The Marine Spy Scandal: It's a Biggie

(2 of 3)

The Administration has launched what State Department Spokesman Charles Redman called a "full-scale counterintelligence investigation." All 28 Marines assigned to Moscow are being replaced. State Department security officials will accompany the new guards on their rounds. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and the House and Senate intelligence committees ordered broad investigations into the entire 1,400-man Marine Security Guard battalion to which Bracy and Lonetree belonged.

Among other charges, the Marine Corps alleges that Lonetree and Bracy provided the Soviets with the names, addresses and telephone numbers of "covert U.S. intelligence agents" in the Soviet Union. They offered embassy blueprints, floor plans and office assignments to the Soviets, turned over the contents of confidential burn bags and lied to security personnel about why alarms had been activated in the communications center.

In addition, the Marine Corps charges that Lonetree provided Soviet agents with the floor plans of the U.S. embassy in Vienna. Lonetree's lawyer says his client will "absolutely deny these allegations."

Lonetree, who is from St. Paul, arrived in Moscow in September 1984, and allegedly started working for the KGB soon after he began a love affair with an embassy translator. She later introduced the Marine to her "Uncle Sasha," an operative known as Aleksei Yefimov. The scandal began to unfold when Lonetree, feeling pressure from the Soviets, surrendered to U.S. authorities in Vienna last December. Bracy, a native of Queens, N.Y., is said to have had a sexual relationship with one of the embassy's Soviet staff, a cook. Both of the women who became involved with the Marines were attractive; it is well known that the KGB uses such women -- "swallows," in the trade -- to lure contacts. "We're not talking about bag ladies here," said a White House aide.

The U.S. suspects that when Bracy and Lonetree shared night watch, Soviet agents were able to bug the most secure of the embassy's communications equipment and place intercept devices in highly sensitive cryptographic information, enabling them to read State Department messages before they were put in code. "There's lots of grounds for assuming the worst case in this instance," explained a White House source. Based on what Bracy and Lonetree have revealed, U.S. officials are convinced that for more than a year, beginning in mid-1985, the Soviets read every important classified communication issued by the embassy; the assumption is that the intercept devices are still functioning. The security penetration could have other long-term consequences: the Soviets may have planted "trap doors" in the equipment that could cripple American communications with the embassy in the event of a crisis.

The two Marines have confirmed that KGB agents were easily able to open normal embassy safes, "often in less than half an hour," according to one investigating officer. The Soviets also gained access to the two most sensitive areas in the embassy: the bubble and the vault. The bubble, a supposedly bugproof structure hung inside a standard room, is routinely used for top-secret conversations. The vault is a highly secure area, enclosed with heavy steel and special locks, in which CIA officers operate. Navy investigators were dismayed to learn that Soviet agents cracked the locks on both bubble and vault in under two hours.