CIA HEAD CONVINCES JUSTICE TO FREE RETIRED RUSSIAN SPY.

Byline: Tim Weiner The New York Times

The director of central intelligence helped free a retired Russian spy Thursday, convincing the Justice Department that his arrest was a mistake that could provoke Moscow to seize retired CIA officers doing business in Russia.

The retired KGB colonel, Vladimir Galkin, was jailed Oct. 29 after a deep misunderstanding between the FBI and the CIA. While on a business trip to the United States to buy police surveillance equipment, Galkin was met by FBI agents at Kennedy International Airport in New York and charged with espionage for trying to steal secrets about the Strategic Defense Initiative.

But the director of central intelligence, John Deutch, did not know that the Justice Department planned to imprison Galkin. The arrest led Russia to charge that the United States had broken the unwritten rules of espionage, which call for Washington and Moscow to deport the other side's spies, not jail them, and to leave retirees alone. The imprisonment followed a communications breakdown between the FBI and Deutch, senior law enforcement and intelligence officials said.

The FBI sent a secret cable addressed to Deutch on Oct. 23, saying the case was imminent and directly told several CIA officers. The agency gave the go-ahead. But word never reached Deutch, who thought the bureau was merely going to try to wring a statement from Galkin and let him go.

The decision to release the retired spy enraged several FBI officials and revived old tensions between the bureau's spy catchers and the CIA. But senior State Department and intelligence officials agreed that the arrest of Galkin was a blunder.

Galkin agreed. ``It was a mistake, and I explained this to the guys from the FBI,'' he said in a telephone interview an hour after he was set free by a federal magistrate in Worcester, Mass. ``I told FBI guys that it's a very bad thing for the guys from the CIA working in Russia. I think they respected my position.''

Russia's prime minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, called Vice President Al Gore on Thursday morning to complain.

The Russian foreign intelligence service has repeatedly and openly suggested it might arrest ``former U.S. intelligence agents'' in reprisal. More than a few retired Americans CIA officers are running businesses or doing research in Russia.

A senior Justice Department official said the case ``either didn't get the right level of attention at CIA, or there were additional pieces of information brought to bear.'' Another government official, reflecting the CIA's point of view, said the agency was unaware at the highest levels that Galkin would be arrested and imprisoned, rather than interrogated and deported. ``There wasn't a clear understanding that it was going to go that far,'' he said.

The CIA ``didn't fully appreciate what we were saying,'' a senior Justice Department official said.

After discussing the matter on Wednesday over lunch with Thomas Pickering, who stepped down as the U.S. Ambassador to Moscow on Nov. 1, Deutch went to Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick and successfully argued that the charges should be dropped. State Department officials concurred. Chernomyrdin weighed in Thursday morning, telling Gore in a telephone conversation that the United States should solve the problem, lest it create tensions between Washington and Moscow.

The warrant for Galkin's arrest charges that, in a meeting in Cyprus in 1991 he paid a $30,000 bribe to an American computer scientist in exchange for secret military data, including information on the $40 billion, never-completed Strategic Defense Initiative ballistic missile defense system.

That scientist, Subrahmanyam Kota, pleaded guilty and implicated Galkin.

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Photo

Photo: Vladimir Galkin

Told FBI it made mistake