Dustup in Moscow

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

The phone calls from the U.S. embassy in Moscow last Wednesday struck a note of ominous mystery. Business people, journalists and students in the Soviet capital were "urged to attend" a 9:30 p.m. briefing at Spaso House, the residence of the American Ambassador. They would be asked to sign a list of those attending; no cameras or recording devices would be allowed. Subject: secret until the briefing.

But by the time the Americans assembled, the message read to them by Charge d'Affaires Richard Combs had already been trumpeted to the world by the State Department. The U.S. proclaimed that it had caught the Soviet KGB using a kind of spy dust: an invisible chemical agent "applied indirectly to embassy personnel" and possibly to other Americans in the U.S.S.R., presumably by spreading it on objects such as doorknobs and auto steering wheels that the Americans would be sure to touch. The Americans would then leave traces of it on anything or anyone they touched. Thus the KGB might, for example, determine that a Soviet dissident had been meeting with Americans by finding the chemical tracer in the dissident's apartment.

The chemical, NPPD (for nitro-phenylpentadien) is "potentially harmful" as well, the U.S. contended. Tests show that it is a mutagen, meaning it is capable of altering a cell's genetic makeup; mutagens can be, but are not always, cancer-causing agents. The U.S. conceded it has "no evidence to date" of any serious ill effects. All the same, said State Department Spokesman Charles Redman in Washington, "we have protested the practice in the strongest terms and demanded that it be terminated immediately."

That was one of a series of public challenges delivered to the Kremlin by the Reagan Administration last week. National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane fired the first salvo on Monday by warning, in a speech to the Channel City Women's Forum in Santa Barbara, Calif., that the Soviets must change their basic thinking on security issues and human rights if they are to have much hope of reaching even "incremental" agreements with the U.S. The next day Washington announced over strenuous Soviet objections that it would go ahead, possibly by the end of next week, with an often postponed test of an advanced antisatellite weapon (see box).

At week's end the President joined the offensive. In a Los Angeles speech interrupting his California vacation, Reagan once more defended his Star Wars program to develop a defense against enemy missiles. In the process, he took a poke at the Soviet bear. Noting that domestic critics had called Star Wars "unfeasible," Reagan asked, "Well, if that's true, why are the Soviets so upset about it? As a matter of fact, why are they investing so many rubles of their own in the same technologies?"

Taken together, the words and actions suggest that the U.S. is preparing for the Nov. 19-20 summit meeting in Geneva between Reagan and Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev in a spirit of confrontation. The Soviets are posing as conciliators, but at the same time have launched a wide-ranging propaganda offensive, aimed principally at Western Europe. Its chief elements: a temporary suspension of underground nuclear tests that is attractive to the Europeans but deceptive in the Americans' view, combined with loud charges that the U.S. is accelerating preparations to conduct chemical warfare.

In that climate, Washington seized an unexpected chance to embarrass the Soviets by publicizing the spy-dust episode. As a propaganda opportunity, it ranked with the 1976 disclosure that the Soviets were bombarding the embassy with potentially harmful microwaves, apparently in an effort to eavesdrop on communications. U.S. officials gave this account: as early as 1976, microscopic pinches of NPPD were found at the embassy. The chemical is a synthetic one concocted in Soviet laboratories and almost unmentioned in scientific literature. It has no known use except for espionage. It is odorless and, in the tiny quantities normally used, invisible, but it produces a glow under ultraviolet light and a yellow residue when treated with another special chemical.

The U.S. synthesized its own NPPD and began tests that by last year showed it to be a mutagen. This finding seemed academic, since Soviet use of the chemical appeared to have stopped in 1982. But last spring a routine sweep of the embassy found NPPD again. Also, some embassy employees developed skin rashes, the possible result of contact with heavier-than-usual concentrations of the chemical. Intensified searches pointed to more widespread Soviet use of NPPD, and in larger quantities than ever before. At one point, in fact, careless KGB operatives seem to have sprinkled it so heavily in the embassy that the chemical for once turned visible, leaving a telltale yellow splotch. Two weeks ago the Administration made a detailed report to President Reagan, who approved a formal protest to Moscow and a public statement. U.S. officials admit that two or more years of tests on animals will be needed to determine whether NPPD poses a serious threat to health. That displeased many Americans at the Spaso House briefing, who felt they were being given a warning so vague as to be meaningless. "You've told us the stuff is there, but you haven't told us where you found it or where we might come in contact with it," the husband of an American journalist protested to Charge d'Affaires Combs. Asked what precautions to take, Charles Brodine, a State Department doctor, could only suggest lamely, "Wash your hands frequently with soap and water."

William O'Hara, an American steel executive in Moscow, noted that any risks to health would be shared by "some very high-level Russians" who come in contact with embassy personnel. Officials in Washington speculated that the KGB might simply not have given any thought to health hazards.

To some officials in Washington, the episode indicated blundering by an overzealous KGB. Wide use of the spy dust would seem to be self-defeating, since the number of people spreading it would increase exponentially, from 500-odd Americans (180 of whom work at the embassy) to countless Soviet citizens with whom they have routine dealings. The Soviet government officially dismissed the U.S. charges as "absurd" and "outrageous." At a White House briefing in Los Angeles, Spokesman Larry Speakes suggested that the Kremlin's leaders, including Gorbachev, may not have known about the spy dust. There was more than a hint of a taunt in his remarks, however, as he noted that the Soviet military and KGB sometimes act as if they were under no one's control.

The other challenges from Washington to Moscow were more direct. For more than two years, the Soviets have been proposing a ban on development and testing of antisatellite (ASAT) weapons. But Reagan last week gave Congress the required 15-day notification that the U.S. would proceed with its first attempt to shoot down an actual satellite, one that has outlived its usefulness and is orbiting aimlessly.

Speakes explained the motivation crisply: a moratorium on tests would only "perpetuate" a Soviet "monopoly" since Moscow has an operational ASAT system and Washington does not. "They have one and they don't want us to have one," said Speakes. But the U.S. must try to catch up to ward off a "clear threat" to its satellites, he said, and to that end "we have to test, and we have to test now."

The opposing argument was stated by retired Admiral Noel Gaylor, a frequent critic of U.S. arms policy, in testimony last year to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Said the admiral: "The Soviet antisatellite weapon is a busted flush--slow, unreliable, clumsy and easy to countermeasure, capable of only low-altitude attack." His conclusion: "If we both stop testing now, neither side will ever have a serious antisatellite capability." Some other experts add that the U.S. would have more to lose from an ASAT race than the Soviets would, since it is more dependent on satellites to provide intelligence and coordinate military movements. In any case, says John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists, the U.S. test "is throwing down the gauntlet to the Soviets before the summit."

That in fact might be part of Reagan's purpose. Star Wars hovers in the background of every discussion of ASAT testing, since the same weaponry that could shoot down satellites could also attack nuclear warheads in mid-course. Thus the ASAT test could serve as a warning to the Kremlin not to expect any dwindling of the Administration's determination to develop a Star Wars defense. More generally, the ASAT test might convey this message to the Kremlin: do not expect us to conclude agreements for their own sake. We will negotiate only from a position of strength.

Administration officials have been talking privately of the summit as an opportunity less to search for agreements than to set a philosophical agenda for future dealings with Gorbachev, who at 54 might be in power in Moscow for a generation. McFarlane put this idea on the record last week. Seeking specific agreements, said the National Security Adviser, "should not become an excuse for not thinking about what is at the heart of our disagreements." As an example of the Soviets' "one-sided negotiating positions," he cited demands that the U.S. abandon Star Wars "even as they pursue the greatest research program on earth. And then, in a masterpiece of chutzpah, they insist repeatedly that ours is a program designed to acquire a first-strike capability." His key sentence: "Without some change in the Soviet approach to security issues, in fact in the thinking that underlies it, I fear that even incremental improvements will be extremely hard to reach."

Bristling at such talk, Moscow accused the U.S. of mounting an anti-Soviet propaganda campaign. Noted TASS: "One gets the impression that instead of encouraging dialogue between our countries and creating a favorable atmosphere (for the summit), attempts are being made to raise obstacles." There is some merit to the Administration's desire to focus on fundamental issues rather than cosmetic agreements, but there are high risks as well. Too many harsh signals from Washington before November could convince the Soviets once and for all that they can never do business with Ronald Reagan. If that happens, the "agenda for the future," which Reagan wants to write in Geneva, could turn out to be disappointing indeed.

With reporting by James O. Jackson/Moscow and Johanna McGeary/Washington