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Fast Money & Foreign Objects
The Bugged Embassy Case: What Went Wrong
By ELAINE SCIOLINO, Special to the New York Times
Published: November 15, 1988
WASHINGTON, Nov. 14— In 1969, after years of tortuous negotiation, the Nixon Administration signed an agreement with the Soviet Union providing for new embassy complexes in Washington and Moscow.
The American project was to be the most elaborate and expensive United States embassy ever, a testament to American wealth and power.
Today, the eight-story American chancery in Moscow stands useless, infested with spying systems planted by Soviet construction workers, a stark monument to one of the most embarrassing failures of American diplomacy and intelligence in decades.
Over the years, the United States has spent $23 million on the building, but more than twice that amount in an attempt to figure out how the Soviets used eavesdropping devices to transform it into a giant antenna capable of transmitting written and verbal communications to the outside.
After a saga of suspicious behavior by Soviet work crews, electronic devices buried in concrete and investigators hanging like rock-climbers from the roof, a secret cable to the American Ambassador resulted, finally, in a halt to what a 1987 Senate committee described as ''the most massive, sophisticated and skillfully executed bugging operation in history.''
The Bush Administration will have to decide whether to follow President Reagan's advice that the building be torn down.
What went wrong is a spy story full of confusion, compromise and bureaucratic conflict. A Tale of Two Hills, And the Better Deal
The embassy saga dates back to 1934, when William C. Bullitt, the first American Ambassador to the Soviet Union, asked Stalin for a new embassy. But negotiations did not begin in earnest until the early 1960's.
Although the United States was offered a site high atop the Lenin Hills overlooking Moscow, it opted for an 85-year-lease on a site more accessible and centrally located: a 10-acre parcel overlooking the Moscow River and within walking distance of both the Ambassador's residence and important Soviet Government buildings.
Although neither side could have guessed it in 1969, when the site agreement was signed and eavesdropping techniques were less dependent on microwave telephone transmissions, the Soviets got the better deal, an elevated site on Mt. Alto, a hill overlooking Washington, tailor-made for espionage.
For four years, American and Soviet negotiators labored unsuccessfully over the terms of the construction. But in 1972, during the heady days of detente, President Nixon ordered a reluctant State Department to reach an agreement. In what would later be recognized as a crucial blunder, the United States gave the Soviets control of the design and construction of the mission in Moscow.
''I didn't favor it because it was a one-sided deal,'' recalled William P. Rogers, who signed off on the deal as Secretary of State in the Nixon White House. ''But I was carrying out the orders of the White House.''
But Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, Mr. Nixon's national security adviser at the time, declines to accept blame, saying the State Department did not voice strong objections. ''I don't exclude I said to somebody, 'See what you can do to get it done,' '' he said. ''But that isn't the same thing as saying, 'Go ahead, cost what it may.' ''
The Soviets proceeded to build pre-cast concrete pieces for the embassy building in their own factories, out of view of American security experts. In signing the accord, Washington miscalculated that inspection of the pieces as they arrived at the site would be sufficient to enable security personnel to detect eavesdropping devices. Since the United States had the right to do all the finishing work - from inside walls to windows and doors - there was little concern that the Soviets would be able to implant bugs that could not be detected. Security Slips Between the Cracks
From the outset, the project was beset by clashes within the Washington bureaucracy which delayed decisions on security matters. The chain of command was never clearly defined, as security, construction, diplomatic and intelligence functions were carried out by different offices with different agendas.
At the time of the groundbreaking in 1979, there was still no clear American plan for the on-site security needs or what the specialists were supposed to look for. American intelligence officials in Moscow warned that they would not have the necessary equipment and personnel to handle the problem of Soviet bugging once construction began.
By late 1979, several thousand precast elements of at least 7,000 pounds each were arriving on the building site. All of them had to be inspected. ''We started getting technical security people saying, 'Hey, guys, you have problems,' '' said a State Department official who was in Moscow at the time. ''They weren't listened to.''
Meanwhile, the State Department's Office of Foreign Buildings Operations, already under pressure from Congress because of cost overruns and poor results in construction projects in other capitals, was pushing to move the job along.
Instead, they found that the Soviet idea of efficient construction was vastly inferior to American standards, and they quickly lost patience with Russian absenteeism, drunkenness on the job and sloppy work habits.
''We treated this as a cost-driven operation and it became critical to move as quickly as possible,'' said Joseph S. Hulings 3d, the State Department's current coordinator on the embassy project.
By ELAINE SCIOLINO, Special to the New York Times
Published: November 15, 1988
WASHINGTON, Nov. 14— In 1969, after years of tortuous negotiation, the Nixon Administration signed an agreement with the Soviet Union providing for new embassy complexes in Washington and Moscow.
The American project was to be the most elaborate and expensive United States embassy ever, a testament to American wealth and power.
Today, the eight-story American chancery in Moscow stands useless, infested with spying systems planted by Soviet construction workers, a stark monument to one of the most embarrassing failures of American diplomacy and intelligence in decades.
Over the years, the United States has spent $23 million on the building, but more than twice that amount in an attempt to figure out how the Soviets used eavesdropping devices to transform it into a giant antenna capable of transmitting written and verbal communications to the outside.
After a saga of suspicious behavior by Soviet work crews, electronic devices buried in concrete and investigators hanging like rock-climbers from the roof, a secret cable to the American Ambassador resulted, finally, in a halt to what a 1987 Senate committee described as ''the most massive, sophisticated and skillfully executed bugging operation in history.''
The Bush Administration will have to decide whether to follow President Reagan's advice that the building be torn down.
What went wrong is a spy story full of confusion, compromise and bureaucratic conflict. A Tale of Two Hills, And the Better Deal
The embassy saga dates back to 1934, when William C. Bullitt, the first American Ambassador to the Soviet Union, asked Stalin for a new embassy. But negotiations did not begin in earnest until the early 1960's.
Although the United States was offered a site high atop the Lenin Hills overlooking Moscow, it opted for an 85-year-lease on a site more accessible and centrally located: a 10-acre parcel overlooking the Moscow River and within walking distance of both the Ambassador's residence and important Soviet Government buildings.
Although neither side could have guessed it in 1969, when the site agreement was signed and eavesdropping techniques were less dependent on microwave telephone transmissions, the Soviets got the better deal, an elevated site on Mt. Alto, a hill overlooking Washington, tailor-made for espionage.
For four years, American and Soviet negotiators labored unsuccessfully over the terms of the construction. But in 1972, during the heady days of detente, President Nixon ordered a reluctant State Department to reach an agreement. In what would later be recognized as a crucial blunder, the United States gave the Soviets control of the design and construction of the mission in Moscow.
''I didn't favor it because it was a one-sided deal,'' recalled William P. Rogers, who signed off on the deal as Secretary of State in the Nixon White House. ''But I was carrying out the orders of the White House.''
But Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, Mr. Nixon's national security adviser at the time, declines to accept blame, saying the State Department did not voice strong objections. ''I don't exclude I said to somebody, 'See what you can do to get it done,' '' he said. ''But that isn't the same thing as saying, 'Go ahead, cost what it may.' ''
The Soviets proceeded to build pre-cast concrete pieces for the embassy building in their own factories, out of view of American security experts. In signing the accord, Washington miscalculated that inspection of the pieces as they arrived at the site would be sufficient to enable security personnel to detect eavesdropping devices. Since the United States had the right to do all the finishing work - from inside walls to windows and doors - there was little concern that the Soviets would be able to implant bugs that could not be detected. Security Slips Between the Cracks
From the outset, the project was beset by clashes within the Washington bureaucracy which delayed decisions on security matters. The chain of command was never clearly defined, as security, construction, diplomatic and intelligence functions were carried out by different offices with different agendas.
At the time of the groundbreaking in 1979, there was still no clear American plan for the on-site security needs or what the specialists were supposed to look for. American intelligence officials in Moscow warned that they would not have the necessary equipment and personnel to handle the problem of Soviet bugging once construction began.
By late 1979, several thousand precast elements of at least 7,000 pounds each were arriving on the building site. All of them had to be inspected. ''We started getting technical security people saying, 'Hey, guys, you have problems,' '' said a State Department official who was in Moscow at the time. ''They weren't listened to.''
Meanwhile, the State Department's Office of Foreign Buildings Operations, already under pressure from Congress because of cost overruns and poor results in construction projects in other capitals, was pushing to move the job along.
Instead, they found that the Soviet idea of efficient construction was vastly inferior to American standards, and they quickly lost patience with Russian absenteeism, drunkenness on the job and sloppy work habits.
''We treated this as a cost-driven operation and it became critical to move as quickly as possible,'' said Joseph S. Hulings 3d, the State Department's current coordinator on the embassy project.
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