Insincerely Yrs.

The U.S. State Department offered a backhanded compliment of sorts to agents of the KGB last week. "The Soviets are becoming more sophisticated," said an official commenting on the State Department's release of six documents that it claimed were Soviet forgeries. The department offered no proof, only the observation that the fakes fit a pattern of Soviet mischief-making in the past. The documents, which included letters that were purportedly signed by President Reagan and other high Administration officials, seemed designed to embarrass the U.S. and create friction with its allies. As it turned out, the forgeries were not very effective in stirring up trouble.

The most blatant forgery was a letter addressed to Spain's King Juan Carlos last Oct. 23 and ostensibly signed by Reagan; it urged Juan Carlos to crack down on leftists and join NATO (which Spain did in May 1982). The letter was not sent to the King but to Spanish journalists, who ignored it. The KGB allegedly circulated the letter again in November. This time several Spanish newspapers exposed it as a fake.

The State Department also claimed that Alexander Haig's signature was forged on a letter of June 1979 to NATO Secretary-General Joseph Luns, which included a discussion of nuclear first-strike strategy and urged that an "action of a sensitive nature" be undertaken to "jolt the fainthearted in Europe." The letter contained a telltale error: it addressed Luns as "Dear Joseph," while Haig, a former NATO commander, would have written "Dear Joe."

Another letter, purportedly signed in September by William Clark, then Deputy Secretary of State, and addressed to U.S. Ambassador Monteagle Stearns in Greece, was denounced in the Greek press as a forgery. The letter claimed that the U.S. supported conservatives in the Greek elections of October 1981 and suggested that a military coup would be appropriate if Greek Socialist Andreas Papandreou became Prime Minister, as indeed he did.

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