FBI Warning on Festival Spies Irks Soviets

A high-ranking Soviet official on Thursday branded as “absolutely groundless” and “irresponsible” allegations by the FBI that Soviet artists visiting San Diego for the upcoming Soviet arts festival may be KGB agents in disguise.

“Moreover, we characterize it as a blatant manifestation of the Cold War mentality,” said Sergei Aivazian, consul and press attache in the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco. “It is disheartening and disquieting. We cannot bridge the credibility gap between the two nations with such scandalous chatter.

“It puts a damper on the whole event and on Soviet-American relations.”

The Soviet response came in the wake of warnings by the FBI, outlined in a Thursday press conference in San Diego, that the more than 300 visiting artists may include “spies” bent on stealing important military and intelligence secrets.

Three special agents of the FBI said that even the “average” San Diegan should be, in the words of one official, “especially mindful” and “watchful” of the Soviet actors, dancers and puppeteers who will come here for the three-week festival.

“We must be mindful that San Diego is a major military presence,” said Thomas Hughes, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Diego office. “We have a third of the Navy here. We have a very large defense contract industry. We have a defense research industry and a lot of universities doing vital research.

“Not to single it out, but functions and activities such as this arts festival bring a lot of Soviets into our midst,” Hughes said. “We have to look at such events in terms of a worst-case scenario. That’s our job at the FBI.”

Ironically, the FBI’s warning on spies came just one week after Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov, and an entourage of high-ranking Soviet officers, toured military facilities in San Diego, including North Island Naval Air Station and the Camp Pendleton Marine base. During the tour, late-model weapons, including jet fighters, were put on display for the Soviets.

Yazov’s San Diego visit was part of a U.S. tour in which the top Soviet military leader also visited Luke Air Force Base in Arizona and Ft. Bragg in North Carolina, and met with U.S. official in Washington.

Yazov’s U.S. tour reciprocated a visit to the Soviet Union in 1988 by then Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci.

Despite the wide-ranging tours of military bases given U.S. and Soviet officials, Hughes said he feared “significant damage” emanating from the Soviets’ making “valuable contacts” during the festival in San Diego. Ticket sales have already reached 100,000 for the festival, which begins Oct. 21 and ends Nov. 11.

“The pattern is similar based on any case we’ve prosecuted, where the development of a contact leads to an exchange of technical or classified information or to another contact,” Hughes said. “The worst-case scenario is the exchange of information that the Soviet Union could use against us.”

Soviet official Aivazian countered by saying--angrily--that “no one” in the Soviet delegation was a spy, and added: “This is a cultural event in which representatives of the arts will be there to show what it is they do. There’s absolutely no need for intelligence people to be there. It’s absurd to think they would be.”

A UC San Diego professor, widely regarded as an authority on Soviet history and culture, said Thursday that the FBI should be “embarrassed” for making what he called “outrageous accusations.”

Sounds Like Old Script

“It sounds like the San Diego division of the FBI could use a dose of the new thinking,” said Robert Edelman, who teaches Russian and Soviet history at UCSD and who has made 25 recent trips to the Soviet Union as part of cultural and academic exchanges. “This certainly does sound like the old script.”

Edelman said the possibility that KGB spies may have infiltrated the ranks of visiting artists is “irrelevant.”

“Even if they are KGB, there’s still a lot to talk about,” he said. “We could talk about ballet and painting without revealing the plans for the B-2, could we not?

“Most spies for the Soviet Union these days tend to be Americans who have been bought for money rather than ideology. I think they would tend to be more surreptitious about spying than to come here disguised as painters and musicians on some highly publicized arts exchange. It doesn’t seem like a very subtle way of spying, does it? To suggest that they’re going about it in this way may say more about our method of spying than it does about theirs.”

Paul Downey, a spokesman for Mayor Maureen O’Connor, who conceived and championed the festival, said the mayor was not embarrassed about the FBI’s reaction and did not see a problem “in any way whatsoever” with the visit or how the visitors might perceive the FBI’s comments about them.

“We’ve cooperated fully with the FBI,” Downey said. “We’ve provided them information on who’s coming and the schedules they’ll follow when they’re here. As far as what they do beyond that, we don’t know.

“They’ve got a job to do, and if they feel they need to make those statements . . . well, we’re not the security experts, they are. So, let them make their statements. But I do want to point out that this festival would not have occurred without former President Reagan, who is a fairly conservative fellow. He signed a protocol agreement with Mikhail Gorbachev 2 1/2 years ago, and ever since there have been numerous cultural exchanges.”

Special agent Hughes said that Soviet intelligence-gathering had actually increased during glasnost and perestroika . He said he had looked over the list of visiting artists and noticed that many are “frequent visitors.”

Watchful and Careful

Asked what the average San Diegan should do to be watchful and careful, he recommended common sense.

“If your dealings with the Soviets start to take on an abnormal tone, then you ought to call the FBI immediately, even if you call anonymously and run it by an agent,” Hughes said.

Asked to be more specific, he said: “Say the festival is over. And one of the Soviets wants to maintain contact over a lengthy period of time. Well, that might be different from what you’d expect, and maybe it’s something we should know about.”

Asked if American artists visiting the Soviet Union were in fact working as spies, Hughes declined comment and referred the question to Special Agent Marc Sutherland.

“That’s not an FBI responsibility,” Sutherland said. “That’s the CIA.”

Special Agent Robert Lewis Harman said he had spoken with an American who had once been befriended by a Soviet who turned out to be a KGB agent working in the United States.

“He got the feeling that the guy was filling out a report on him,” Harman said.

Harman said the Soviet asked the American’s date of birth by saying he was interested in astrology, to which a television reporter asked, “Does that mean we should watch out for Soviet astrologers?”

Harman blushed but then said, “Well . . . yes.”

Sutherland said he and other American agents fear a recurrence of the John Walker spy scandal in which an American military officer furnished--for a large profit--”extremely classified” secrets to the Soviets. He pointed out that Walker obtained much of his information from San Diego defense plants.

The Rev. William Mahedy, who has been to the Soviet Union twice recently as part of a program designed to aid veterans of the wars in both Vietnam and Afghanistan, laughed when hearing the FBI’s statements.

“It’s true the KGB is all over the place, but so is the CIA,” Mahedy said. “I think we should not pass over secrets, but the average San Diegan doesn’t know any secrets to pass over.

“There’s no question that serious espionage is going on on both sides of the fence, but what I have a problem with is seeing how dancers are going to find out anything.