Ex-Envoy Sees Added Tensions : Tighter Embassy Controls Not a Cure, Hartman Says

Americans assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow may have to be screened and supervised more closely in the wake of espionage charges against three Marine guards, but more rigorous controls offer “no permanent cure” to the risk of KGB entrapment, the former ambassador to Moscow, Arthur A. Hartman, believes.

On the contrary, Hartman said in an interview, closer supervision of U.S. personnel in Moscow inevitably will grate on Americans accustomed to independence and freedom of movement and add to the considerable tensions that already exist for foreigners in a closed and suspicious society.

“Professionals, those who are authorized to have contacts (with Soviets) and do the kinds of jobs we can only do in Moscow, know how to handle themselves,” he said. “The others, I’m afraid, are going to have to be very carefully supervised. And there are not many Americans who want to come over and be very carefully supervised in a place like Moscow, that offers so little in the way of distraction and entertainment.”

Escorted by KGB

Soviet embassies, Hartman noted, control their staffs so closely that communications technicians, for example, are not allowed off the premises without a KGB escort.

“Imagine trying to recruit Americans to come over and subject themselves to the same kinds of conditions,” he said. “You’re not going to be able to change American society and the rules Americans work under beyond a certain point. You can’t turn the whole (embassy) community into a Soviet society.”

A career diplomat who served as ambassador to France from 1977-81, Hartman, 61, was U.S. ambassador to Moscow from 1981 until this February, when he retired from the Foreign Service. During a recent hourlong conversation in the Washington home where he and his wife, Donna, now live, Hartman expressed irritation at some members of Congress and news commentators who have accused him since the espionage scandal of having a lax attitude toward security.

Played Key Role

In separate interviews, several senior diplomats who served in Moscow said the criticism has unfairly detracted from Hartman’s distinguished record of service in the Soviet capital, during which he played a key role in navigating U.S.-Soviet relations through one of the rockiest periods of the postwar era, marked by a generational change in the Soviet leadership.

“Hartman is getting a bum rap in this,” a former senior embassy officer in Moscow said. “He took security very seriously. Of all the ambassadors I knew there, he was the most insistent on briefing people (about security measures), on sticking to the rules. He really did care. When there was a problem, there was action.”

In the interview, Hartman said that, even before the current furor erupted over charges that at least three Marine guards accepted sexual favors for Soviet access to secure areas of the Moscow embassy and the U.S. Consulate in Leningrad, he had raised the possibility of replacing the young, single and frequently rowdy Marine guards with more mature, married noncommissioned officers.

Weekly Briefings

During his tenure, he said, the Marines were given weekly security briefings by a State Department officer in sessions known as “guard school” that specifically warned against the dangers of sexual entrapment.

Although a number of Marines had to be sent out of the country for rowdy behavior that ranged from excessive drinking to cutting down Soviet flags, he said: “I can remember no one saying that the Marines, or even the aberrational Marine, were in danger of commiting treason.”

“All of us--the Marine group, the security officers, and certainly I felt that the group dynamic was such that we would find out if an aberration was occurring, because they were a close-knit group. If these charges are correct, it looks as if the dynamic worked the other way.”

Not Permanent Cure

While more careful screening and supervision of men and women assigned to Moscow could enhance security, Hartman noted that “it is not a permanent cure,” nor are age and apparent maturity sure protection against KGB enticements and blackmail. “It comes down to individuals and their motivation and how they handle themselves.”

During his five years as ambassador, Hartman said, there were cases--he declined to give numbers or other details--in which U.S. diplomats and civilian support staff were sent home, not on suspicion of espionage but for behavior deemed “dangerous” or imprudent.

Hartman said he considered accusations of complacency on his part to be “rather unfair,” in view of the fact that he was the first U.S. envoy since the United States opened relations with Moscow in 1933 to draw up and enact a plan to reduce the embassy’s depende1852007712repairmen and clerical workers--all of whom are supplied by an agency controlled by the KGB.

Separate Area

Beginning in early 1985, the embassy began cutting Soviet employees by half, preferentially letting go those whose personal qualities or positions gave them even remote opportunities to gather intelligence. Although Soviet workers never had been allowed in classified areas of the embassy, those who remained were to be moved out of the main embassy building altogether to a separate part of the American compound.

Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) has accused Hartman of having “strongly resisted” security improvements at the embassy in a “harshly worded” classified cable to Washington in 1984.

Asked to respond, Hartman said the cable in fact used what he called “colorful language” to stimulate a high-level policy review of efforts by some U.S. counterintelligence officials to reduce Soviet representation in the United States that he believed would have amounted to a virtual break in relations.

“I got a little angry over some of the actions proposed--not at a high level in the FBI or counterintelligence, but at some level--to try to close down Soviet activities (in the United States) entirely,” Hartman said.

They ‘Know Everything’

While sympathizing with U.S. officials who face the problem of tracking increasing numbers of Soviet citizens in the United States, he said some officials took the extreme view that “if it meant closing down (our) activities in Moscow, well, you can’t do anything useful anyway, the Soviets know everything you’re doing.”

As it was, the United States placed a ceiling of 225 on Soviet diplomatic staff in the United States last October and Moscow retaliated by withdrawing all Soviet workers from the embassy.

The Soviets are being replaced by Americans recruited by a private firm based in Los Angeles, but Hartman said it remains to be seen whether this approach will prove satisfactory.