Espionage Activities of Chinese, Soviets Increase in California

I want to take this opportunity to express my appreciation for your newspaper’s recent series on espionage in California (Part I, Nov. 20-22). The three articles on espionage are the most comprehensive and informative expose of the modus operandi employed by the Soviet and Communist Chinese intelligence services I have read in the print media.

By virtue of having served as an intelligence officer for the Central Intelligence Agency for over 25 years, I obtained a firsthand overview of the massive espionage onslaught Communist Bloc countries have mounted against the U.S. over the past 30 years.

The public should take care and not be lulled into thinking that the Soviets, and other communist countries, will tend to decrease their espionage activities in the U.S. because of domestic reforms that appear to be under way in the Soviet Union because of glasnost and perestroika .

The steady improvement of relations between the Soviet Union and the U.S. can be expected to afford the KGB’s agents greater ease of movement in and out of the U.S. in their insatiable clandestine quest to acquire U.S. high-technology secrets for use in support of Soviet advanced weapons systems.

JACK F. MATHEWS

Santa Barbara