Ex-CIA Agent Gets Refuge in Moscow : Accused Spy, Implicated in Ruining U.S. Operation, Eluded FBI for a Year

MOSCOW —  Edward Lee Howard, an accused former CIA agent-turned-spy whose disclosures to the KGB are believed to have devastated the American intelligence network here, was granted political asylum Thursday by the Soviet Union.

The announcement by Tass, the official news agency, was the first indication of Howard’s whereabouts since he eluded the FBI and disappeared from Santa Fe, N.M., last September.

Howard’s betrayal of CIA secrets to the Soviets has apparently dealt a crushing blow to U.S. intelligence networks in Moscow, informed sources in Washington have told The Times. At least five American diplomats were accused of spying and expelled from the Soviet Union as a result of information Howard supplied to the KGB intelligence and security service, the sources said.

Howard, however, reportedly said he was being persecuted without reason by the U.S. intelligence services and wanted to hide from them in the Soviet Union.

“Guided by humanitarian considerations,” the brief Tass announcement said, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the nation’s nominal Parliament, granted Howard’s request.

President Reagan’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board has criticized the CIA and the FBI for not being tough enough on Howard, 34, after he was found to be using drugs, drinking to excess and flunking polygraph tests at work, Washington sources with access to the board report told The Times in June.

Despite a host of personal problems, the board found, Howard was almost sent to Moscow to be a case officer for a valuable CIA informant. Although the CIA canceled that assignment, the board said, it faulted the spy agency for not making sure that Howard did not sell his secrets.

Howard was fired from the CIA in June, 1983, after having been with the agency for 2 1/2 years, U.S. officials told The Times last October.

In fleeing to the Soviet Union, he followed in the footsteps of such notorious British spies as Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. Two Americans who worked for the code-cracking National Security Agency--Bernon Mitchell and William Martin--defected to the Soviet Union in 1960.

The U.S. Embassy in Moscow declined to comment on the Tass statement beyond saying that it is rare for American intelligence officers to seek asylum in Moscow.

“If Howard has anything to say, he can say it for himself,” an embassy spokesman told reporters.

Fingered by Russian

Ironically, it was double defector Vitaly Yurchenko, a senior Soviet intelligence officer, who first identified Howard as a spy for the Kremlin.

Yurchenko went to the United States and cooperated with CIA interrogators but then returned to Moscow and asserted that he had been kidnaped by the Americans.

Before Yurchenko’s disclosures about Howard, the United States was unaware that the former agent was anything but a troubled man whose intelligence service career had foundered.

The Times reported last June 27 that Howard’s disclosures to the KGB in Austria in the fall of 1984 led to the arrest of a Soviet engineer, who had been a prime CIA informant, in the summer of 1985. The engineer, identified as A.G. Tolkachev, was reportedly executed later.

Howard joined the CIA in January, 1981, and was trained for two years in preparation for a highly sensitive assignment in Moscow as an intelligence officer, according to U.S. government officials.

Failed Lie Detector

When a polygraph examination indicated deception on his part, however, he lost the opportunity to go to Moscow and eventually was fired for drug use and mental instability.

In reviewing the CIA’s handling of Howard, critics have questioned whether he should have been fired, suggesting that it would have been better to keep him working for the agency in a low-level, non-sensitive job.

In a departure from procedure, according to officials, the CIA failed to inform the FBI of Howard’s dismissal for nearly a year.

He got a new job in Santa Fe as an economic analyst with the New Mexico legislature but soon began taking overseas trips and showing signs of wealth without arousing CIA or FBI suspicion.

After his ouster, Howard spent hours in front of the Soviet Embassy in Washington wondering whether to go inside and tell what he knew, according to FBI affidavits filed in the case.

Gave Data to KGB

Later, in 1984, he flew to Austria and fed his information to the KGB.

Howard was charged last month with conspiring to deliver national defense secrets to a foreign government and with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

He reportedly made a false offer to cooperate with the FBI last Sept. 20 after agents accused him directly of selling secrets to the Soviet Union.

The next day, however, he evaded FBI surveillance and got away.

Howard was born in Alamagordo, N.M., in 1951, son of an Air Force master sergeant, and attended primary and secondary schools in the United States and abroad during his father’s tours of duty.

Graduated from the University of Texas in 1972 with a degree in business, Howard joined the Peace Corps, serving in Colombia and the Dominican Republic until 1974, when he became a Peace Corps recruiter. Later, Howard reportedly worked as an assistant project development officer for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Peru.

In 1976, he married Mary Cedarleaf, a Minnesota woman whom he had met in the Peace Corps. He left her and their 2-year-old son, Lee, behind in Santa Fe last September when he wrote his legislative committee boss a note saying he was quitting “for personal reasons,” and dropped out of sight.

In the Dallas suburb of Garland, Tex., the Garland Daily News quoted Howard’s father, Ken, as saying his son telephoned Tuesday morning from Moscow, the Associated Press reported.

“I’m relieved to know where he’s at and that he’s OK,” the father said. “He said more or less he’s going to settle down and wants his family to come see him.”