The KGB: Eyes of the Kremlin

(8 of 13)

success abroad when it simply pays for espionage, often at a surprisingly low rate. U.S. counterintelligence experts are concerned because a growing number of Americans with little or no political convictions have taken the initiative to provide the Soviets with information purely for monetary gain. Says the FBI's O'Malley: "The KGB manual says that Americans can be bought, and unfortunately it is often true, especially in difficult economic times." A roundup of recent rogues:

> In 1974 a young college dropout named Christopher Boyce, then 21, got a job as a communications clerk with TRW, a California defense contractor that was working on surveillance satellites for the CIA. He was disillusioned with the Viet Nam War and Watergate. At a party in 1975, he and a childhood friend, Andrew Daulton Lee, then 22, devised a scheme to sell information to the Soviets. Lee made the first contact at the Soviet embassy in Mexico City, and over the next year and a half collected more than $60,000 for his troubles. Boyce made less: approximately $15,000. They were caught when Lee tried to contact his Soviet caseworker by throwing a message through the gate of the embassy and attracted the attention of Mexico City police. Boyce gave the Soviets valuable information, particularly about the "Pyramider," an espionage satellite in development.

> To Soviet agents in Ottawa, one Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, who remains anonymous, seemed an ideal "mole" for penetrating the Canadian security service. They wooed him assiduously. Details for secret meetings were passed inside a hollow stick or in a specially designed pack of Marlboro cigarettes. A piece of colored tape strategically placed on a pillar in a shopping center would also signal a rendezvous. Over a nine-month period the Mountie received $30,500; then Canadian police blew the whistle. The case proved to be a classic counterespionage sting. After the Soviets tried to recruit him, the Mountie had informed his superiors, who encouraged him to play along. The scandal resulted in the expulsion of 13 Soviet diplomats.

> Former CIA Undercover Agent David Barnett was having trouble making money from his antiques export firm when KGB agents approached him in Indonesia in the early 1970s. They were allegedly willing to pay $100,000 to hear his story of how the CIA had picked up Soviet military hardware from Indonesian naval officers in the 1960s, plus any other trivia about U.S. intelligence operations. In 1977 they prodded him to apply for positions on the Senate and House intelligence committees and the White House Intelligence Oversight Board. He was not accepted. FBI agents arrested him in 1980.

> Geoffrey Arthur Prime was serving with the British Royal Air Force in West Berlin when he offered his services to the KGB in 1968. Over much of the next 13 years, he worked as a Russian translator at Britain's top-secret electronic intelligence center in Cheltenham, and he managed to pass the Soviets sensitive information on British and American counterespionage efforts. After Prime was picked up last year for a sex offense involving a 14-year-old girl, his wife reported to police that she had uncovered spy equipment he had used.

> In the Southern California condominium complex where they lived, William Holden Bell and Marian Zacharski seemed to be merely good