New Moscow compound riddled with ‘bugs’

Press, 7 April 1987, Page 10

New Moscow compound riddled with ‘bugs’

NZPA-AFP Washington A new United States Embassy compound under construction in Moscow is packed with Soviet listening devices and the entire SUSI9O million ($338.4 million) project should be scrapped, according to some United States Congressmen and intelligence officials. The “New York Times” quoted Government officials as saying the security problems stemmed from a 1972 decision to have much of the new embassy building assembled from prefabricated modules manufactured at a Soviet site not open to American inspection.

Bugs were placed in the steel beams, said the officials.

The "Times” quoted Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat and former vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, as saying: “The only honest approach is to tear it down and start all over again. There is no way possible to make that embassy secure.” The report follows a sex-for-secrets scandal at the present United States Embassy in Moscow that led to the arrest of three Marine guards, two of whom have been charged with spying. The scandal has heightened concern over whether secure communications can be maintained during a visit by the Secretary of State, George Shultz, to Moscow next week.

My Shultz will have to

use a caravan outside the Embassy for sensitive conversations. The “Times” said that before the Marine guards scandal, the consensus among Administration and Congress officials was that the new embassy, to be occupied in 1989, could be salvaged, and it would be more damaging for the embassy to remain in its present quarters. Mr Daniel Mica, a Democrat who heads the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee, which monitors embassy security, said the security flaws could be remedied at an estimated cost of SUS2O to SUS4O million, in addition to the SUSI9O million already spent on the project.

The new building was supposed to have*fleen

completed in 1983 at a cost of SUS9O million. Mr Mica is in Moscow to inspect the new compound and the existing embassy building.

President Ronald Reagan said yesterday that staff would not move into the new embassy until it was free of listening devices.

Mr Reagan, who is in Canada for talks with the Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney, said he knew there had been a problem at the building for several years “and I know that steps are constantly being taken by ( our people.” He added: “So I cannot tell you what the situation is right now, but obviously if there is no way to change that around, we obviously would not move in, would we?”