Spy Gave Key U.S. Navy Plans, Pravda Asserts

The U.S. Navy intelligence analyst who defected to the Soviet Union and joined the KGB provided Moscow with key U.S. naval plans in the event of a nuclear war, the Communist Party newspaper Pravda said Saturday, praising him as a master spy.

Glenn Michael Souther, who committed suicide here last week at the age of 32, had access, according to Pravda, to “the most valuable documents (and had) disclosed the plans for the use of the U.S. Navy in a nuclear war against the Soviet Union and other socialist countries.”

“Souther did everything to help the forces of peace,” Pravda said. “He occupies a place in that line of KGB intelligence agents to which such outstanding soldiers of the ‘invisible front’ as Kim Philby and George Blake belonged,” Pravda said, naming two British intelligence officers who spied for the Soviet Union.

In Washington, a senior Defense Department official described the Pravda story as “highly unlikely.” He said that Souther had access to “nothing remotely like” U.S. Navy plans in the event of nuclear war.

“He was a photo interpreter,” said the official. “He could have helped with such things as practical information on photo reconnaissance.”

Pravda, skirting cautiously around Souther’s suicide, said that the American, who was granted Soviet citizenship after his defection and nominated for one of the Kremlin’s major awards, had reiterated that he had no regrets.

“Justice demands that you hear my last words,” Souther wrote in a note to his colleagues at the KGB, where he had been given the rank of major. “I do not regret our relationship. It was a longstanding one, and it helped me grow as a person. I wish to be buried in the uniform of an officer of the KGB.”

Unhappy Over Hardships

Pravda suggested, however, that Souther’s unhappiness with the day-to-day hardships of Soviet life, as well as the psychological toll of years of spying, may have contributed to his suicide.

“Of course, when he arrived on Soviet soil, he did not find all the things that he had dreamed of,” Pravda said. “He failed to understand, for example, how it is possible to go shopping and not find what you are looking for.”

The government newspaper Izvestia said in another report Saturday that Souther had asphyxiated himself in his garage on June 22. Providing the first details of his death, Izvestia said that he had shut himself inside the garage and started his car.

Vladimir A. Kryuchkov, chairman of the Soviet Union’s Committee for State Security, as the KGB is formally known, told Western correspondents last week that Souther had a “very sensitive personality” and suffered from periodic bouts of depression. He said he had met Souther several times and considered his suicide “a real tragedy . . . and a personal loss.”

One of Souther’s friends told Pravda: “He worked a lot, there were times when he was plunged into depression, but nobody thought about the tragic outcome.”

Souther nevertheless “was not mistaken in the main thing,” the newspaper added. “He felt the warmth of the Soviet people. He saw that their wish for international unity met his ideals.”

He had taken the name of Mikhail Orlov after arriving in the Soviet Union, Pravda said, choosing the Russian word for “eagle” as his last name because it symbolized freedom and strength.

The Pravda article, accompanied by two photographs and occupying half of the back page of the paper, went even further than previous stories in the extraordinary public discussion by Soviet authorities of Souther, and KGB officials say that more material will be published soon about his career as a Soviet agent.

Senior Western diplomats are puzzled by the series of articles about Souther, Kryuchkov’s readiness to discuss the case and the motivation for it all.

‘Very Few Facts’

“While we have very few facts--we don’t even know for sure that Souther is dead--all the talk that is going on is beginning to take on a significance of its own,” one well-placed Western diplomat said Saturday. “I keep asking myself, ‘What are they up to?’ If this man were a legend like Kim Philby, it would be one thing. But just who was Glenn Michael Souther?”

In Washington, a Defense Department spokesman said last week that Souther, who had served in the Navy as an intelligence analyst for eight years and then remained in the active reserves for four more years, was under investigation when he disappeared in May, 1986.

But Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams said that the FBI had not yet been able to determine what information Souther might have provided to the Soviet Union--or even whether he had spied actively before he defected.

At the time of his disappearance three years ago, Souther, an active duty reservist, was working as a satellite photo analyst at the Naval Intelligence Center at Norfolk, Va., where he had access to sensitive material collected by U.S. reconnaissance satellites as well as to some information on U.S. naval activities in the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean.

“We have no idea whether any sensitive information was passed and, if so, what it was,” Williams said. “There is a damage assessment going on.”

Williams, however, confirmed information here that Souther’s first wife, an Italian, had told the Navy as long ago as 1981, while he was on the personal staff of the commander of the U.S. 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean, that he was spying for the Soviet Union.

Recruited While in Navy

And a KGB spokesman said last week that Souther had been recruited as a Soviet agent while in the Navy and had provided considerable material for a number of years before coming to Moscow.

Souther had completed his initial period of active duty as a petty officer first class and had hoped for a Navy commission after graduation from Old Dominion University in Virginia, where he had studied Russian language and literature and Soviet affairs.

His defection became widely known a year ago when the Soviet government announced that he had asked for, and been granted, political asylum.

Souther, who was given a full military funeral last week, left a Russian wife and an 18-month-old daughter, according to KGB officials.