Aim Spy Outrage at Ourselves : Huffing and Puffing Overlook Our History of Lax Security

Members of Congress have worked themselves into a lather over revelations that security at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow has been hopelessly compromised, and that it will take at least five years and millions of taxpayer dollars to put things right. Even then we won’t be entirely sure that American secrets are safe from the eyes and ears of the KGB.

As Secretary of State George P. Shultz left Washington for this week’s round of arms-control talks in Moscow, Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill were fighting to see who could make the most pugnacious demands for retaliation.

By a large bipartisan vote, the Senate urged President Reagan to call off Shultz’s Moscow trip until U.S. diplomatic “facilities there are deemed secure.” The President wisely rejected the advice, but pitched in with a statement of his own calling the Soviet penetration of the embassy “outrageous.”

It’s outrageous, all right, but our anger should be directed more at ourselves than at the Soviets. After all, the KGB was only doing its job--which is more than you can say for the Marines who were supposed to be guarding the embassy and for responsible government officials whose relaxed attitude toward security set the tone.

A whole bundle of investigations are under way to pin down the damage, but the consensus among experts is that we have experienced an intelligence disaster.

Two Marines are accused of permitting Soviet agents to enter the most sensitive areas of the embassy, where they purportedly obtained access to secret files and communications and presumably planted additional listening devices.

The embassy walls are assumed to have so many ears that two visiting members of Congress were advised last week to communicate by writing on erasable children’s slates. It is embarrassing, to say the least, that a special van had to be brought in to assure Shultz of secure communications with Washington during his Moscow visit.

The innards of a new but as yet unoccupied U.S. Embassy in Moscow are said to be so studded with hidden microphones and transmitters that the building is like one giant antenna. At best, corrections will cost millions of dollars. The $190-million structure may have to be abandoned.

Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd sees “a textbook case in incompetence” by the Administration. The incompetence is beyond dispute, but the fault is shared by Reagan’s predecessors.

Each side was allowed to build a new embassy in the other’s capital under terms of a U.S.-Soviet agreement signed in 1972, when Richard M. Nixon was President. But as early as 1966, when Lyndon B. Johnson was President and the deal was in the discussion stage, the National Security Agency warned that the Soviets should not be permitted to build on a site suitable for electronic eavesdropping on U.S. government telephone conversations.

The warning was ignored. The Soviets were allowed to build on Mount Alto, the second-highest point in Washington, which is ideally suited for the interception of microwave telephone conversations from Congress, the White House and the Pentagon.

In contrast, to quote Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), “The new U.S. Embassy is being built in a swamp surrounded by buildings controlled by the KGB.”

Making matters worse, Washington came out second best in the battle of the bugs. There is no reason to doubt Soviet allegations that the United States tried to implant listening devices in the new Soviet embassy, too. But it is we, not the Soviets, who are having to consider abandoning our new embassy before it is even occupied.

Washington allowed the new U.S. Embassy to be built by Soviet workers without thorough American inspection. But the Soviets, according to an American architect who worked on the project, made meticulous inspections of everything that went into their new facility in Washington, including X-rays of steel girders. They rejected building materials fabricated outside the complex. When at least one “bug” was found, they began searching every brick that went into the structure.

The Soviets have not yet occupied the new embassy offices--they can’t, under the agreement, until our embassy in Moscow is ready for occupancy. But Russian diplomats long ago moved into living quarters at the site, and the Soviets already are using equipment installed atop the residence to eavesdrop on telephone conversations in the nation’s capital.

Angry members of Congress have introduced legislation that would instruct the Administration to give the Soviets the choice of allowing construction of an entirely new embassy at a different site in Moscow or picking up the tab for modifications to make the current facility secure.

If the Soviets say no, they would be required to vacate all their new embassy and residential facilities atop Mount Alto.

Such an ultimatum may not be entirely practical, but the Soviets should understand that congressional ire is real--though possibly temporary. The angry mood will, as Shultz warned, complicate U.S.-Soviet attempts to negotiate new nuclear-arms-reduction agreements.

The Kremlin charges that the spying accusations are in fact part of a plot to sabotage the negotiations. That is ridiculous, if for no other reason than Reagan’s strong need for a success to make people forget about the Iran- contra affair; wrapping up an agreement on nuclear-arms reduction would do admirably.

In his speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council on Friday, the President underscored his continued interest in an arms-control pact and renewed his invitation to Mikhail S. Gorbachev to visit the United States.

U.S. lawmakers are right to demand actions to correct the one-sided advantage gained by the Soviets in the execution of the embassy agreement. But the fix that’s really needed--a sharpening of day-in, day-out American security consciousness--will be harder to come by.

Dallying with Soviet women by Marine guards at the U.S. Embassy was known, but had been treated as a violation of anti-fraternization rules rather than as a security breach. Intelligence experts have known about structurally implanted Soviet listening devices in foreign embassy walls for 25 years. Congressional oversight committees have long known about the Soviet eavesdropping operations in Washington, New York and San Francisco.

The embassy intelligence disaster occurred because, as a rule, Americans in key positions--including members of Congress--simply do not take security seriously. Despite the present burst of concern, it’s not at all clear that the lesson has been learned.