American Spies: Espionage against the United States from the Cold War to the Present

11 The Spy in the US Marine Corps

125 1 1 The Spy in the US Marine Corps CLAYTON LONETREE Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? [Who will guard the guards?] JUVENAL, Roman Wives, in Juvenal, Sixteen Satires, 45 As the last partygoers filed out of the Vienna Embassy’s 1986 Christmas party, Sergeant Clayton Lonetree of the US Marine Corps pulled aside Jim Olson, a veteran in Soviet operations at the CIA. “I served in the embassy in Moscow as a marine security guard,” he told Olson, “and got into something with the KGB. I’m over my head.”1 Lonetree’s admission set off an espionage investigation that would spread throughout the US Marine Corps, ignite more interagency feuds, and launch a massive hunt through CIA files to stanch the hemorrhage in its Soviet spy network. Lonetree had been recruited by the KGB in a classic “honey trap” operation . A lonely marine in a hostile foreign country, Lonetree was befriended by Violetta Seina, an attractive, English-speaking Soviet girl, and began a love affair with her. Violetta suddenly introduced Lonetree to her kindly “uncle,” a KGB officer who toyed with the young marine’s emotions in order to induce him into espionage. Lonetree, of course, was not the first to fall intoaKGBtrap.Thirtyyearsbefore,thefirstCIAofficerinMoscow,Edward The Decade of the Spy: Soviet Spies of the 1980s 126 Ellis Smith, had an affair with his Soviet maid and was sent packing by the ambassador. The Americans had still not learned their lesson. Unlike Smith, Lonetree was young and impressionable. Only twentyfour when he arrived in Moscow in 1984, he joined the US Marine Corps as a way out of a broken home, just as John Walker had entered the navy as a way out of juvenile delinquency. Lonetree was born into a Native American family that was plagued by his father’s alcoholism and parental quarrels. His mother spirited her children away from their father, Spencer Lonetree, but he later seized them back. A rigid disciplinarian , Spencer Lonetree frequently berated his son Clayton and crushed the boy’s self-esteem.2 Lonetree found his escape in books about spying and the Nazis. He read Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and the German madman’s self-assurance inspired Lonetree to believe that he, too, was destined for greater things. Fortunately , Lonetree was also inspired by a better role model, his deceased uncle, Mitchell Red Cloud, who had posthumously received a Medal of Honor for heroic service in Korea. Lonetree followed his uncle’s example by joining the US Marine Corps. After completing a special training course in Quantico, Lonetree entered the elite Marine Security Guard (MSG), which was then and still is responsible for protecting American embassies. The MSG performs routine security duties, controlling entry by visitors into embassies, checking that classified materials are secured after business hours, and reporting violations when classified materials are not locked in safes. The MSG, however, also does far more. In an age of increasing terrorism and anti-Americanism abroad, small cadres of marines at besieged embassies have been repeatedly called on to defend American property and personnel against local mobs that far outnumber them. A member of the MSG is also the first person a foreign visitor encounters upon entering an embassy; and in his or her neat and perfectly tailored dress blues, the guard immediately projects the image of a strong and self-confident America. The US Embassy in Moscow was an especially challenging assignment for the MSG. Because of the KGB threat, the marines were obligated to report any contact with Soviet citizens and were forbidden from fraternizing with them. At the time of Lonetree’s assignment, the rest of the embassy, from the ambassador on down, had taken a relaxed attitude toward security The Spy in the US Marine Corps 127 and scoffed at rules that, in their view, inhibited their ability to conduct effective diplomacy in the Soviet Union. The MSG discovered more than two hundred violations in 1985, but the lax security seemed to have little impact on embassy leadership. The flouting of security rules hardly set an example for the marine guards, who wondered why they were compelled to follow the strict regimen ignored by their embassy counterparts.3 The MSG detachment commander had alerted his superiors to increasing infractions by his own troops in Moscow, but his warnings went largely ignored because the MSG was suffering from manpower shortages. This security negligence was exploited by the...