Moscow Grants Asylum to Target of U.S. Spy Probe

A missing former Navy enlisted man, who had special intelligence clearances and who is the subject of an FBI espionage investigation, has shown up in Moscow and been granted political asylum.

The Soviet newspaper Izvestia announced Sunday that “Glen Michael Souter” asked for asylum because “he had to hide from the U.S. special services, which were pursuing him groundlessly.” The newspaper identified him only as a U.S. citizen and did not say how long he had been in the Soviet Union.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Moscow said he was unaware of the case. However, an FBI spokesman said that the man granted asylum is Glenn Michael Souther, a Navy veteran in his early 30s who disappeared in May, 1986, shortly after graduating from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., where he majored in Russian.

The spokesman said he could not comment further because of “a pending espionage investigation” of Souther.

One source said Sunday that FBI and Navy officials were concerned about Souther’s disappearance because he had special security clearances, including access to satellite photo data, while on duty with the Sixth Fleet in Italy in the early 1980s. Another source said that while Souther attended college, he had been assigned as an active reservist to the Naval Intelligence Center in Norfolk.

“He could give away information that could be valuable,” one source said.

Souther disappeared shortly after being questioned by FBI counterintelligence agents. He is known to have visited his mother in Illinois and used a one-way ticket to Rome, the home of his former wife and son.

One U.S. intelligence expert said Sunday that investigators had been acting “on more than suspicions but didn’t catch him in the act” of espionage and thus couldn’t hold Souther at the time he was questioned. He added that it is likely that Souther entered the Soviet Bloc soon after he disappeared and that the Soviets “finished hearing anything he had to offer” before making the asylum announcement.

Norfolk newspapers reported in November, 1986, that FBI agents had questioned Souther’s friends and professors, but it was unclear at the time whether they had evidence of espionage or were acting aggressively in the wake of the spy scandals involving former Navy man John Walker and some of his relatives, as well as the defection of former CIA agent Edward Lee Howard.

There were some reports that the authorities’ interest in Souther was triggered by allegations of spying made by his former wife.

Souther joined the Navy in 1975 and left active duty in late 1982 with the rank of photographer’s mate. Teachers and acquaintances have told reporters that after his disappearance, FBI agents questioned them about Souther’s finances, personal life and Russian studies.

They described him then and again Sunday as a bright but undisciplined young man who wanted to be a Navy officer. One woman friend said that he always seemed to have money from unexplained sources and that he liked to party.

“He was kind of an overgrown delinquent, always horsing around,” Leonid Mihalap, Souther’s Russian professor, said Sunday.

At the same time, Mihalap said, Souther was such a good Russian student that he was selected as a member of the Slavic studies honor society.