Fired CIA Agent Who Fled Arrest Surfaces in Moscow : Accused of Wiping Out Spy Station by Selling Secrets

The Soviet Union said today that it has given asylum to former CIA agent Edward Lee Howard, who has eluded an FBI dragnet since being charged last year with selling U.S. secrets to Moscow.

The Los Angeles Times last month reported that information Howard sold the Soviets for $6,000 “wiped out” the CIA’s Moscow operations and led the Soviets to arrest and execute a Soviet CIA contact.

Howard, 33, vanished from his Santa Fe, N.M., home last September, just days before the FBI charged him with espionage. Reagan Administration sources said in October that he was thought to have fled to the Soviet Union.

It is believed to be the first defection by a CIA agent and the first American defection to Moscow since the 1960s.

The official Tass press agency distributed a statement in English saying Howard sought asylum because “he has to hide from U.S. secret services, which unfoundedly persecute him.”

‘Humane Considerations’

The government newspaper Izvestia published a brief announcement of Howard’s defection on its back page. It did not say Howard was accused of spying and described him only as “a U.S. citizen (and) a former CIA officer.” The statement did not say when Howard entered the Soviet Union or where he is.

“Guided by humane considerations, the Presidium of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet complied with the request of Edward Lee Howard. He has been granted the right to live in the U.S.S.R. for political reasons,” the statement said.

In Washington, CIA spokeswoman Kathy Pherson said she could not confirm or deny Izvestia’s report. Assistant FBI Director William M. Baker said: “We certainly give a lot of credence to the Soviets’ public remarks. We have no reason to believe they are untrue.”

Specific details about the damage Howard may have caused to U.S. intelligence are hazy. But a former CIA official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the damage “has to have been serious.”

Flunked Polygraph Test

Howard worked for the CIA from January, 1981, to June, 1983, when he was fired. U.S. officials said he flunked a polygraph test that indicated he had used illegal drugs while he was an agent and was guilty of petty thefts of money.

Howard had been in training for a Moscow post.

The FBI charged in court papers that he met with KGB officials in St. Anton, Austria, on Sept. 20, 1984. U.S. officials said $6,000 appeared in his bank accounts after that date.

Howard did not come under suspicion until nearly a year later, after U.S. officials interrogated Soviet defector Vitaly Yurchenko, described as a high-ranking KGB official.

Yurchenko, who later returned to the Soviet Union and denied that he was with the KGB, reportedly knew only the code name “Robert.” But he supplied enough information to trace “Robert” to Howard, officials said.

The Times last month quoted unidentified sources as saying Howard sold the Soviets details of U.S. intelligence operations in Moscow that led to the execution of one of the CIA’s prime contacts, identified as A. G. Tolkachev, an engineer.

Unstable, Drug Problems

“Howard disclosed virtually every active operation we had,” The Times quoted a source as saying. “He wiped out Moscow station.”

The Times also quoted a highly classified report as saying Howard had drug problems and was mentally unstable.

Two days before Howard disappeared, the KGB issued an announcement through Tass saying Tolkachev was charged with espionage. It linked him to U.S. diplomat Paul Stombaugh, who was expelled from the Soviet Union on espionage charges in June, 1985.

At least two other American diplomats have been expelled on spy charges since then. KGB chief Viktor M. Chebrikov told the 27th Communist Party Congress this year that a “major” U.S. spy operation in Moscow had been broken up.

Just before disappearing, Howard quit a job with the New Mexico Legislature’s Finance Committee, where he reportedly had occasional dealings with workers at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where top-secret weapons research is done.

FBI agents said his wife, Mary, aided his moonlit escape by placing a dummy in a car to make it appear he was there.

Hours Near Embassy

Mary Howard later left Santa Fe with their 3-year-old son, Lee, and her whereabouts are not known.

An FBI affidavit filed in federal court in Albuquerque, N.M., last year said Howard told two CIA employees that he had spent several hours near the Soviet Embassy in Washington in October, 1983, trying to decide whether to enter and disclose classified information, but that he had decided against doing so.

The affidavit quoted Howard as telling a confidential informant that the Soviets paid for a trip he made to Europe in 1984 and that Howard met his KGB contact there.

Howard, a New Mexico native, grew up traveling the world with his Air Force father. He was a Peace Corps volunteer from August, 1972, to August, 1974, in the Dominican Republic and Colombia, and worked from 1976-79 for the Agency for International Development.

Howard was the first American reported to have defected to the Soviet Union since two National Security Agency employees and a series of U.S. servicemen protesting the Vietnam War took asylum in Moscow in the 1960s.

Howard’s case was reminiscent of the celebrated spy scandals involving British defectors Donald MacLean and Guy Burgess in 1951, both now dead, and Kim Philby in 1963. All three lived in obscure luxury in the Soviet Union.

The U.S. servicemen who defected in the 1960s appeared on Soviet television to denounce American policy in Vietnam. American defector John Smith claimed in the Soviet media in 1967 that he had been a CIA agent--a claim denied by U.S. officials.