Attempt to Play Upon Disaffections : Soviets Held to Target Minorities for Spying

U.S. officials investigating security breaches at the American Embassy in Moscow believe that the KGB deliberately targeted two Marine guards for sexual entrapment, in part because they were both members of minority groups.

Some officials also believe that the Soviet intelligence agency was spurred to penetrate the Marine guard contingent by a U.S. plan prepared in early 1985 to strengthen security at the embassy by dismissing half of the facility’s nearly 190 Soviet employees. That effort threatened to curtail the KGB’s access to its main foreign target in Moscow.

Two sources familiar with details of the Moscow embassy investigation said it is clear that the KGB had singled out Sgt. Clayton J. Lonetree, 25, and Cpl. Arnold Bracy, 21, for particular attention because of their minority status. Lonetree is an American Indian and Bracy is black.

The sources said that the KGB’s operational doctrine--based in part on a Leninist interpretation of American society--holds that minority group members are more likely than whites to be disaffected and thus vulnerable to enticement.

Known as a Loner

In addition, one official noted that Lonetree was conspicuous as a loner who did little mixing at Marine social functions. That pattern, he said, would have encouraged the KGB to play on Lonetree’s apparent sense of isolation and estrangement from other Americans.

For many years, the same official said, the Marine Corps avoided posting black enlisted men to the Moscow guard unit, not because they were considered untrustworthy but because it was assumed that the Soviets would focus entrapment efforts on them.

In recent years, he said, the Marine Corps has relaxed this rule, and “a number of very fine black men have served in Moscow, and have done very well.”

On Wednesday, Defense Department officials announced that a third Marine guard has been arrested on suspicion of espionage while assigned to guard duty at the American consulate in Leningrad in 1981 and 1982.

Officials did not say specifically whether Sgt. John Joseph Weirick, who is white, was a target of sexual entrapment. However, Pentagon spokesman Robert Sims told reporters that Weirick’s conduct, while not connected to that of Lonetree and Bracy, indicates “a similarity of Soviet methods.”

According to a Marine Corps spokesman, four members of the 28-man unit currently being withdrawn from Moscow are members of minority groups.

Although disproportionately few members of such groups have been implicated in espionage in the past, the Soviet practice of targeting them for recruitment or blackmail nevertheless remains in force, one source familiar with Soviet espionage techniques said.

Types of Targets

“We know they targeted both of these guys (Lonetree and Bracy) because they were minorities. That’s obvious,” an official close to the investigation said. “They recruited him (Lonetree) because he was vulnerable. It’s Soviet operational doctrine that those are the people you go after--people who might not fit in well or people with problems” such as debts, job tensions or alcohol or drug addiction.

There have been no indications, however, that Lonetree or Bracy--who was known in the embassy community as a religious man with a warm personality--suffered any of these problems.

Investigators have charged the two Marines with allowing Soviet agents extensive access to the most sensitive areas of the embassy, including code and communications rooms. The breaches are presumed to have thoroughly compromised embassy security.

Lonetree, who served in the embassy from September, 1984, to March, 1986, has told investigators that he had an affair with Violetta Seina, a young Soviet woman working at the embassy, who introduced him to a KGB officer posing as her “Uncle Sasha.”

Bracy, whose service overlapped with Lonetree’s for eight months from July, 1985, to March, 1986, is accused of having had a sexual relationship with a Soviet cook who worked in the embassy snack bar.

One official who is familiar with the operation of the Moscow embassy and with the current investigation said that Seina is remembered by embassy staff as a tall, attractive woman in her 20s with long brown hair and striking gray eyes who spoke fluent English.

Meet on Subway

He said a variety of circumstances strongly suggest that she was “targeted” on Lonetree, whose first, seemingly casual encounter with her on the Moscow subway was probably carefully orchestrated.

In March or April of 1985, according to this official, a young Soviet Georgian woman who handled the complex paper work involved in selling diplomats’ used cars quit on “very short notice.”

Acting with unusual dispatch, he said, the Foreign Ministry sent Seina to replace her within two weeks. Independent sources said that she first met Lonetree within a few days of her arrival at her embassy job.

Seina and all other Soviet workers employed by embassies, foreign business offices and foreign correspondents are furnished by an agency of the Foreign Ministry known by its Russian initials as the UPDK. Although not all its employees are presumed to be KGB officers, all are subject to political screening and are expected, when asked, to report to the KGB on their employers.

One official noted that while “there appears to have been a concerted effort to target minorities” in the embassy, it is also likely that the KGB “stepped up its efforts when they learned the locals would be leaving.”

Soviets to Be Replaced

Under a plan approved by Ambassador Arthur A. Hartman in early 1985, the UPDK staff at the embassy was to be reduced from 189 to 95, one official said. All Soviets who had been specifically identified as KGB officers were to be among those dismissed and the already limited areas of the embassy open to remaining Soviet workers would be further restricted.

Among the first to be let go in the spring of 1985 was the longtime embassy barber, a woman known to successive generations of U.S. diplomats only as Valentina, who was widely presumed to be a senior KGB officer. Her dismissal led UPDK to retaliate by removing the receptionist at Spaso House, the ambassador’s residence, who in any case was also slated to be replaced by an American.

In addition, the embassy put a high priority on replacing Soviet telephone operators--who routinely hung up on Russian-speaking callers--with bilingual American operators, although the State Department took nearly a year to find suitable candidates in the United States.

But State Department sources said that Hartman never planned to let go of all Soviet workers performing routine clerical and maintenance tasks in non-classified areas of the embassy. They said that such a step was viewed as inordinately costly, impractical and--paradoxically--not clearly in the best interests of security.

Prevailing Viewpoint

One former Moscow embassy officer said that the prevailing view, shared by other Western embassies, was that it would be “better to keep the Soviets at arm’s length than to have a lot of U.S. civil service people coming in whose only purpose was to earn money, then getting disaffected and falling for the enticements of the KGB.”

“Better to deal with the devil you know than one you don’t,” he said.

Others, including some security experts, maintained that the balance of risk nevertheless favored an entirely American staff.

The issue became moot last fall when Moscow withdrew all Soviet employees from the U.S. embassy in retaliation for Washington’s expulsion of 55 Soviet diplomats from the United States.

Already, nine of the 26 Americans sent to Moscow to replace Soviets as service workers at the embassy have been sent home or are about to be recalled for a variety of reasons--two for fraternizing with Soviets.

Staff writers Robert L. Jackson and Michael Wines contributed to this story.