Ex-Official Flees; May Be Double Agent : FBI Probe Possibly Based on Information From KGB Defector

FBI counterintelligence agents are seeking a former federal official who quit his new job in New Mexico and fled after agents began questioning acquaintances about the possibility that he had been a Soviet spy, a U.S. official said Tuesday.

The source, who refused to be identified by name, said that the investigation of Edward L. Howard may have resulted from information from a top-level Soviet defector, former KGB official Vitaly Yurchenko.

Last week, Administration and congressional sources said that Yurchenko had named a very few former CIA men as Soviet agents, and on Tuesday two officials put the number at precisely two.

Lived in Southwest

One of the two ex-CIA men implicated by Yurchenko lived in the Southwest, one of the sources said Tuesday.

Among his government posts, Howard was assigned by the State Department to Moscow in 1983, according to a department document. He had served in the Agency for International Development also.

The State Department and AID are sometimes used as cover for overseas CIA assignments. But it could not be learned whether Howard was one of the ex-CIA men named by Yurchenko or whether he had come to the FBI’s attention through information obtained independently of Yurchenko.

CIA and FBI spokesmen refused to comment.

Neighbors told AP reporter Edward Moreno in Santa Fe that eight FBI agents, backed by a helicopter, converged on Howard’s home outside Santa Fe last Saturday. The neighbors said neither Howard nor his wife, Mary, was at home.

Economic Analyst

In July, 1983, Howard became an economic analyst for the legislative finance committee of the New Mexico Legislature. He was engaged in revenue projections and in analysis of the oil industry.

A source in New Mexico, apparently one of several Howard acquaintances and co-workers interviewed last week by the FBI, said he had the impression, “based on their questions, that there was some connection between Howard and a KGB defector.”

Yurchenko, the one-time No. 5 official of the Soviet KGB intelligence agency, defected to the United States in Rome in early August. He had served in Washington from 1975 to 1980.

‘We Will Not Comment’

In New Mexico, U.S. Atty. William Lutz was asked about Howard and said: “I can’t comment. We will not comment. We are not going to comment.”

Howard worked for the Agency for International Development from 1976 to 1979. According to a former State Department official, department records show that Howard worked in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow as a budget specialist in 1983--the same year that he was hired by the New Mexico Legislature.

The records show that Howard was born in New Mexico in 1951, served in the Peace Corps as a volunteer and as a recruiter and later worked with ACTION, the corps’ parent agency, as well as for the Small Business Administration.

Suddenly Quit Job

On Sept. 20, Howard unexpectedly left a committee meeting, leaving behind a note resigning his job, as of Sunday, for personal reasons and asking that his check be sent to his wife.

FBI agents questioning neighbors in the rural subdivision of Eldorado on Saturday wanted to know not only his whereabouts but whether he had buried anything on his property.