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US Digs Tunnel Under Soviet Embassy
The United States government constructed a secret tunnel under the Soviet Union's embassy in Washington in order to eavesdrop, but federal investigators now believe the operation was betrayed by the F.B.I. agent who was arrested last month on charges of spying for Moscow, The New York Times reported Sunday.
The secret tunnel operation, which current and former United States intelligence and law enforcement officials indicated was run jointly by the F.B.I. and the National Security Agency, was part of a broad United States effort to eavesdrop on and track Soviet -- later Russia -- facilities and personnel operating in the United States.
Spokesmen at the F.B.I. and the White House declined to comment on the tunnel operation today.
Current and former United States officials estimated that the tunnel construction and related intelligence-gathering activities cost several hundred million dollars, apparently making it the most expensive clandestine intelligence operation that the agent, Robert Philip Hanssen, is accused of betraying. The tunnel was designed to aid in a sophisticated operation to eavesdrop on communications and conversations in the Soviet Embassy complex, which was built in the 1970's and 1980's but not fully occupied until the 1990's.
In the 1980's, at about the time the tunnel operation was under way, the United States and the Soviet Union argued bitterly over their respective embassies in Moscow and Washington, with the United States accusing Moscow of spying at both locations.
The government has never publicly disclosed the existence of the tunnel operation. But in an F.B.I. affidavit in the Hanssen case, the government stated that Hanssen "compromised an entire technical program of enormous value, expense and importance to the United States government." Officials said that was a reference to the tunnel operation and related intelligence activities.
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