Holes in A Spy Scandal

The Moscow embassy case has been a fiasco

Alarms went off all over Washington last March when former Marine guards at the U.S. embassy in Moscow were charged with espionage. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger proclaimed the case "quite comparable to Iran's actions in seizing our embassy in Tehran." The Reagan Administration, believing that the Marines had allowed KGB agents to plant miniaturized listening devices in the embassy, cut off electronic communications with it and undertook a $100 million program to replace security and communications equipment in Moscow and elsewhere. It seemed that the two key defendants, Sergeant Clayton Lonetree and Corporal Arnold Bracy, who were said to have been...

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