Lawmakers Accuse Diplomats of Being Lax on Security : Guards Called Embassy’s ‘Weakest Link’

Congressional investigators said Tuesday that Soviet agents apparently found “the weakest link” in U.S. Embassy security when they persuaded two Marines to help them obtain official U.S. secrets.

The investigators, both members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that the assignment of young, unmarried Marines to guard embassies in the Soviet Union and other East Bloc countries “may be unsuitable” in the future.

Shortcomings Charged

The two, Reps. Daniel A. Mica (D-Fla.) and Olympia J. Snowe (R-Me.), made the statements in a report that condemned “serious shortcomings” in the embassy’s security system--the same system used at major U.S. diplomatic posts around the world--and recommended immediate measures to improve it.

The report accused senior diplomatic officials in Moscow of having a lax attitude toward secrecy and proposed regular polygraph tests for State Department security officers and Marines assigned to embassies.

The two lawmakers said that the U.S. Embassy in Moscow is a “firetrap” and that a new building under construction to replace it is so riddled with Soviet listening devices that it may take five years or more to make it secure.

Inspection Trip

The embassy had no comment on the report, which was delivered at a news conference after Mica and Snowe conducted a two-day inspection in the wake of a spy scandal involving two Marines formerly stationed here.

The Marines, Sgt. Clayton J. Lonetree and Cpl. Arnold Bracy, are charged with permitting agents of the KGB, the Soviet secret police and espionage organization, into the most sensitive areas of the embassy. According to U.S. officials, both Marines were sexually involved with Soviet women employed by the embassy.

Mica, chairman of a House subcommittee charged with overseeing embassy security, said the disclosures about the loss of U.S. secrets may have a negative effect on Soviet-U.S. relations.

“When someone breaks into your embassy and bugs it and everything else, it obviously doesn’t help your relations,” Mica said. “Secure conversations for more than half a dozen people right now are out of the question.”

Alarms Disconnected

Mica said that, under the present security system, two people working together were able to disconnect alarms and permit unauthorized individuals to enter super-secret code rooms and other sensitive areas without leaving any trace of their presence.

In referring to the charges against Lonetree and Bracy, he said: “It all came together with the wrong people in the right place at the right time.”

The damage was done, he said, in the early hours of the morning, when only a few Marines are normally in the nine-story yellow stone building.

In addition, Mica and Snowe criticized senior embassy officials for taking “a negative attitude” toward security. In 1986, they said, the Marines recorded 137 security violations--safes left open, secret material left on desks--in the embassy here. Use of identification badges, they said, was “resisted and resented by key embassy personnel.”

‘Lax Attitude’ Cited

“This lax attitude and lack of leadership in the security area by the senior staff in the embassy may have contributed to the breakdown in the security system which led to the penetration of the embassy,” Mica and Snowe said.

The present building, they continued, is “grossly inadequate” in terms of security, and the new building, an eight-story brick structure about half a mile away, has equally serious security problems. It has been under construction since 1979, cannot be occupied for at least five more years and may never be used, they said.

When Mica and Snowe entered the new building Tuesday, they carried children’s “magic slates” on which to jot down messages and then erase them.

‘Hostile Environment’

When asked if they would recommend that the $100-million building be razed rather than occupied, Snowe replied: “We might.”

Mica, apparently shaken by what he had seen, said: “This is a hostile environment--very, very difficult. Before we left, we were told our rooms were going to be bugged and every movement of ours was going to be watched. American diplomats are working in the most unremitting hostile environment possible.”