Soviets Arrest U.S. Diplomat for Spying, Then Expel Him : Military Attache Left Saturday; 2nd Act of Year Against Americans

The Soviet Union ordered a U.S. Embassy defense attache to leave the country because he was caught spying, the official news agency Tass said today.

Embassy spokesman Jaroslav Verner said the diplomat, Erik Sites, left the Soviet Union on Saturday. Verner declined comment on the espionage allegations made by Tass.

The Tass report was attributed to the KGB secret police.

It was the second time this year that an American diplomat was ordered out of the Soviet Union. In March, the Soviets expelled Michael Sellers, an embassy second secretary.

‘I Don’t Have That’

Asked if Sites held a military rank, Verner said, “I don’t have that.” He said Sites was a member of the staff of the defense attache’s office but declined to say how long he had been in Moscow.

In Washington, White House spokesman Larry Speakes confirmed that Sites had been expelled but also refused to discuss the spy charge.

“We do not comment on such allegations,” Speakes said. Asked if the United States would retaliate by expelling a Soviet official, he said, “I don’t have anything on that.”

The State Department today refused to release a photograph of Sites to the news media.

Tass said in an English-language dispatch: “Erik Sites, member of the staff of the military attache at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, has been arrested in Moscow on May 7 when he had a secret meeting with a Soviet citizen recruited by the U.S. intelligence service.

“A big espionage action of U.S. secret services against the Soviet Union was thwarted,” it said.

Tass said officials found evidence that “fully proved” Sites was conducting activities “incompatible with his official status.”

It said he was declared persona non grata and that an investigation was being conducted into the “affairs of the agent of American intelligence,” apparently a reference to the Soviet citizen, who was not named.

Sites’ expulsion follows increased anti-American attacks in the Soviet press and by Kremlin officials following the April 15 U.S. bombing raid on Libya, continued U.S. nuclear testing and Soviet allegations that the American government orchestrated a “hysteria campaign” over the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident.

Reports Virtually Identical

When Sellers was declared persona non grata March 14, Tass said he had been caught during a clandestine meeting with a Soviet citizen and was guilty of espionage. The phrasing in the Tass reports about Sites and Sellers was virtually identical.

Sellers was expelled a week after the United States angered the Soviet Union by ordering the Kremlin to reduce the size of its missions at the United Nations in New York from 279 to 170 by April, 1988.

The move drew an official protest from the Soviet Foreign Ministry, which said it placed superpower relations in jeopardy.