Innocent Man: An accused Marine spy is freed

Before he was arrested on espionage charges last March, Marine Corporal Arnold Bracy told investigators a story that shook the U.S. diplomatic and national- security communities. Bracy, a guard at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, confessed to serving as a lookout while another guard, Sergeant Clayton Lonetree, escorted KGB spies through the embassy. The ensuing scandal led to calls for Secretary of State George Shultz to cancel a scheduled visit to Moscow. Lonetree and Bracy, who had allegedly been seduced into spying by Soviet women, were carted off to the brig at the Quantico, Va., Marine base to await court-martial proceedings.

Today Bracy, 21, is a free man and the Marines are somewhat shamefaced. All charges against the Marine guard were dismissed last week after the corps announced that it had insufficient evidence to corroborate his confession. . Bracy had retracted the statement, claiming that agents of the Naval Investigative Service had coerced it from him during three days of grueling interrogation.

At a press conference last week, Bracy said a Soviet cook at the embassy had tried to recruit him as a spy in June 1986. He rejected her offer and promptly reported it to his commander. Later, he said, he confronted the woman but did not tell the commander of the meeting. "My mistake was that I didn't report," said Bracy.

The corps has also dropped charges that Lonetree, 25, escorted Soviet agents through the embassy, but it will still prosecute him for allegedly passing documents and photographs to the KGB. A third Marine who had been detained on espionage charges, Sergeant John Weirick, was set free last month because the military statute of limitations prevented him from being prosecuted for acts he was accused of committing at the Leningrad consulate in 1981-82.

The U.S. has had trouble substantiating claims that the old Moscow embassy and a new one under construction have been planted with electronic listening devices. After returning from an inspection of the new embassy last week, a team headed by former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger recommended a massive overhaul of the chancery to combat alleged Soviet bugging. Yet technicians have been hard pressed to find any tangible evidence of the bugs. Listening devices can be so well disguised, said one investigator, that "the problem is we don't know what we're looking for."