Moscow station : how the KGB penetrated the American Embassy /

Kessler, a former investigative reporter for the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, charges that the KGB planted bugging devices in CIA code machines and typewriters in the U.S. embassy in Moscow. He further cites a CIA cover-up of the events and claims that the Naval Investigative Service was so inept that the perpetrators were never brought to justice. Kessler asserts that marine corporal Arnold Bracy was guilty of letting the KGB into the embassy yet received an honorable discharge, even despite his links to convicted marine sergeant Clayton Lonetree. Kessler concludes that "it was the ultimate irony that Reagan, who came to office with a conservative mandate to strengthen the nation's defenses, wound up presiding over the worst intelligence debacle since the CIA's abortive 1961 invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Unfortunately, there are no short-term solutions. The embassy in Moscow will remain vulnerable to KGB penetration." Notes; index. --George Cohen

This is all you wanted to know about the lurid Marine, spy, and sex scandal that has recently rocked the American embassy in Moscow. After the antics of the poor, young, single, not-too-bright, and not-well-trained Marines sent to guard the Embassy, the Marine motto of semper fidelis (``always faithful'') just won't be the same. Critics have said that Kessler, author of Spy Versus Spy (LJ 9/1/88), theorizes beyond his evidence. But that is not the central point. The description of the laxity about security, the demoralizing conditions of the Marines and embassy staff, and the dimwitted Washington bureaucracies in charge of these things is the real story, and on hearing it one doesn't know whether to laugh at the Get Smart atmosphere or to cry. A neat if somewhat padded expose.-- H. Steck, SUNY Coll. at Cortland (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.