Another Ex-Guard at Embassy Charged

WASHINGTON â€”  The Marine Corps announced Thursday that it has charged another former guard at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow with a variety of potentially serious security violations, but it did not suggest he was linked to a spy ring that reportedly operated there in 1985 and 1986.

Sgt. Kenneth J. Kelliher, 22, of the Chicago suburb of Hinsdale, will appear Monday in Quantico, Va., at a military pretrial hearing on the charges, which are related to his embassy guard duty in Moscow and Bern, Switzerland, in the last three years.

Kelliher has not been arrested or charged with espionage. In an apparent indication that the charges are not directly linked to the spying scandal, a Marine spokesman said Kelliher has not been confined to the Quantico Marine base or otherwise restricted.

Probe Remains Active

The spokesman said a Naval Investigative Service inquiry into those charges and other possible Marine guard violations in Moscow remains active.

While in Moscow from September, 1984, to March, 1986, the Marines charged, Kelliher made black market trades in currency and goods with a woman identified as Anna Novikov and failed to report contacts with three other “citizens of a Communist-controlled country,� identified only as Sasha, Ina and Oleg.

While serving as a guard in Bern from March, 1986, to last March, Kelliher allowed a Swiss woman, Regula Sommerhalder, to enter an “unauthorized� embassy space after hours, the Marines charged. The prohibited space was not identified, but was not necessarily a secure area containing classified information, a spokesman said.

Kelliher also was charged with copying classified documents in Bern and mailing them to a private address in Grayslake, Ill., a Chicago suburb, the Marines said.

Accused of Lying

He also was accused of wrongfully appropriating a government motor vehicle and of lying under oath.

Kelliher is the fifth Marine to be charged with security violations in the wake of a sex and spying scandal that decimated U.S. intelligence operations in the Soviet Union last year. The latest accusations appear to stem from a review of the Moscow embassy guard staff begun by the Marines and the Naval Investigative Service last spring.

Kelliher’s Moscow tour overlapped that of Marine Sgt. Clayton J. Lonetree, charged last winter with espionage for the Soviets, and Cpl. Arnold Bracy, who was briefly accused of helping Lonetree escort Soviet agents into some of the Moscow embassy’s most heavily guarded areas.

The charges against Bracy were dropped on June 12. Lonetree still faces a trial on espionage charges but accusations that he led Soviet agents into the embassy have been dropped also.

Another Marine Charged

Staff Sgt. Robert S. Stufflebeam, 25, Lonetree’s superior in Moscow, has been accused of failing to report contacts with Soviet women while in Moscow. In addition, Sgt. John Joseph Weirick, a former guard at the U.S. consulate in Leningrad, was detained in April on suspicion of espionage but was discharged from the Marines in May without being charged.

The Marines have stated that Lonetree’s spying was supervised by a Soviet agent known as “Uncle Sasha,� but a Marine spokesman said Thursday that that agent is not the same Sasha with whom Kelliher is said to have had unapproved contacts.

Kelliher has been reassigned to the Marine Security Guard Battalion in Quantico until charges against him are resolved. The court review scheduled for Monday, called an Article 32 hearing, is the military equivalent of a grand jury proceeding to decide whether a suspect should be indicted and tried.

He could face a court-martial and prison term, a spokesman said, but the maximum penalty for the violations was not known.