Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume X, Eastern Europe

45. Action Memorandum From the Ambassador to Romania (Kirk), the Ambassador to the German Democratic Republic (Meehan), the Ambassador to Czechoslovakia (Niemczyk), the Ambassador to Hungary (Palmer), the Ambassador to Bulgaria (Polansky), and the Chargé d’Affaires of the Embassy in Poland (Davis) to Secretary of State Shultz¹

Washington, June 5, 1987

SUBJECT

• Comprehensive Security Action Program for Eastern and Central European Embassies

As your Ambassadors in the Warsaw Pact nations of Eastern and Central Europe, we are keenly aware of the hostile threat facing each of our posts and of our responsibilities to take every possible step to enhance our security. We welcome the fact that we now have a potentially historic opportunity to make profound and lasting changes in our ability to defeat the attempts to penetrate our embassies and to recruit our personnel. We are already taking a large number of steps to correct existing deficiencies within current budgetary and personnel limitations.

For the kind of dramatic improvements that we would all like to achieve, we have developed three packages of further steps. They are in priority order and depend upon the resources which the Administration and the Congress are willing to devote to security in this region:

a. All-American and all-Classified Embassies. The most important security step we can take is to change the way in which our embassies now function. Removing from our embassies all non-Americans will have a profound effect on the security environment. This is not an easy nor cost-free step. In most cases, this will require facilities for the relocation outside our embassies of consular, USIA and export promotion activities so that we will have genuinely controlled places in which to do our classified work. It also would require bringing in about 50 American personnel to replace approximately 75 FSNs in such key functions as building maintenance, phone operators, personnel and mail handling. Precise figures are being developed by EUR and other Bureaus for you. Our own very rough estimate of the costs for additional American personnel and for facilities in which we would relocate our public functions is a one time cost of $30,000,000 for new facilities and annual additional personnel costs of $10,500,000.

2. All American 100% Secure Embassy. Three of our embassies in Eastern. Europe (Budapest, Prague and Sofia) have such difficult physical configurations; most importantly contiguous walls, that the only way to achieve 100% security is to build a new embassy or facility. This will be very expensive but it is also very essential, and we believe possible in all three cases. Budapest is the furthest advanced in terms of site location, negotiation of construction agreement, and Congressional understanding. The total cost here would be on the order of $150,000,000 for three new, state-of-the-art secure chanceries. Bucharest would move to an all-American compound at cost of $200,000 in one-time costs plus annual pay and maintenance of $450,000.

3. Beyond the Embassy. There are further steps we could consider taking to attempt to enhance security outside of our embassy buildings. There are three categories: a) in our proposed separate-from-the-embassy, unclassified library, export promotion office and consular sections, replace foreign service nationals with Americans; b) replacing local household help; c) put some or all Americans into housing compounds with American guards. Clearly, it would be possible to take some or all of these measures. The cost obviously would vary depending upon the mix. For example having American librarians would be welcome if USIA or other sources of funding could be found. Replacement of household help would be possible again if money could be found. But taking all of these measures including building new housing compounds would be very expensive, and of less importance in terms of enhanced security than packages one and two. Our rough estimate is that the annualized personnel increased cost would be about $50,000,000 and the cost for construction of new housing would be $150,000,000. We are concerned about the creation of gray areas—places which might seem secure but which in fact are not really secure. And also there are serious disadvantages in terms of our ability to project America’s presence in a vigorous way, and our ability to collect intelligence. Secretary Baldrige, Director Wick, Chairman Mica,² the PFIAB staff and others have voiced a variety of concerns about total replacement of FSNs and exposing large numbers of additional Americans in Eastern Europe to the counter intelligence threat.

Our Views. All six of us strongly support immediate action on the first two packages. On the third package, we believe the benefits are somewhat more marginal and the costs are high in terms of our missions and finances. At the same time, we believe there are things we sensibly can do if resources are available. We request that you allow us to give you our more detailed thinking on the third package. Frankly, our central concern is that there will be a lot of talk, elaborate proposals from various agencies and commissions, authorizing legislation but then totally inadequate or no appropriations. This is too important an issue and too rare an opportunity to allow us to end up with nothing. At a minimum, we must get the first package which would give us all-American embassies with not a single FSN in them and a significantly enhanced security posture. We also should get started now on at least one new embassy in the second package as a model of the 100% security we want to achieve. We believe the costs to the American taxpayer are justified in these cases.

As we approach the security challenge confronting us, we are mindful that there are a broad range of problems beyond the question of financial resources which will bear upon the actions we are able to take. These include, inter alia, reciprocity issues, personnel policies, development of training programs and logistical support. We look forward to working with Washington to address ways of dealing with these issues.

At the tabs³ are specific programs we have developed for each of our embassies. We discuss there what we already are doing to enhance security consciousness, to tightly restrict FSNs to certain areas, to improve technical security. We urge you to glance through them so that you will have a sense of the scale of the effort we have underway.

Recommendations

That you:

1. Approve establishment of all American, all-classified embassies including the acquisition/construction of new facilities for our unclassified functions and the replacement of approximately 75 FSNs with 50 Americans.⁴

2. Approve construction of 100% secure new embassies where this is required (Budapest, Prague, Sofia) and initiate immediately construction in Budapest as a model and proceed with an all-American compound in Bucharest.⁵

3. Keep open the question of steps to be taken outside the Embassy with regard to housing, libraries and other unclassified facilities pending receipt of recommendations from each of us.⁶

1. Source: Reagan Library, Secretary George Shultz Papers, Executive Secretariat, Super Sensitive (06/05/1987). Secret.
2. Representative Dan Mica (D–Florida), Chairman of the Subcommittee on International Operations of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
3. Attached but not printed.
4. Shultz initialed the “Approve” option.
5. Shultz initialed the “Approve” option.
6. Shultz initialed the “Approve” option.