New Trench Coats?

By Howard G. Chua-Eoan

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.

With reporting by Jay Peterzell and Bruce van Voorst/Washington and Elizabeth Tucker/Moscow, with other bureaus