Suspect’s Admission of Spying Told : FBI Affidavits Say Ex-CIA Man Met With KGB Agents

A “confidential source” has told the FBI that Edward Lee Howard, the former CIA employee accused of spying for the Soviet Union, once admitted meeting KGB agents in Europe last year and turning over information for cash, according to affidavits made public Friday.

Howard’s trip to Europe, allegedly financed by the Soviets, appears to match a meeting in Austria a year ago between a former CIA employee and senior KGB officials that, according to one of the affidavits, was described to U.S. intelligence by another confidential source with “intimate knowledge of Soviet intelligence matters.”

Defector Named as Source

This second confidential source is believed to be Vitaly Yurchenko, a high-ranking KGB official who defected to the United States while on temporary assignment in Rome last August. Yurchenko, rated by U.S. officials as one of the most significant defections in many years, is providing counterintelligence agents with leads to spies working in the United States and with other information on Soviet sources and methods of intelligence.

The affidavits contained a dramatic description of Howard’s state of mind last month as he prepared to flee from federal agents closing in around him in Santa Fe, N. M. An affidavit submitted by FBI agent Gerald B. Brown told of a farewell note Howard left for his wife, Mary C. Howard, before disappearing Sept. 21. He told her “to sell the house, Jeep, etc. and move (in) with one of our parents and be happy.”

In the note, Howard, who is now the object of an intense FBI manhunt, asked his wife to tell their 2-year-old son, Lee: “I think of him and you each day until I die.”

A second note described in an affidavit by FBI agent Martin R. Schwarz, left with Howard’s employer the weekend he disappeared, said cryptically: “Well, I’m going and maybe I’ll give them what they think I already gave them.”

Howard had been working for a New Mexico legislative committee since leaving the CIA in 1983.

Suspicion Aroused Earlier

The affidavits, filed but not made public Sept. 27 and last Wednesday with a U. S. magistrate in Albuquerque, provide the most detailed account yet of how Howard came under suspicion almost a year before Yurchenko’s defection.

The Schwarz affidavit said that on Sept. 24, 1984, Howard had told two CIA employees that he had hung around the Soviet Embassy in Washington for hours in October, 1983, “trying to decide whether to enter the embassy and disclose classified information.”

Howard claimed that he did not enter the embassy, Schwarz said. Government sources said Thursday that Howard’s anger over being fired by the CIA in June, 1983, may have been the motivation for giving the Soviets national security secrets.

Statement Told to Superiors

The CIA employees, following agency regulations, reported Howard’s statement to superiors, according to a source familiar with the incident. But agents apparently did not develop incriminating evidence until Yurchenko defected.

FBI agent Brown said the investigation had determined that Howard traveled to and from Europe and Mexico, locations that the KGB prefers to use in dealing with their U. S. agents to guard against being apprehended.

Complaint Made Public

An amended criminal complaint, also made public Friday, accused Howard of conspiring since 1984 to deliver to the Soviets national defense information with the intention that it would be used to injure the United States.

The complaint said that, to carry out the conspiracy, Howard traveled in the fall of 1984 from Santa Fe to Austria and that last July he went to South Padre Island, Tex., a location that provides easy access to Mexico.

In a related development, it was learned Friday that Howard was “allowed to resign” from the CIA after officials accused him of stealing agency money and using illicit drugs. Howard failed a polygraph examination when questioned about the accusation, one source said.

Worked in Soviet Section

Howard was seven months short of satisfying the CIA’s three-year probationary period when he left the agency. He worked in the CIA’s Soviet section, which gave him access to U. S. intelligence of particular interest to the KGB.

Dave Durenberger (R-Minn.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has been briefed on the Howard case, said that Howard’s spying could be “as serious as any damage we’ve sustained in the recent past.”

He added that he “did not imply or mean to imply that the damage was permanent or disabling or that the damage compromised our operations in Moscow or elsewhere.”

Ronald J. Ostrow reported from Washington and Eric Malnic from New Mexico.