50. Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in the Soviet Union1
1029. Literally Eyes Only for Ambassador from Secretary. Regarding our recent attaché problem, I want you to know that I have raised in USIB the question of giving better advice to attachés and other intelligence personnel about methods and conduct under the different circumstances of different countries to which they are assigned. Quite frankly, my impression is that our attachés acted with great naivete and that comparable conduct on the part of Soviet attachés in the United States would have been considered by us as unacceptable. For this reason, we have emphasized the violations of immunity through intrusion and searches by Soviet security personnel but I am not at all comfortable [Page 118] about the intelligence used by our own people in carrying out their mission. This is not the first instance where such cases have arisen and I have asked for a review of procedures.2
- Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, USSR, Vol. V. Secret; Nodis. Drafted and approved by Rusk.↩
- On October 11 Kohler replied that he, too, had long been concerned with the attaché problem, feeling that the requirements for their activities were based on obsolete concepts of intelligence gathering. In the present case he feared that the loss of notes and information probably outweighed all the intelligence gathered by this means over a long period of time. (Telegram 1075; ibid.) Citing the Khabarovsk affair and an incident in Poland, Rusk wrote McNamara on December 24 proposing a review of policies and procedures governing intelligence gathering by military personnel in both the Soviet Union and Communist Eastern Europe. For text, see Foreign Relations, 1964–1968, vol. XVII, Document 9.↩