Marines Called Lax in Reporting Potential Spying

The nation’s chief auditors, in a finding that is expected to revive questions about continuing intelligence leaks by Marine embassy guards, have told lawmakers that Marine officials overseeing the elite force have been lax in reporting potential espionage activities by the military guards to the Navy’s investigative arm.

“The heads of the Marine Corps security guard program from February, 1985, to the present . . . generally failed to systematically report counterintelligence information” concerning Marine Guards to the Naval Investigative Service, the General Accounting Office concluded in a report obtained by The Times.

The government watchdog agency, in a report to members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that over the last three years, about 80 Marine embassy guards have been involved in misconduct that could make them security risks, including black marketing, illegal money exchange and unauthorized travel.

The GAO also revealed that as recently as last April, at a diplomatic post “in a high-security threat area” such as the Soviet Bloc, two-thirds of a Marine Guard detachment were found to be in violation of regulations forbidding fraternization with local nationals.

At the same time, the government auditors, in a finding that may blunt criticism of the Naval Investigative Service, praised the office’s conduct of an inquiry into the suspected espionage activities of Sgt. Clayton J. Lonetree and Cpl. Arnold Bracy, two Marine guards accused of spying at the Moscow embassy.

‘Professional and Thorough’

“We think the NIS espionage investigation was professional and thorough” and took steps to protect the constitutional rights of the espionage suspects, the GAO concluded. Lonetree and Bracy’s defense attorneys charged that the NIS coerced their clients to confess to criminal actions the attorneys said the men did not commit.

In the wake of the complaints, all charges against Bracy were dropped. Lonetree was convicted of espionage and court-martialed last August. The Navy’s investigative arm has been widely criticized for having bungled the probe.

By contrast, the GAO was critical of the State Department’s efforts to identify potential security risks. The agency’s counterintelligence staff maintained shoddy records, was poorly trained and failed to coordinate with Navy investigators or the Marine Corps to identify or probe potential spies, the auditors charged.

The GAO warned that problems that plagued the Marine Corps’ security guard program persist, in spite of the service’s efforts to negotiate new procedures to coordinate with the State Department’s counterintelligence office.

Rejected Leadership Probe

Nevertheless, the Marine Corps’ leading legal authority, implying “that any leadership failings were past history,” rejected a recommendation that the service conduct an investigation of the Marine Guards’ leadership. The GAO said such a probe should focus especially on the local level, where commanders of Marine Guard detachments were said to be tolerating practices, such as fraternizing with foreign nationals, that are forbidden.

The Marine Corps, however, contends that the service has cleaned up faults cited in the report by increasing counterintelligence training, cutting the lengths of foreign tours and adding a psychologist to the staff of each Marine guard battalion.

“We’ve taken a hard look at this report and tried to institute changes as necessary,” Marine Corps spokesman Lt. Col. Fred Peck said.