(7 of 13)
Under Andropov's direction, the KGB has made a concerted effort to catch up with Western intelligence services in the technology of espionage. The Soviets are still lagging behind the U.S. in developing spy satellites. Only two weeks ago, a runaway Cosmos 1402 Soviet spy-in-the-sky plummeted to earth, the second such event in five years. But Moscow has made significant advances in electronic eavesdropping. Operatives from the KGB routinely monitor Western communications from embassy outposts bristling with antennas or from offshore spy trawlers. Ironically, the Soviets have benefited from the telecommunications revolution in the West. The use of satellites and microwaves to transmit telephone conversations has made it easier for KGB eavesdroppers to intercept highly confidential Government and business information.
If the KGB lags behind in technical spycraft, it is second to none in human intelligence "assets." KGB Defector Aleksei Myagkov says that between 1969 and 1974, 1,500 West Germans were recruited by the Soviets as spies. No one knows how many Americans have been enlisted, but FBI officials are sure of one thing: KGB activity in the U.S. is on the rise. Says the FBI's O'Malley: "It is evident in the ever increasing resources deployed against us, in the unrelenting effort by the KGB to recruit agents from Government, business and science, and the growing voraciousness of the Soviet appetite for science and technology."
In the 1930s and '40s, when sympathy for the Soviet experiment was high, the Soviet secret service could count on attracting ideologically committed foreign recruits. One such believer was British Intelligence Official H.A.R. ("Kim") Philby, who passed on secrets to the Soviets while serving as Britain's senior intelligence officer and, for a time, as liaison with the CIA. He defected to the Soviet Union in 1963. Now 71, Philby may have retired. U.S. intelligence experts have noticed a decline in the quality of KGB forgeries in English, a former specialty of Philby's.
The enticements for such traitorous acts today are various. In a permissive age, sexual entrapment is not as effective as it used to be, but it can still play a role in KGB blackmail schemes. In the late 1970s, a randy West German with political ambitions who had made several sexual conquests at the Leipzig Trade Fair soon learned that he was the unwitting star of a movie directed by the KGB's sister operation in East Germany, the MfS. If he did not show equal enthusiasm about climbing into bed with the secret police, agents threatened, they would turn over to the West German press photos of him wearing only his socks. West German counterintelligence foiled the plot by extracting a promise from the newspapers not to publish the photos. The KGB tried to snare U.S. Assistant Military Attaché James Holbrook in a similar "honey trap" of seductive female agents during a visit to the Ukrainian city of Rovno in 1981. He reported the misadventure to U.S. officials and was sent home.
The KGB seems to have more