The Spies Who Are Out in the Cold

NEVER before had the British Government staged such a carefully calculated counterattack against Soviet espionage--even though in the past ten years it has expelled no fewer than 27 Russian diplomats on spying charges. But last week, reinforced with the testimony of a defecting Soviet agent who brought as a dowry a list of his country's spies in Britain, the government of Prime Minister Edward Heath ordered the largest mass expulsion of diplomats in modern history. In all, it expelled 90 Soviet officials and barred the re-entry of 15 others.

The defector--so far unnamed--was a high official in Britain of the KGB, the Soviet secret police. He got in touch with British agents several weeks ago to seek asylum in Britain, and was swiftly granted it. His information conveyed, said the Foreign Office, full details of "the scale and nature of Soviet espionage in Britain." Those details included--startlingly enough--plans for the "infiltration of agents for the purpose of sabotage." The KGB man also brought along a Soviet plan for infiltrating the British navy, particularly a secret research establishment at Portland on England's south coast, the same base where British counter-intelligence broke up a Soviet spy ring in 1961.

Hospitable Party Givers. The 105 Soviet officials involved this time worked not only for the Soviet embassy in London but also for the Soviet trade delegation, the Moscow Narodny Bank, the airline Aeroflot and other commercial enterprises, and constituted almost 20% of the Soviet official community in Britain. That community had grown steadily--from 138 in 1950 to 550 as of early last week. The British had tried to limit the number of Soviet diplomats, particularly in 1968 after a Royal Air Force technician named Douglas Britten was sentenced to 21 years in prison for passing secret military information to the Soviet embassy's cultural counselor. London then ordered the embassy to keep its staff to no more than 150 officers. But the only noticeable result was that the size of the Soviet trade delegation and other groups grew sharply--while Soviet-British trade remained steady.

Unlike the stereotyped surly Soviet diplomats of earlier times, many of the new men became unusually active in local communities. Hospitable party givers, they could also be seen frequently having a drink with an M.P. or a meal with an industrialist or businessman at an expense-account restaurant. In the elegant North London suburb of Highgate (where Karl Marx's grave is located), Soviet trade-mission officials took a handsome modern office building of glass and concrete, set up house in luxurious apartments that rent for $168 to $240 a week, and went out of their way to behave like good neighbors. Their sheer numbers led some Highgate residents to complain that "the Russians have been taking over this area."

Pulling the String. The British were not unaware of what the Russians were up to. Though embassy and trade staffs of most big nations round the world are generally believed to shelter some espionage agents, the Soviet Union goes to extremes; a rule of thumb, at least in the U.S., is that 25% of Soviet embassy staffers are involved in intelligence activity. Most of the 105 expelled by Britain indulged in fairly routine if clandestine and illegal information collecting, and all were under surveillance by the British. A number of the Soviets were involved in industrial espionage--ferreting out the secrets of computer electronics and of the Anglo-French Concorde supersonic jetliner and its Olympus 593 engine. "Having been allowed to operate undisturbed," suggests a U.S. intelligence expert, "they may well have grown bold and sloppy. The problem in this business is always when to pull the string."

In pulling the string last week, the British tightened a knot around the Soviet community. They declared that the Soviet Union will not be allowed to replace any of the officials who are being expelled--or any similarly expelled in the future. That will reduce the size of the Soviet official community to 445, and even fewer if additional cases of espionage are discovered.

Inherent Contradiction. Britain's move took considerable diplomatic courage, but it also reflected a growing exasperation, expressed by Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home in a letter sent several weeks ago to Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. "I take it," Sir Alec wrote in tones of elaborate sarcasm, "that you yourself are fully informed of the scale of Soviet intelligence activities in this country."

Gromyko ignored the letter, as he had ignored a similar one sent eight months earlier. The British government, and particularly Prime Minister Heath, was furious at Gromyko's failure to reply. Last week the British went beyond polite requests. Using the best leverage at hand, the British Foreign Office declared: "The Soviet government can hardly fail to be conscious of the contradictions between their advocacy of a conference on European security and the scale of the operations against the security of this country." The statement went on to make it absolutely clear that unless Soviet officials stopped spying, Britain was prepared to oppose an all-European conference at which the Soviets hope to win Western recognition of the status quo in Eastern Europe. Home will undoubtedly stress this point during a face-to-face meeting with Gromyko this week in New York City.

The Soviet news agency Tass attacked the British action as "a relapse into the cold war," and Soviet diplomats in London were clearly stunned. The Daily Express quoted Soviet Labor Attache Igor Kleminov as protesting: "This just can't be. I am a friend of Vic Feather's [head of the Trades Union Congress]. I was drinking whisky with him at lunchtime." Edouard Ustenko, a second secretary, was equally surprised. "Impossible," he said. "There will be nobody left." Embassy Counselor Yuri Kashlev told the newspaper: "I have just come from Manchester, a welcome by the Lord Mayor and a rapturous reception. Now this. It doesn't make sense." In New York, a Soviet diplomat observed wryly: "I would not have thought the British would be so uncivilized."

There is a possibility that the Soviets will retaliate by expelling British embassy staffers in Moscow, but no chance whatever that Moscow will be able to give measure for measure. The British community in Moscow, where London's new Ambassador Sir John Killick presented his credentials just last week, consists of only about 100 diplomats, businessmen and journalists.

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