FBI Official Suggests Pressing Soviets for Help on 2 Spy Cases

The head of the FBI’s intelligence division proposed Tuesday that the United States press Soviet officials for unprecedented cooperation in two celebrated espionage cases in exchange for future U.S. economic aid to the beleaguered Soviet republics.

The FBI official, Thomas E. DuHadway, frankly acknowledged frustration over the agency’s failure to resolve its cases against Edward Lee Howard and Felix Bloch. He suggested that an opportunity may now exist to obtain critical assistance from the Soviet Union’s KGB secret police.

DuHadway, who spoke with The Times on Monday and again Tuesday morning, died of a heart attack later Tuesday while playing golf.

The 49-year-old bureau veteran, who was highly regarded by colleagues in the FBI, said of the Soviets, “If they want this massive aid--and I’m not saying we shouldn’t give it to them--there are reasonable quid pro quos that people would ask for, and I don’t think those two cases are unreasonable at all.”

The remarks by DuHadway--who only recently had taken over the intelligence division after serving until July as special agent in charge of the FBI’s Washington field office, one of the agency’s highest-profile positions--reflect the interest by U.S. officials in settling old scores and exploiting potential opportunities posed by the collapse of the old Soviet order.

Specifically, the FBI would like the Soviets to turn over former CIA agent Howard, who used his special training to escape an FBI net in 1985 and defect, and to provide information on Bloch, the fired State Department official suspected of but never charged with turning over secrets to a Soviet agent.

In the interviews, DuHadway stressed that he was speaking for himself and not enunciating official policy. He said that he did not know whether the United States has formally discussed the two cases with Soviet officials but added that he was “hopeful” that the Soviets would cooperate.

The basis for his optimism, the assistant FBI director said, was a decision by the KGB’s new chairman, Vadim V. Bakatin, to allow the family of KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky to join Gordievsky last week in London. Gordievsky, a British double agent, defected in 1985; his wife, who divorced him under KGB pressure, and two daughters, were kept under 24-hour surveillance until last month’s failed coup.

Gordievsky, who had been the KGB’s station chief in London, had fled to the West through Finland after his Moscow superiors called him home for questioning about security leaks. British Prime Minister John Major led high-level efforts to win his family’s release.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III is to meet this week with Bakatin, who replaced hard-liner Vladimir A. Kryuchkov as KGB chairman after Kryuchkov was arrested for his central role in the coup. It was not clear whether Baker would raise the Bloch or Howard matters with Bakatin.

DuHadway, noting that he was not suggesting that the KGB should agree to a wholesale opening of its files or exposing of its agents, said that “there are a lot of reasons they could choose to cooperate” in the Howard and Bloch cases.

Howard, suspected of providing the KGB with crucial information about U.S. “assets” in the Soviet Union that he obtained while training for a CIA assignment in Moscow, managed to escape FBI agents who had his New Mexico home under surveillance. Eventually he surfaced in Moscow, where he was provided with a dacha and traveled to Soviet satellites as well.

“Howard no longer has access” to U.S. secrets, DuHadway noted, adding that he was not certain whether the Soviet Union or former Soviet satellites, including Hungary and Czechoslovakia, would welcome him any longer.

“He could be very much a liability” to improved relations with the United States, the FBI intelligence chief said. Bloch, a 30-year career diplomat, was no less an embarrassment for the FBI. The former second-ranking official at the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, Bloch became the target of an extraordinary, highly visible surveillance effort by FBI agents in Washington and New York.

The unusual tracking began after news reports disclosed that electronic surveillance and surreptitious photography had documented an alleged meeting between Bloch and a Soviet agent in Paris. The State Department stripped Bloch’s name from his office door and agents began trailing him night and day. The counterintelligence officials, in turn, were followed by TV cameramen and reporters.

The FBI called off the surveillance in late 1989 after determining that agents lacked court-admissible evidence to support charges against Bloch. He then was fired by Baker for “his deliberate false statements or misrepresentations to the FBI in the course of a national security investigation,” the State Department said. His eligibility to receive a pension for his Foreign Service career has not yet been resolved.

DuHadway noted that the Soviets would have to be “very careful” if they chose to cooperate in the Bloch or Howard matters. “If you’re in the business of recruiting (agents), and suddenly you turn some over, it’s going to hurt your potential in the future,” he said.

But in the two cases, both men have “been neutralized as far as being effective agents for the Soviet Union,” DuHadway said. “So you could rationalize that you’re not giving up agents and assets.”