Espionage used to mean operating under aliases, sneaking around dark corners, seducing sultry Mata Hari’s, and traveling under forced passports. Detente has converted that formerly shady business into a respectable and flourishing enterprise.
Today, espionage means having a diplomatic passport and operating out of a beautiful embassy or consulate in a plush residential neighborhood. Spying is a principal export business of the Soviet Union.
Just as the Soviet scientific fishing fleets use a “vacuum cleaner” system for sucking in all the fish in a given area, so the Soviet espionage apparatus uses a “vacuum cleaner” technique to suck in all available military, scientific, technical, business, and trade information. In our open society, plenty is available.
A well-worn story often used to motivate salesmen describes a farm boy who got a job selling pianos and who promptly began to outsell all the older salesmen. The president of the company called him in to find out why. “It’s very easy,” the champion piano salesman said. “I just call on 200 homes every day and some are sure to buy.”
That’s the way the Soviets gather in American information. Their field persons haul in the nets, and Soviet “closet” persons analyze and evaluate. Even if 95 percent of the take is worthless, the 5 percent is the biggest bargain on the market today in terms of knowledge gained for money spent.
During and after World War II, stealing secrets of the atomic bomb and microfilm of State Department documents was the Soviet priority. Today the major utility of espionage is to gather economic and industrial information. American businesses spend millions of dollars developing techniques — and the Soviets reap the benefit by getting e copy of the U.S. patents, subscribing to technical journals, and attending specialized conferences.
The Communists use their diplomatic, business and cultural exchanges as a cover for their espionage apparatus. According to FBI Director Clarence M. Kelley, “in the last four years, the number of Communist bloc officials alone has increased 50 percent. The number of bloc visitors … has more than doubled.”
Americans cheerfully invite Communist agents here and allow them to travel around the country. The Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., is the espionage headquarters. The branch offices are the Soviet consulates in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Communist bloc sailors can take shore leave at almost any port.
As Alger Hiss proved 30 years ago, you don’t have to be a Russian to be a Soviet agent. You don’t even have to be poor, unemployed, or need money. Just this year, three American citizens were convicted of trying to sell important U.S. government or defense secrets to the Russians. One is a former CIA employee, a second is the son of a security director for an airplane manufacturer, and the third is the son of a well-to-do doctor.
How can the Russians get Americans to spy for them? There are many different motivations, but entrapment is a frequent one. Every American traveling to a Communist country is observed for behavior that might be compromising.
The United Nations is the biggest espionage nest of all. Some U.S. intelligence officials say that one-third of the 401 Soviet nationals employed at the UN Secretariat in various translating and executive positions have affiliations with the KGB (the Soviet CIA).
Thus the United Nations provides a means for Communist bloc countries, in effect, to put their spies on the U.S. payroll. Since the United States pays 25 percent of the UN’s annual $2.3 billion operating budget, U.S. taxpayers pay a quarter of each agent’s salary.
