U.S. Tightening Security in Moscow in ‘Spy Dust’ Case

The U.S. government, amid charges that the Soviet secret police penetrated the homes, offices and cars of American diplomats and secretly dusted them with a potentially harmful chemical, has begun a program intended to increase security around the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, the State Department said Saturday.

“Ensuring the security of our operation and employees at the embassy in Moscow is a matter of continuing attention,” department spokeswoman Anita Stockman said. “We currently have under way or in the planning stages a number of measures intended to upgrade the embassy security.”

She declined to provide any details of the steps under consideration.

The department believes that the embassy in Moscow and the U.S. Consulate in Leningrad, unlike diplomatic posts in volatile capitals such as Beirut, are in no danger of physical attack from the likes of terrorist car bombers.

Instead, the missions face persistent threats of espionage activities by the KGB, the Soviet secret police. In addition to the “spy dust” incident, it was reported in March that electric typewriters in the embassy had been bugged to transmit anything typed on them to Soviet monitors, and hidden microphones have been found on embassy property.

A U.S. official, confirming the substance of a report in the Washington Post, said one possible move under consideration is to replace with U.S. citizens many of the 200 or more Soviet nationals employed in the embassy and the consulate as janitors, chauffeurs, low-level clerical workers and other maintenance and support personnel. It has long been assumed that at least some of these Russians have been planted by the KGB.

However, such a step would be expensive because Americans command higher salaries and in addition, would be entitled to such benefits as housing allowances and home leave that are not granted to Soviet employees.

Besides, another U.S. official said, there is no certainty that removal of even a substantial number of Soviet workers would do much good.

“Soviet nationals have no access to the sensitive areas of the embassy--such as the ambassador’s office and the economic and political sections--now,” the official said. “The locals are in consular and administrative sections. They assist with visas and work in the (cleaning) force and motor pool.”

The Post said that the department has plans to ask Congress for $18 million to cover the cost of hiring Americans to replace half of the Soviet citizens now employed by the United States. It costs about $300,000 a year to employ these Russians.

Rep. Jim Courter (R-N.J.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, proposed legislation earlier this year to require the elimination of all Soviet employees at U.S. diplomatic missions, but the State Department opposed the bill at the time. Courter renewed his proposal in a letter Thursday to President Reagan.

Former CIA director Stansfield Turner, in a series of interviews following Washington’s “spy dust” charges, said that employment of Soviet citizens is one of the weakest links in embassy security. He recommended the replacement of the Russians with Americans.

The Soviet Union does not hire Americans to work in its embassy in Washington or consulate in San Francisco, preferring to bring in Soviet citizens for even the humblest jobs, presumably for security reasons.

The State Department said Wednesday that the KGB is using a possibly cancer-causing chemical dust to trace the movements of U.S. diplomats and to discover their contacts with Soviet citizens, many of those presumably dissidents.

The dispute continued to simmer Saturday when the Communist Party newspaper Pravda accused Washington of inventing the story as part of a “filthy anti-Soviet plot.”

“To cover up at least slightly its militarist, hegemonistic ambitions and its desire to achieve military (and) strategic superiority over the U.S.S.R., the U.S.A. has launched a new anti-Soviet campaign,” the authoritative Soviet paper charged.