Living on Burrowed Time

Was onetime CIA Agent David Barnett a KGB mole?

The news did nothing to improve the already tarnished reputation of the Central Intelligence Agency. In Baltimore last week, a grand jury indicted David Barnett, 47, a former CIA covert agent, on a single count of selling top-secret information to the agency's Soviet counterpart, the KGB. Barnett allegedly fed the Soviets details about a CIA operation code-named HABRINK, set up to collect data on Soviet weaponry systems.

Barnett, who was said to be living with his family in Bethesda, Md., was expected to plead guilty this week. Though he faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, he may receive a lighter penalty for confessing. It is the first public case of a CIA official giving secrets to the KGB.

A 1955 graduate of the University of Michigan, Barnett joined the CIA in 1958 and served as an analyst with U.S. Army intelligence units in South Korea and Washington, D.C. From 1965 to 1967, he worked at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., as a staff officer in the directorate of operations, which ran the agency's worldwide covert activities. In 1967 Barnett was assigned to a diplomatic post in Indonesia, where he was responsible for recruit ing local Soviet officials to spy for the U.S. He quit the agency in 1970 to run an antiques-exporting firm in Indonesia, but apparently continued to work for the CIA on a contract basis. At some point after his "retirement," with his business on the verge of bankruptcy, Barnett was recruited as a KGB mole.

The most important information Barnett gave the Soviets concerned the CIA's Operation HABRINK in the late '60s. Moscow was then supplying Indonesia's President Sukarno with billions of dollars worth of military equipment. Indonesian naval officers, however, were selling some of the Soviet weapons, parts and manuals to the CIA. Barnett worked on the project under diplomatic cover. He may also have provided details on other covert activities he had known about during his directorate years. And as one former agency official put it, the KGB would surely have debriefed Barnett on CIA minutiae: "the weaknesses of colleagues; who was sleeping with whom; who had a drinking problem; who was unhappy--information that is really useful to them." In any case, the notoriously stingy KGB did pay Barnett nearly $100,000, and in 1977 it persuaded him to apply for staff positions on the Senate and House intelligence committees and the White House Intelligence Oversight Board.

Barnett failed, apparently because there were no openings. In January 1979, however, he was rehired by the CIA as a contract agent; 13 months later he abruptly resigned. By that time, both the CIA and the FBI were aware that Barnett was a KGB agent. In fact, TIME has learned that his links with the Soviets were known to some U.S. officials at least two years before the CIA rehired him. That, of course, raises a crucial question: Why was Barnett allowed to return to the agency?

Justice Department officials contend that Barnett was not arrested or exposed earlier because the CIA hoped to turn him into a triple agent. Intelligence experts scoff at this argument on the ground that the KGB would never trust a turncoat agent with any Soviet secrets. Another theory is that rehiring Barnett was simply an administrative goof. When it was discovered, officials decided that the best strategy was to play for time until it was decided how to handle his case with the least amount of damaging publicity. Whatever the truth, the Justice Department promises to shed at least some light on the shadowy case of David Barnett when he is formally arraigned this week. sb

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