Comparing the Embassies

"It wasn't the best deal we ever made," said a U.S. official. "They got the mountain and we got the swamp."

The revelation last week of electronic eavesdropping at the U.S. embassy in Moscow has again raised questions about the sites chosen for the new Soviet and American embassies being built in each country. After six years of negotiations ending in a 1969 agreement, the Soviets were provided with a location on Mount Alto in northwest Washington, D.C., one of the highest spots in the area, while the U.S. was left to build in low, marshy ground near the Moscow River.

Officials say the Soviets got the prime turf, with a view of several sensitive buildings, including the White House, because, when the sites were originally agreed upon, the land was available and microwave communication and its interception were not as sophisticated or as prevalent as they are today. Although the microwave problem is less severe now because of such countermeasures as coding sensitive messages, new listening devices have enhanced the Soviet embassy's physical advantages. A laser bugging technique that shoots beams against windows can decipher vibrations in the glass made by conversations. The Americans agreed to their lowly site in Moscow because it is only a mile from the Kremlin and convenient to the old embassy on Tchaikovskovo Street.

Construction of the two new facilities has been more problematic. A 1972 agreement specified that the interior decoration and finishing of each embassy would be handled (for security reasons) by the country's own work crews but the major construction must be done by citizens of the host country. Though fine in principle, that led to some sticky situations. In 1983 Soviet workers halted work for several weeks on the U.S. embassy to protest American use of an X-ray machine to detect structural flaws. The Soviets said it was hazardous to workers' health, but it became obvious that they were more concerned with the machine's real function: locating eavesdropping bugs that workers might be secreting in the walls.

Inside the Tchaikovskovo Street embassy, still occupied by the Americans while their new building is being constructed, Soviet personnel present a similar problem. Whereas the Russians bring to Washington an entire retinue of maintenance workers and cleaning people, the U.S. employs 211 Soviet citizens in similar capacities at its embassy. All are presumed to have at least informal ties to the KGB, and American personnel tag along as they do their chores. The State Department now has bowed to pressures from the intelligence community and agreed to remove most of the Soviets from their embassy jobs at some future date.

Meanwhile, the Soviets have benefited from the Americans' free-market habits. The ten-acre U.S. site in Moscow will not be finished until 1988, but the Soviets' new Washington embassy compound was virtually complete by 1979. Explains a U.S. official: "American contractors have an incentive to finish as soon as possible. There are no similar incentives in the Soviet Union." The U.S. refuses to allow the Soviets to complete the interior of their new building and move from their old ornate brick embassy four blocks from the White House until Soviet crews finish the American facility in Moscow.