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The dangers of Soviet military espionage may be receding, but U.S. security officials are awakening to a spy threat from a different quarter: America’s allies. According to U.S. officials, several foreign governments are employing their spy networks to purloin business secrets and give them to private industry. In a case brought to light last week in the French newsmagazine % L’Express, U.S. agents found evidence late last year that the French intelligence service Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure had recruited spies in the European branches of IBM, Texas Instruments and other U.S. electronics companies. American officials say DGSE was passing along secrets involving research and marketing to Compagnie des Machines Bull, the struggling computer maker largely owned by the French government.

A joint team of FBI and CIA officials journeyed to Paris to inform the French government that the scheme had been uncovered, and the Gallic moles were promptly fired from the U.S. companies. Bull, which is competing desperately with American rivals for market share in Europe, denies any relationship with DGSE. Last year the company made a legitimate acquisition of U.S. technology when it agreed to purchase Zenith’s computer division for $496 million.

U.S. officials say the spy ring was part of a major espionage program run against foreign business executives since the late 1960s by Service 7 of French intelligence. Besides infiltrating American companies, the operation routinely intercepts electronic messages sent by foreign firms. “There’s no question that they have been spying on IBM’s transatlantic communications and handing the information to Bull for years,” charges Robert Courtney, a former IBM security official who advises companies on counterespionage techniques.

Service 7 also conducts an estimated ten to 15 break-ins every day at large hotels in Paris to copy documents left in the rooms by visiting businessmen, journalists and diplomats. These “bag operations” first came to the attention of the U.S. Government in the mid-1980s. One U.S. executive told officials about a trip to Paris during which he had made handwritten notes in the margin of one of his memos. While negotiating a deal with a French businessman, he noticed that the Frenchman had a photocopy of the memo, handwritten notes and all. Asked how he got it, the Parisian sheepishly admitted that a French government official had given it to him. Because of such incidents, U.S. officials began a quiet effort to warn American companies about the need to take special precautions when operating in France.

While France can be blatant, it is by no means unique. “A number of nations friendly to the U.S. have engaged in industrial espionage, collecting information with their intelligence services to support private industry,” says Oliver Revell, the FBI’s associate deputy director in charge of investigations. Those countries include Britain, West Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, according to Courtney. The consultant has developed a few tricks for gauging whether foreign spies are eavesdropping on his corporate clients. In one scheme, he instructs his client to transmit a fake cable informing its European office of a price increase. If the client’s competitor in that country boosts its price to the level mentioned in the cable, the jig is up. “You just spoof ’em,” Courtney says.

Most U.S. corporations could protect their sensitive communications simply by sending them in code. But many companies are reluctant to do this, even though the cost and inconvenience might be minor. One reason may be that the effects of spying are largely invisible. All the company sees is that it has failed to win a contract or two. Meanwhile, its competitor may have clandestinely learned all about its marketing plans, its negotiating strategies and its manufacturing secrets. “American businesses are not really up against some little competitor,” observes Noel Machette, a former National Security Agency official who heads a private security firm near Washington. “They’re up against the whole intelligence apparatus of other countries. And they’re getting their clocks cleaned.”

As U.S. national-security planners increasingly focus on American competitiveness, many of them fear that U.S. corporations are operating at a severe disadvantage. America’s tradition of keeping Government and business separate tends to minimize opportunities for the kind of intelligence sharing that often occurs in Europe. “I made a big effort to get the intelligence community to support U.S. businesses,” recalls Admiral Stansfield Turner, who headed the CIA in the late 1970s. “I was told by CIA professionals that this was not national security.” Moreover, it would be hard for the Government to provide information to one U.S. firm and not to another. Yet if sensitive intelligence is shared too widely, it cannot be protected.

One thing the U.S. Government can do is make sure business leaders understand the threat. When the late Walter Deeley was a deputy director at NSA in the early 1980s, he began a hush-hush program in which executives were given clearances and told when foreign intelligence agencies were stealing their secrets. “He considered it a real crusade,” a former intelligence official says. “If American business leaders could see some of these & intelligence reports, I think they would go bananas and put a lot more effort into protecting their communications.”

“It may not be possible to level the playing field ((with foreign companies)) by sharing intelligence directly” with their U.S. rivals, observes deputy White House science adviser Michelle Van Cleave. “But it should be possible to button up our secrets.” That argues for much more use of secret-keeping techniques and far less naivete on the part of American business as it enters the spy-vs.-spy era of the 1990s.

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