Cheap Turncoat

A double agent sells out

In the cynical world of spy novels, there is no nastier business than that of the double agent. No one can be certain whose side he is really on; each seems to have a price at which his services can be bought and his country betrayed. But never for the piddling sum of $11,000.

In the actual world of espionage, however, the sellout price can apparently be that low. According to allegations made by an FBI agent after a 15-month investigation, Richard Craig Smith, 40, a former U.S. Army counterintelligence specialist, sold information last year to a Soviet KGB agent for precisely that sum. His betrayal gave away the identity of a U.S. double agent whom Smith had supervised for nearly two years. Smith was arrested last week at Washington's Dulles Airport after voluntarily flying from his home in Bellevue, Wash., to face charges of espionage.

Smith joined the Army in 1967 and climbed to staff sergeant, then in 1977 shifted to civilian status as a member of the Army Intelligence and Security Command, which tries to protect the Army against penetration by foreign spies. From October 1976 to July 1978, he was assigned as the case officer to handle a U.S. double agent code-named Royal Miter. The double agent posed as an informant for the KGB but was actually feeding Smith information on Soviet attempts to plant agents in jobs where they could acquire sensitive details about the U.S. Army. Smith met periodically with Royal Miter, although the FBI will not disclose where the double agent operated or even give his nationality.

Smith, who had top-security clearance, quit his Army job in 1980. Married and the father of four children, considered by neighbors to be a good family man, he dabbled in various real estate investments but declared bankruptcy in the summer of 1982. An affidavit filed in court by FBI Agent Michael J. Waguespack contends that Smith has admitted taking many trips in 11981 and 1982 to Japan, which was then a hotbed of KGB activity, according to the testimony of a Soviet defector. On three occasions in the course of those trips, Smith met Victor Okunev, a Soviet consular-affairs official in Tokyo. Short, fluent in Japanese, and an active member of the Japan-Soviet Union Friendship Association, Okunev is assumed by U.S. officials to be a KGB agent. According to Waguespack, Smith admitted giving classified information about Royal Miter to Okunev and accepting the $11,000 from him in Tokyo on Nov. 7, 1982. The maximum penalty for transmitting national defense information is life imprisonment.

Washington spokesmen expect that Okunev will be recalled from his Tokyo assignment by his KGB superiors, who not only now know the identity of Royal Miter but probably of other U.S. spies as well. U.S. officials refused to reveal the fate of Royal Miter, but, said one: "We're concerned about the safety of a lot of double agents. Smith hurt us."