order of
battle and intercept Warsaw Pact communications. Cuts may also
be made in satellite programs aimed at tactical intelligence
gathering.

    The KGB's problems are more than budgetary. Since 1988 it
has been conducting a public relations campaign in the Soviet
media to eradicate its decades-old image as the repressive arm
of the regime. KGB Chief Vladimir Kryuchkov depicts the agency
as the lawful and benign upholder of justice, the supporter of
perestroika as well as the country's first line of defense
against domestic and foreign threats. KGB officials, for
example, argue that the agency is the state's primary weapon
against organized crime, and that as much as 80% of the
agency's forces are engaged in the battle against gangsters and
drug traffickers.

    Two weeks ago, Kryuchkov turned on the charm as he debated
with a delegation of Soviet legislators who want to transform
the KGB headquarters in Dzherzhinsky Square into a memorial to
the victims of Stalin. Referring to the mustard-yellow structure
that houses the infamous Lubyanka prison and basement cells
where countless innocent people were interrogated and shot,
Kryuchkov declared that the KGB is undertaking its own reforms
and that "from within its walls come truth, justice, fairness
and honesty." While Kryuchkov may not be persuasive enough to
revise history, Soviet citizens are amazed at how far the KGB
has come. Says Igor Spassky, a member of the Supreme Soviet's
Committee on Defense and State Security: "Four years ago, we
couldn't even theoretically consider such a meeting."

    Even as Moscow attempts a public change of face, it is also
trying to preserve as much of its espionage empire as possible.
The Soviet Union once could count on East Germany to penetrate
West Germany, Czechoslovakia to target military and industrial
sources in the West, and Bulgaria to carry out assassinations.
Now, however, the KGB's symbiotic relationship with Warsaw Pact
agencies is threatened by reformist governments in the region.
Though these countries' foreign operations have not yet been
curtailed, some spies -- especially East Germans -- are trying
to come in from the cold. Last month Markus Wolf, the former
head of East German intelligence whose prowess at placing agents
in Bonn's highest offices led to his depiction as the formidable
Karla in Le Carre's spy novels, went to the Soviet Union,
presumably to help the KGB roll up the East German operations.
"Some of the best analysts from Eastern Europe are probably in
Moscow now," says a British diplomat. "And the best agents
abroad are probably employed by the KGB."

    With the Soviets scooping up the cream of the East bloc,
some agents who do not make the grade are hunting for espionage
jobs in the West. Most are turned away. "If the KGB did not want
them, why should we?" says a senior British diplomat. Many
agents end up working in Western countries for Iraq, Saudi
Arabia and Libya. "It makes sense," says Malcolm Mackintosh,
senior fellow at London's International Institute for Strategic
Studies. "They are less conspicuous in the West than Arabs are."
The cold war may be over, but for spies the basic method remains
the same: the art of survival is founded on the practice of
deception.


____________________________________________________________
COLD WARRIORS

    CIA

    "If anything, the changes introduced by Gorbachev make it
more important for the Soviets to get intelligence."

    -- CIA Director William Webster

    Headquartered in Langley, Va., the CIA is financed by a
U.S. intelligence fund that also provides for certain activities
of the departments of State, Treasury and Defense. About half
of the classified fund, estimated at $30 billion for 1990, is
earmarked for tactical and military intelligence. The CIA,
National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency and
civilian intelligence groups share the remainder.


    KGB

    "We coexist. They work, and we work."

    -- KGB Chief Vladimir Kryuchkov, referring to his agency's
rivalry with the CIA

    While the KGB has promised to uphold glasnost, it offers
few details about its budget and employment rolls. U.S.
diplomats in Moscow believe, however, that the agency's
international operations are receiving greater funding than
ever, particularly for industrial espionage. The KGB is
reorganizing its networks in Eastern Europe. Moscow is also
concerned that Cuba may shut down KGB listening posts, just 90
miles from Florida.