U.S. to Cut Foreigners on Embassy Staffs

The State Department has devised a program aimed at increasing security and reducing the number of foreigners in U.S. embassies throughout Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe, a senior department official said Wednesday.

The program will be implemented in three phases, taking longer to complete its security goals than some security officials and congressmen have proposed, the official said.

One bill now in Congress would eliminate all foreign nationals in these embassies within two years.

Would Be Cheaper

But the State Department plan would be cheaper than replacing all foreign nationals immediately and would produce greater security for the embassies in the end, the official said.

The plan was formulated by the department’s Bureau of European Affairs after a meeting here June 4-5 of the U.S. ambassadors to the six East European nations that are members of the Warsaw Pact: Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.

The program was formed in response to the U.S. Embassy security scandals in Moscow, in which a Marine guard was charged with espionage and the Soviets were accused of bugging the new embassy complex as it was being built.

Lessons learned from the Moscow experience, along with the broader examination of U.S. embassies in the rest of the Communist bloc, were taken into account in producing the new security plan, which will cost “tens of millions of dollars,” the official said.

The program calls for:

--Creation of an “all-American, all-classified core” within each embassy where only U.S. diplomats could enter and where all secret information would be kept. Ideally, the “core” would be a separate building, newly constructed “from the ground up” to ensure security. Until then, or if funds are not available, several upper floors of the embassy can suffice.

Relocation of Offices

--Relocation of foreign nationals to outside the embassy’s chancery and into separate buildings accessible to the local public, particularly for offices concerned with general information and cultural affairs.

--Examination of the functions of foreign nationals at embassies in depth to determine whether Americans can be trained to substitute for them in part or in whole. “The aim would be to move toward eliminating these nationals in the long run if possible,” the official said.

In all, about 200 Americans are stationed at the six embassies in Eastern Europe, with an average ratio of about two Americans to every three foreign nationals. The Moscow embassy had about 115 Americans and 200 Soviet support staff until last October, when all of the Soviets were withdrawn in retaliation for the drastic cutbacks in Soviet personnel at the United Nations demanded by the United States on grounds that many engaged in espionage.

The main lesson learned from the Moscow experience, the official said, was “build your own building, with total supervision of construction.” Also, the official said, the United States must “improve the chain of command by strengthening the ambassador’s authority and responsibility for security matters.”

To eliminate listening devices, the new U.S. Embassy complex in Moscow probably will be rebuilt in large part, the official said, and an entirely new building will be constructed as a secure embassy “core.”

Not an Automatic Answer

But the elimination of all foreign employees from an embassy is not an automatic answer to security problems, he said.

About 80 Americans are being recruited to take the place of the 200 withdrawn Soviets, and about 35 of them are already there. Of the first 30 who were sent, however, nine were quickly brought back because of drinking, fraternizing and other infractions of rules. As a result, applicants for those jobs are now being screened more thoroughly, he said.

More significantly, the quantity and quality of the diplomatic reporting has fallen off over the last six months. Most of the quantitative drop is due to the difficulties of transporting handwritten reports to West Germany by air--because all typewriters at the Moscow embassy are suspect of being bugged--for transmission to Washington.

But because professional diplomats are doubling as drivers and performing other support staff chores, they have less time and energy to “make the rounds of receptions where you pick up reports that keep us abreast of what’s happening,” another official said.