Spy’s Death Reveals Double Life : Ex-Navy Man Who Fled to Moscow Was KGB Agent

A U.S. Navy intelligence analyst who defected to the Soviet Union in 1986 complaining of FBI harassment actually was a longtime Soviet spy, a newspaper said today in disclosing his death at the age of 32.

The disclosure that Glenn Michael Souther had been “a staff member of the KGB” was a rare admission of Soviet spying.

The military newspaper Red Star published an obituary, signed by the KGB collegium and his “work comrades,” on the man it called Mikhail Yevgenievich Orlov. It said he died suddenly June 22, but did not give a cause of death.

A picture accompanying the obituary showed a clean-cut Souther wearing a suit and tie.

Background Unclear

It was not clear whether he was a Soviet mole working under cover for years in the United States, or whether he began working for the KGB--the Soviet secret police and intelligence unit--only after his defection.

“I think it’s probably too early to tell,” FBI spokesman Mike Kortan said in Washington.

He said Souther was born in Hammond, Ind., and went to high school in Cumberland, Me. The FBI believes that he took the name Orlov when he defected, Kortan said.

The FBI says Souther was a Navy veteran who disappeared in May, 1986, after graduating from Old Dominion University in Virginia with a major in Russian studies. He served in the Navy in the 1970s and worked as a civilian intelligence specialist in the Navy’s 2nd Fleet headquarters in Norfolk, Va. He apparently was being investigated for espionage at the time.

Kortan said Souther’s wife did not defect with him.

‘She Suspected Him’

“All that’s come out is the fact that his wife has said she suspected him several years before he left,” Kortan said, adding he did not know the status of their marriage.

Soviet media reported last July that Souther had been granted asylum in the Soviet Union after he claimed that FBI agents persecuted him.

The obituary said he was a “Soviet intelligence agent” who had worked a long time to “remove the threat of nuclear war hanging over humanity” and had “performed special assignments and made a large contribution to ensuring Soviet state security.”

The newspaper did not say exactly what he did for the KGB, or how long he had spied for the Soviets.

Shortly after his defection was disclosed, Souther appeared on Soviet TV to describe his American work with secret reconnaissance photographs taken by satellites to help plan the U.S. bombing raid on Libya in April, 1986.

TV Appearance

The attack was to retaliate for what Washington claimed was Libyan involvement in the bombing of a West German disco in which a U.S. serviceman was killed and 50 others wounded.

In his TV appearance, Souther said nothing about spying for the Soviets.

During the broadcast, Souther indicated that he had not settled in to Soviet life and was not satisfied with what he was doing.

Although he said he had a comfortable Moscow apartment, Souther added: “There’s a lot of work here, but I haven’t found my niche exactly. I don’t feel that I’m being the most productive for what I have to offer.”