CIA Chief Says Soviet Spying Is on Rise

Although East-West tensions have eased remarkably with the revolution in the East Bloc, the Soviet Union has stepped up its spying activities against the United States and other Western nations and is trying harder than ever to recruit U.S. agents, CIA Director William H. Webster warned Wednesday.

“Around the world, our stations are reporting more aggressive actions, more robust intelligence collection efforts and more efforts to recruit our embassy and our intelligence personnel than we have seen in a long time,” Webster said in a speech at the National Press Club.

He also cited Soviet attempts to gain access to U.S. technology.

“Technology transfers is one of the big issues in the world today, and as less money is dedicated to that particular effort inside the Soviet Union, more and more effort needs to be applied to obtain that kind of technology through clandestine means. That’s what we are experiencing.”

Discussions with heads of other intelligence services around the world have shown, he said, that “this is exactly the same experience and the same conclusion that they have reached.”

But he noted one difference in Soviet operations. “They are less confrontational in the sense that they avoid doing flatfooted things that would create major press issues. But the activity is there.”

His remark referred in part to earlier Soviet disinformation campaigns, such as false reports leaked to Third World papers that Americans were buying Latin American babies for transplant operations and that the first strain of AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, resulted from U.S. nuclear testing, informed sources said.

Webster noted, however, that the KGB had made attempts to “minimize” its internal domestic activities, at least partly in response to Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s new policy of a more open society.

Webster also said that, despite increased Soviet interest in arms control, “the armed might of the Soviet Union and its satellites, however benign their leaders may profess it to be, constitutes a threat.”

In general, he said, “The need for (U.S.) intelligence has grown.” The heightened Soviet intelligence profile, changes in Eastern Europe and the proliferation of terrorism, narcotics, Third World arms production and regional conflicts have added to the demands of intelligence monitoring, he said.

“It is clear that those assumptions under which we have operated--the existence of a bipolar world divided into East-West alliances, the economic supremacy and dominance of the West and the competition for global strength through ideology and military power--are no longer unquestioned.

“As the hard edges of the world recede, the threats we face become more numerous, more diffuse and more difficult to define.”

His remarks come at a time of speculation about how U.S. defense cuts may affect the intelligence community.