Spy on allies, but don’t get caught

Press, 26 December 1985, Page 12

Spy on allies, but don’t get caught

By

Bryan Brumley

of Associated Press in

Washington

Do allies spy on allies? They do indeed, according to experts. Usually it means not much more than analysing information readily available in the allied country — sometimes it involves electronic eavesdropping and very rarely it entails use of agents, such as navy analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard, an American who has confessed to selling delicate information to Israel.

It is an old story. During a trip to Paris in the early 1960 s the Treasury Secretary, Mr Henry Fowler, and a diplomat, Mr George Ball, stayed in hotels because the ambassador’s residence was under renovation. Mr Fowler’s attache case was opened in his hotel room, but the man who did it was caught about halfway through, and nothing was taken, recalls Mr Ball, who was then United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Several months later a French diplomat quietly let the Americans know that agents also had gone through Mr Ball’s briefcase. “I had nothing in my attache case,” Mr Ball said, “and United States officials quietly let it drop, as befitting a misunderstanding between friends.”

Two former C.I.A. directors, Mr William Colby and Mr Richard Helms, give somewhat different answers when asked about allies spying on allies. Neither denies that it happens.

“Whenever you run a clandestine operation you have to weigh the possible gain versus the risk. With an ally, the answer is usually, no,” Mr Colby said. For Mr Helms, the matter is not so clear.

“The _only sin in espionage is getting caught, and that friends spy on the United States surprises me not at all,” he said in a recent television interview. “We use all kinds of human agents in countries all over the world.”

France and Israel are mentioned most often when experts are asked to cite instances of friendly spying. French agents outraged New Zealand several months ago by setting a bomb which sank the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour, killing one person, to prevent it from interferring with a nuclear test. The sinking landed two French agents in a New Zealand jail and led to the resignations of the French Defence Minister, Mr Charles Hernu, and Admiral Pierre Lacoste, head of the General Directorate for External Security, the main French espionage agency.

Before the United States entered World War H, Britain launched one of the most massive intelligence operations in history — based in New York. The British Prime Minister, Mr Winston Churchill, sent Mr William Stephenson, code-named Intrepid, to establish a spy centre in Manhattan’s Rockefeller Centre, away from German bombardment. Mr Stephenson operated with the blessing of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the F. 8.1. director, Mr J. Edgar Hoover, but without the knowledge of the State Department, which was observing strict neutrality. Mr Stephenson and his agents secretly killed at least three German operatives in America, and ran clandestine campaigns to discredit United States politicians who opposed aid to Britain, according to a book on the operation, “A Man Called Intrepid,” by William Stephenson. America’s European allies are not known to have run agents in the United States since 1954, when an employee at the National Security Agency, Mr Joseph Peterson, was arrested for passing secret documents to the Dutch Embassy during and after World War 11. The Dutch said they thought Mr Peterson was authorised to give them the secret documents, although one former United States intelligence official said the Netherlands knew better and wanted the material to help preserve its empire. These days United States satellites, airplanes and naval vessels circle the globe collecting photographic and electronic intelligence, mostly about hostile nations, but sometimes on friendly and neutral countries as well. On June 8, 1967, during the sixday Mideast war, the intelligence ship U.S.S. Liberty was snooping in international waters off the Sinai Peninsula. Israeli warplanes attacked it for more than an hour, killing 34 American crew members and wounding 171. Although Israel claimed the attack was accidental, a former deputy C.I.A. director, Mr George Carver, and Admiral Thomas Moorer, who was chief of naval operations at the time, said Israel warplanes buzzed the Liberty for eight hours before attacking. Israel fired on the Liberty because it was in position to intercept military broadcasts proving that the Israeli attack on the Syrian Golan Heights was unprovoked, according to Mr Carver and Admiral Moorer. “Any nation which would do that

would not hesitate to swipe a few documents,” Mr Carver said in an interview. Another former senior intelligence official, speaking on condition he not be identified, was asked what might prompt the United States to spy on a friend. He recalled that the United States was eager in the 1970 s to know whether Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant could produce weapons-grade uranium.

The Israelis turned us down, said the official, who pointedly declines to say whether Washington then sent an agent to Dimona.

In April, 1979, South Africa expelled the United States military attache and two aides for mounting a camera in their plane and photographing sensitive installations, apparently nuclear facilities. Six months later, a United States Vela satellite detected a low-level atomic blast near South Africa. Pretoria denied setting off a nuclear bomb, although Mr Carver and others believe the flash may have been an atomic test by South Africa acting alone, or with Israeli scientists.

A plot by neutral Switzerland against its equally non-aligned

neighbour Austria caused some head scratching in 1979. A Swiss business consultant, Mr Kurt Schilling, also an army reservist, Was asked by his commander to observe Austrian military exercises involving 32,000 troops, the lartest there since World War 11.

Mr Schilling was caught, pleaded guilty, was given a suspended sentence and sent home. Although the case was heard in closed session, to avoid disclosing secrets, word leaked out that Mr Schilling spied for free, collecting neither wages nor expense money. “Most bungled cases of friendly spying are hushed up, sparing public embarrassment for all,” Mr Carver said.

“If a gentleman is enamoured of a lady, perhaps his wife, and believes that she is dallying with another man, perhaps his best friend, he might not find it to his advantage to put all three of them in a situation in which they had toconfront the truth,” Mr Carver said.

“He might let them know of his suspicion through other means. They might think better of it, and the next time he looked the problem might have disappeared. “It is sometimes the same in intelligence. You drop a hint, turn around and the problem you suspected has vanished, perhaps never existed,” he said.