Booze, Brawls and Skirt Chasing

By Ed Magnuson

The spy case that appeared at first to be an isolated instance of two lonely Marines being seduced into espionage at the U.S. embassy in Moscow took a broader and more ominous turn last week. A third Marine was charged with illegal fraternization with Soviet women, and two other pairs of former embassy guards are suspected of having been compromised by female contacts. As the scandal spread, both the Marine and State Department supervisors of the 28-man guard contingent came under increasing criticism for their failure to monitor the behavior of the Marines more closely. Rather than clean-cut Americans being entrapped by their innocence, it seems, all too many of the guards were hard-drinking, brawling women-chasers whose wild partying was condoned.

"The Marines have been difficult all along," Arthur Hartman, who retired only last month as Ambassador to Moscow, told TIME last week. "They are trained for a different kind of duty, and in a place like Moscow, they're young people who don't have the maturity to understand the dangers they face."

Seven Marines were shipped home, Hartman disclosed, after a British nanny accused two of them of raping her last December in the Marine quarters in the embassy building. The Marine Corps charged the two with allowing the woman into the embassy and with having sex with a foreign national, but would not reveal their punishment. The others failed to report the incident, and some were also accused of illegal currency exchanges. On another occasion, said Hartman, Marines had "decked" a worker from another embassy during a presumably friendly game of broomball, a form of ice hockey.

) The young servicemen were known in Moscow for their parties at "Marine House," the name given the embassy quarters in which they lived. Two men occupied each tiny room, off long hallways on four of the building's nine floors. On Fridays, a "TGIF" (Thank God It's Friday) affair in the second- floor lounge of Marine House would include West European and American nannies who cared for the children of Western families. Some guests, however, were Soviet women who worked at the embassy until the Kremlin ordered all its citizens out of clerical and custodial jobs in the building last October.

The young set drank and danced to loud rock music until 1 a.m. "There was always a lot of booze," recalls a former American nanny. "People got more and more rowdy as the night progressed. You'd see couples sprawled all over the couches, and others would head off into the Marines' rooms." She claimed that even a Marine noncom leader joined in the "Animal House" carousing. "When you see your boss getting dead drunk and going around pinching women, it doesn't make for a very strict atmosphere."

Stories about the Marines' behavior are rife among former Soviet embassy employees, although these workers, who often report to the KGB, have reasons to exaggerate. "They were wild," a Soviet woman translator said of the Marines. "They chased all the skirts, Russian or otherwise. If we were flowers, they were bees." A Soviet secretary who had booked dinners for embassy personnel said that many Moscow restaurants would not accept the Marines "because they got drunk and got into fights with other customers."

Marines were not allowed to leave the embassy compound unless accompanied by another American, and they could not stay out overnight. But Soviet drivers claim they often took Marines to parties at foreign compounds and brought them back as late as 6 a.m. Americans visiting the embassy recall being asked by Marines to escort them past the entrance. One American woman said she twice drove a Marine to visit what he called his "Finnish girlfriend." But, she said, "the place was some sort of Soviet institute, so I suspect the girlfriend was Russian." Another way for the Marines to get out was to "apartment-sit" overnight for Americans on vacations.

Many embassy staffers remember Violetta Seina, the Soviet receptionist in Spaso House, the Ambassador's residence. She is the Soviet agent alleged to have persuaded Sergeant Clayton Lonetree, 25, to help other agents enter the ; embassy at night and roam the building's most sensitive communications and CIA areas, where the agents planted numerous bugs. Tall, willowy and slim, with long blond hair and large eyes, Seina stood out at the annual Marine ball. "She was so good-looking," said a former Soviet employee. "She wore a long, elegant black dress and attracted attention." When the Soviet workers were withdrawn from the embassy, a U.S. diplomat was overheard asking, "What will we do without Violetta? We won't have anyone to look at around here."

The Marine House cook, known only as Galina, also made an impression. She allegedly seduced Corporal Arnold Bracy, 21, into working with Lonetree. One American woman in Moscow recalls a Marine telling her "how kind Galina was to them, how thoughtful she was. She went out of her way to teach them Russian and tell them good places to go in Moscow." A former Soviet embassy employee said that Galina was "very, very good-looking" and once complained to a senior U.S. official that "the Marines were behaving rudely and making improper suggestions" to her.

Beyond Lonetree and Bracy, the wide-ranging investigation into the spy affair produced another arrest last week. Staff Sergeant Robert Stufflebeam, 24, who was the second-ranking Marine at the embassy when the two suspects were in Moscow, from July 1985 until March 1986, was charged by the Navy with failing to report his regular contacts with Soviet women. At least one of these women, claimed a source, "was KGB." He has not, however, been accused of spying.

The probe of two new sets of Marine guards could have serious implications. One pair served in Moscow in 1981 and 1982. If the two had engaged in spying, the Soviets could have had access to U.S. embassy secrets far earlier than suspected. Investigators were also concerned about the familiarity with Bracy and Lonetree shown by a second pair now under suspicion. Nor was fraternization confined to Moscow. It was learned that two Marine guards in an East European country embassy returned there to marry local women after leaving service.

One sign of Washington's worry about America's vulnerability to spying was a decision by the National Security Council last week to launch its own broad study of recent espionage damage, including a reassessment of the Navy's Walker spy ring.

Marine officers who train the embassy guards point out that their men had performed without a known security breach for 38 years. The fault, they argue, lies with lax supervision by State Department security officials. A Pentagon source said that a former security officer is under investigation for malfeasance at the Moscow embassy when Lonetree and Bracy were there. The State Department has brought its current security officer in the region home for questioning. As the State Department quizzes its employees at the 225- member embassy, the initial responses, says one source, "are discomforting."

U.S. debugging experts sent to the Moscow embassy in an effort to prepare secure facilities for the arrival next week of Secretary of State George Shultz are finding so many sophisticated Soviet sensors that the entire communications system may have to be replaced. The once secure "bubble," a shielded room within a room, will have to be rebuilt. Shultz will take special mobile communications gear with him.

The Soviets needled the Americans about their predicament. "I thought the fear was of Reds under every bed," deadpanned Soviet Foreign Ministry Spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov. He expressed mock surprise that "the famous U.S. Marines who were victorious on Grenada" had been defeated by "the charms of blond spies." The U.S., however, was not laughing.

With reporting by James O. Jackson/Moscow and Bruce van Voorst/Washington