CI Centre op-ed: Response to 60 Minutes piece on Squillacote case, December 2000

CI Centre op-ed

Counterintelligence Missed Opportunity

Sunday's (December 3, 2000) 60 Minutes piece on convicted spies Therese Squillacote and her husband, Kurt Stand could have been titled, "A Puff Piece for Spies." There was a surprisingly noticeable lack of any investigative journalism on the part of 60 Minutes, who could have begun by simply reading the case affidavit--one of the largest (196 pages) and most detailed affidavits to come out. Equally disappointing was that the FBI did not make themselves available to tell America the other side of the story. Many people from the FBI and other agencies worked long and hard on this case yet it is unfortunate that the millions of people who watch 60 Minutes are left with the impression there was little substance to this case. The CI Centre presents this response to the Squillacote segment on 60 Minutes and what the program missed--a fascinating story of ideological second and third-generation legacy spies who remain firmly committed to far-left ideas and would spy for any country who was against America.

A Puff Piece for Spies

On Sunday, December 3, 2000, the CBS news magazine show 60 Minutes broadcast a piece on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and its impact on the convictions of Therese M. Squillacote and her husband, Kurt A. Stand, for espionage-related activities. The 60 Minutes segment adopted a very sympathetic position toward the actions of Squillacote and Stand, who, together with James M. Clark, were accused, tried, and convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for East Germany and for a person they believed to represent a senior South African official with communist connections.

The thrust of the 60 Minutes reporting was that the US Government’s case against Squillacote, an attorney who had held positions in the Department of Defense and the Justice Department, and Stand, a labor union official, was both unfair and absurd. The unfairness of the US prosecution was presented as its use of the powers of the FISA Court, which meets in secret, to obtain authorization for wiretaps, surreptitious searches, and other sophisticated surveillance techniques. 60 Minutes argues that the absurdity of the prosecution of Squillacote and Stand is demonstrated by the fact that both were convicted of spying for a now-defunct adversary, that their activities actually amounted to remarkably little, and that the FBI used the information gathered from its FISA Court-approved surveillance in combination with the arcane skills of its Behavioral Science Unit to manipulate Squillacote’s depression and thereby lure her into a far more serious offense than she would otherwise have been willing to commit. On-camera interviews with Squillacote, Stand, and their attorneys are used to drive home these points and to paint a sympathetic portrait of the couple. The piece also lays heavy stress on the fact that the FBI, after initially agreeing to have a representative appear on camera to present its side of the story, ultimately declined to participate in the piece, thus making viewers wonder if the FBI's case really was legitimate.

What CBS and its reporters failed to bring to their viewers’ attention, however, is that the US Government long ago made public its 196-page indictment in this case, and this contains a wealth of detail documenting the government’s case. After a review of this single document from a simple common-sense standpoint, it is the 60 Minutes coverage that looks unfair and absurd. The December 3^rd piece on the convicted spies made the following arguments, each of which is contradicted by information in the FBI affidavit:

Assertion: Squillacote and Stand were individuals with innocent contacts with East Germany that FBI investigators exaggerated and misconstrued.

Facts:

Squillacote and Stand both had “agent cards” with identifying details on file in the records of the HVA, East Germany’s external intelligence service.

Squillacote and Stand each had secret code names used for their contacts with the East Germans. Squillacote’s were “Resi” and “the Swan”; Stand’s was “Junior.” The affidavit includes page after page of cables to and from the East German residency in Washington and their headquarters in East Germany that talk about Stand and Squillacote's activities.

Each had been provided with a forged British passport they used during their intelligence trips abroad. Squillacote’s was under the alias “Mary Teresa Miller’; Stand’s passport was in the name of “Alan David Jackson.”

Between 1974 and July 1990, they made over 30 overseas trips to meet with their handlers.

Both were trained in East Berlin during trips in 1983, 1985, 1987, and 1989 in techniques for photographing documents and in receiving coded messages broadcast from Cuba at specific times and dates. They purchased a short-wave radio receiver to receive the broadcasts.

Squillacote stated, "That's one thing about having worked for the East Germans: the training was about as good as it got."

In 1983, East German intelligence officers in the United States delivered a special camera to them for photographing documents. The couple destroyed it in 1992, after German reunification.

Another Stasi miniature document camera was discovered disassembled in the couple's apartment when searched by the FBI. Initially, the FBI agent who found it did not realize it was a camera. This camera, using the Minox film format, was very serviceable and could have been employed by Squillacote and Stand for future illegal activities.

Assertion: The FBI enticed Squillacote and Stand into committing serious acts they would never have considered doing on their own.

Facts:

During his interview on 60 Minutes, Kurt Stand said that his contacts with the East Germans were about providing them with his insights on labor union affairs. During a March 29, 1997, meeting with an undercover FBI Special Agent posing as a pro-communist intelligence agent from South Africa, however, Stand said that his primary service to East Germany was as an agent recruiter.

Stand stated that he was introduced to the East German intelligence service in 1972 through his father and was handled by 12 intelligence officers.

Stand’s intelligence role was verified by Artur Birgel, who was the chief East German intelligence officer in Washington, D.C., from 1978-1981 and 1985-1990. Birgel met personally with Stand on three or four occasions, paying him from $500-$1500 at each meeting for his services. Birgel described Stand’s services as spotting anybody who could possibly be recruited to work for East Germany and providing personality assessment information on the individual.

According to information provided by co-conspirator James M. Clark in April 1997 to an undercover FBI Special Agent Clark believed was a Russian intelligence officer, Stand had invited Clark on an expense-paid trip to Germany in 1976. Stand introduced Clark to an East German intelligence officer, who recruited Clark.

In March 1995, Therese Squillacote used an alias to rent a post office box in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C. The purpose of this was as a return address for a letter written under the alias to a senior South African official with close communist ties. In her lengthy letter, Squillacote referred to herself as a Marxist and a communist. In remarks to Stand, she said she hoped the South African communist would “read between the lines” and establish contact with her.

In August 1996, Squillacote met with an undercover FBI agent posing as a South African intelligence officer. She stressed her 20 years’ experience in the “progressive, anti-imperialist movement” and that she had gotten her job at the Department of Defense “to make a statement.” She accepted $2000 from the undercover agent.

In late 1996 or early 1997, Squillacote on her own initiative took four classified documents from her Pentagon office. To accomplish this, she waited for a time when only clerical staff were present and her actions could be relatively unobserved.

In their residence, Stand and Squillacote removed the classification markings from the documents, either by cutting them out with scissors or using white-out from Stand’s office.

Squillacote passed the classified documents to the undercover agent in early January 1997. At this time she offered to seek another U.S. Government position with more access to classified information.

Assertion: Squillacote and Strand had ceased to be a threat because East Germany had ceased to be a country.

Facts:

In conversations monitored by the FBI, Squillacote, Strand, and co-conspirator James M. Clark repeatedly discussed their lack of “relevance” to the struggle against U.S. imperialism.

After Squillacote’s attempt to initiate an espionage relationship with a South African communist official had apparently achieved success, she excitedly called her brother to say, “…All those years, and I did it! I did it!....Do you know who would be real proud? Grampa.”

She later told the undercover agent that she was "coming with a history" and that her husband "had a very long train of history to which we was connected by virtue of his family." She added, "Between myself and my husband, we go back in this work to 1918 and I'm kinda proud of it...I want them (families) to know that their life wasn't worthless...I sort of feel like we are part of a tag team."

She said that working with a foreign intelligence service was an area that was not unfamiliar to her.

In a series of contacts with the undercover Special Agent posing as a South African intelligence officer, Squillacote said that she had taken steps to find a position with the General Accounting Office, with the aim of parlaying that job into a position at the National Security Council.

Shortly after meeting with the undercover Special Agent posing as a South African intelligence officer, Squillacote contacted Lothar Ziemer, her former East German intelligence service handler, and offered to try to bring him into her new relationship with the South African.

This last point is perhaps the most important oversight in the entire 60 Minutes piece on Squillacote and Stand. The evidence in the FBI Affidavit makes it plain in dozens of places that the two were true believers. East Germany was not the object of their ideological fervor; East Germany was the vehicle for their ideology. The demise of East Germany did not remove their “relevance” as threats to the United States, it required that they find new masters to work with them against “US imperialism.” Hence Squillacote’s unlikely approach to the South African official, and the pair’s manifest delight at seeming to have been picked up as agents by a new communist intelligence organization.

The 196 page affidavit was proven in a court of law and Therese Squillacote, her husband Kurt Stand were convicted on October 23, 1998 of conspiracy to commit espionage, attempted espionage and illegally obtaining national defense documents. Squillacote was sentenced on January 22, 1999 to 21 years and ten months in prison, and Stand was sentenced to 17 years six months on prison.

SOURCE: “United States of America v. James M. Clark, Theresa M. Squillacote, and Kurt A. Stand: Affidavit of FBI Special Agent Katherine G. Alleman in Support of Criminal Complaint, Arrest Warrants and Search Warrants” October, 1997.