Lonetree Makes Deal for Cut in Sentence : He’s Expected to Give Full Account of His Embassy Spy Activities

Former Marine embassy guard Sgt. Clayton J. Lonetree, convicted in August of spying for the Soviet Union, is providing details of his espionage to American officials in exchange for a five-year reduction in his 30-year prison sentence, the Marine Corps said Wednesday.

A Marine spokesman said that Lonetree will give U.S. counterintelligence experts a full account of his recruitment by Soviet KGB agents and all spying activities for them while guarding American embassies in Moscow and Vienna during 1985 and 1986.

If Lonetree cooperates, the Marines will reduce his prison sentence and provide an account of the nature and extent of his cooperation to the Naval Clemency and Parole Board, which would rule on any request for early release.

The agreement would make Lonetree eligible for parole in eight years and three months instead of the 10-year minimum sentence he now must serve before applying for early release.

Chief Warrant Officer Randy Gaddo, a spokesman at the Quantico, Va., Marine base, where Lonetree is being held, said the agreement was struck between Lonetree’s lawyers and the base commander, Lt. Gen. Frank E. Petersen.

Gaddo refused to explain what information U.S. officials seek from Lonetree other than general data on Soviet recruiting tactics and the extent to which they compromised American intelligence activities in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. Nor would he say when Lonetree began cooperating or which U.S. intelligence agencies are questioning him.

A government intelligence source familiar with the case said Wednesday that no major disclosures about the highly publicized embassy spying case are expected to result from Lonetree’s cooperation, “based on what we know.”

“There’s no word that any major breakthrough is likely,” the source said. “I’d be surprised if there was.”

Lonetree, 25, of St. Paul, Minn., was convicted Aug. 21 on 13 espionage-related charges in a scandal at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow that is said to have resulted in a bonanza of information for the Soviets on American intelligence operations and agents in Russia.

U.S. sources said last spring that Lonetree and other possible participants in an espionage ring at the embassy gave the Soviets access to top-secret CIA and communications offices in its top floors, as well as floor plans for the main embassy building.

U.S. officials said that the embassy’s coded communications system was probably bugged by the KGB for up to a year before the spy ring was uncovered and that half a dozen or more U.S. intelligence operatives inside the Soviet Union were executed after KGB agents obtained their identities in one of their embassy forays.

Several other U.S. citizens working at the embassy in Moscow were identified as CIA agents and expelled by the Soviets based on information acquired through Lonetree.

Defense lawyers had argued that Lonetree cooperated with the KGB in hopes of becoming a double agent for the United States, and they contended that he gave the Soviets no information of value.

The scandal led to the replacement of the entire 28-man Marine guard staff at the embassy in Moscow and to three independent investigations of security at U.S. embassies worldwide. One study has since concluded that a new U.S. Embassy building nearing completion in Moscow is riddled with Soviet listening devices and will require extensive reconstruction before it can be securely occupied.

The Marine Corps has attempted to prosecute several others on charges stemming from the spy scandal but with limited success. The Marines have dropped their most serious case, lodged last spring against Cpl. Arnold Bracy, a Marine guard once accused of helping Lonetree sneak KGB agents into the embassy in Moscow.

Three other Marines were detained after the Moscow scandal in connection with lesser security violations. Only one of those cases remains unresolved.

Staff writer Ronald J. Ostrow contributed to this story.