"Do you want any more secret documents put in the safe, Mr. ambassador? "No, Ivan, that's all for tonight." (U.S. marine and espionage)

• Author: Witt, Priscilla

"DO YOU WANT ANY MORE SECRET DOCUMENTS PUT IN THE SAFE, MR. AMBASSADOR?" "NO, IVAN, THAT'S ALL FOR TONIGHT."

It was the oldest trick in the book. A femaleSoviet agent seduced and then recruited U.S. Marine Sergeant Clayton J. Lonetree, a guard who served at the U.S. embassy in Moscow from 1984 to 1986. In one of the worst breaches of security in recent history, Lonetree gave KGB agents extremely damaging intelligence, including names and photos of U.S. agents and floor plans of the most sensitive parts of the embassy.

Like all marines in his assignment, Lonetree,who confessed in January, had been warned about such female agents, called "swallows" in the trade. Marine guards at the embassy are barred from letting women enter their quarters and discouraged from having close contacts with the Soviets. But this swallow didn't have to hang out in some smoky Moscow clip joint for the chance to ensnare Lonetree. She only had to show up every day for work as a translator at the American embassy. Like more than 260 other Soviets, she was a paid employee of the U.S. government.

Our Moscow embassy has not employed Sovietcitizens since last fall's U.S.-Soviet tit-for-tat expulsion of diplomatic staff that began with the Walker family spying affair in 1985. But everywhere else non-U.S. citizens, or foreign service nationals (FSNs), outnumber Americans: alongside the 11,000 U.S. civilians working at our other embassies are 20,000 foreign nationals and probably at least that many "contract lines" and personal servants. The ratio is especially high in the Third World, where diplomats have learned to enduce their "hardship" assignments by surrounding themselves with enough natives to do everything from translate to towel them dry. In Rwanda, for example, 15 to 20 Americans work out of a compound that employs 250 foreign nationals.

The State Department's Inman CommissionReport on Embassy Security, issued two years ago in the wake of the Beirut embassy bombing, recognized that foreign nationals pose a security threat: "[I]t is a well- and long-known fact that there are security-related drawbacks to employing FSNs." Those drawbacks haven't moved the department to jettison its foreign workers, though; FSNs often occupy posts as guards, clerks, researchers, translators, secretaries, drivers, handymen, and personal assistants to diplomats. Diplomats argue they are worth the risk because locals are relatively cheap to employ, and can deal with local languages, customs, and bureaucracies more easily than Americans.

They're also pretty good at cooking and cleaning. Factis, FSNs make possible the cushy lifestyle that the foreign service officer corps has long enjoyed. Among the recently expelled foreign nationals at the Moscow embassy, for example, were baby sitters and ballet teachers. So attached have our diplomats become to this foreign office featherbedding that, while the State Department insists on spending $4.4 billion to reinforce the perimeters of our embassies, very little is being done to guard against the swallows inside.

The baron's maids

The art of snooping for state secrets had beenwell perfected by the Congress of Vienna in 1814. As six kings, hundreds of nobles, and thousands more hangers-on flocked to the city to help create a post-Napoleonic Europe, thousands of Austrians put themselves at their government's disposal as collectors and purveyors of secrets. "That historic gathering provided unparalleled opportunities for the host government of Prince Metternich and his monarch, Emperor Francis, to employ local agents...