California and the West : KGB Records Reveal California Espionage : Intelligence: Unidentified man described as a Democratic Party activist informed Soviets about meeting with then-Sen. Cranston and presidential candidate Jimmy Carter, papers show.

Most knew him as a Democratic Party activist who was deeply involved in California politics during the Jimmy Carter years.

He rubbed shoulders with the party elite, including Gov. Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr. and U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston. During the 1976 presidential campaign, he described taking part in a three-hour strategy session with Cranston, Brown and presidential hopeful Carter at the Pacific Hotel near Los Angeles International Airport.

But according to meticulous records kept by a former Soviet KGB official who fled to the West in 1992, he was a spy and his detailed reports were forwarded to Moscow’s senior leaders.

Although Western intelligence officials said they believe there is little reason to doubt the account--one of thousands of details contained in documents spirited out of Russia by KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin--the identity of the California-based spy remains unknown, at least to the public.

According to Mitrokhin’s records, the California activist was recruited by the KGB during a visit to Russia.

Asked about the account Thursday, Cranston said he was unaware whom the Soviet mole might be.

“I have no idea who this guy is,” Cranston said. The former senator said that he recalled a Carter campaign event at the Pacific Hotel but remembered no meeting between the three Democrats as described by Mitrokhin.

“It’s not logical such a meeting would have occurred,” Cranston said. “I don’t believe it happened. Sounds like this agent [was] trying to build up his own reputation.”

Mitrokhin, who lives under a new identity in Britain, told Western intelligence agents that he copied volumes of information from KGB files over a 12-year period ending in 1984.

He secretly stashed his notes in a milk churn, three tin trunks and two aluminum cases hidden under the floorboards of his country home outside Moscow until he fled the country.

His notes contained minute details of KGB activities in the United States, including the favorite meeting places of Soviet agents in major American cities during the 1960s.

In Los Angeles, for example, preferred rendezvous points included the Wiltern Theater at Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue and a newsstand on Los Palmas Avenue in Hollywood that specialized in out-of-town newspapers. Agents also met near the entrance of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard and in front of the display windows of a McMahan’s furniture store--since closed--in North Hollywood.

In the Bay Area, Mitrokhin noted, Soviet agents met in busy coffee shops. In the nation’s capital, they preferred the discreet distance of a shopping mall in suburban Maryland, miles from the diplomatic world of downtown Washington.

The brief account of the California activist’s links with Moscow and the list of old KGB haunts are contained in “The Sword and the Shield,” written by British historian Christopher Andrew in collaboration with Mitrokhin. The book makes public for the first time much of the trove of information Mitrokhin carried with him when he defected to the West in 1992.

In Washington, FBI spokesman Steven Berry said the Mitrokhin material helped give U.S. counterintelligence officials valuable insights into the history and workings of the KGB in the United States, even generating new leads for unresolved cases.

In one instance, Berry said, Mitrokhin’s records led to the arrest and 1997 conviction of a former National Security Agency clerk, Robert Stephen Lipka, who photographed secret U.S. documents and sold them for as much as $1,000 apiece during the late 1960s.

“Mitrokhin’s information solved the Lipka case,” Berry said. “His information, in concert with existing FBI investigative material, allowed the FBI to resolve lingering intelligence issues.”

A source at the Central Intelligence Agency who spoke on condition of anonymity concurred that Mitrokhin’s defection was an important development.

“He’s the real deal,” this source noted. “He brought out a lot of information that was of great interest.”

But FBI and CIA officials declined to comment on the California incident.

Another source familiar with Mitrokhin’s material suggested that the defector’s notes have probably already given the FBI enough information to identify the high-placed Soviet operative in California.

“There is little doubt the bureau will have been able to figure who this is,” the source said.

John L. Martin, who headed the Justice Department division in charge of prosecuting espionage cases before retiring in 1997, said that the activities described by Mitrokhin do not necessarily constitute a formal case of espionage, even if the Californian provided detailed accounts of Democratic Party strategy sessions to his KGB controllers.

Espionage, Martin said, involves passing protected secrets and information about national defense to a foreign power. The actions of the California activist, he said, appear to fall into a less serious category.

“In this case, the FBI would probably go after him for not registering as an agent of a foreign power, which is a lesser offense, or get him on tax evasion if he was paid and didn’t declare the money,” Martin said.

Martin said it was likely that the FBI would conduct background checks on such individuals, possibly interviewing them and those around them.

“These are the kinds of people you would put under surveillance, he said.

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Times staff writers Carl Ingram and George Skelton in Sacramento and Mark Z. Barabak in Los Angeles contributed to this story.