Administration warns action could backfire on U.S. spying

 BY WALTER PINCUS
 Washington Post Service

 WASHINGTON -- A measure passed by the House that would prohibit
 Washington from restructuring Russia's debts unless Moscow closes its
 multibillon-dollar intelligence eavesdropping facility in Cuba endangers similar
 electronic collection operations the United States and its allies carry on from
 bases around the world, according to Clinton administration officials.

 Electronic interceptions of telephone calls, cables, faxes and more recently
 computer data have been a major secret intelligence activity of Washington and
 Moscow spy services since the early days of the Cold War. Although many of
 these operations can now be conducted from satellites, the United States, Russia
 and other NATO countries continue to run ground facilities to collect the growing
 amount of electronic data being sent around the world.

 ANTI-CASTRO MEMBERS

 Against that background, a group of anti-Castro House members have pushed
 through a measure barring the Clinton administration from restructuring or
 rescheduling Russian loan payments until the president certifies that the giant
 Moscow-run electronic eavesdropping facility at Lourdes, Cuba, has been shut
 down. The bill would affect $485 million owed to the United States.

 The measure does provide that the president can waive its provisions if he certifies
 that the loans are in the national security interest of the country and that Moscow
 is adhering to nonproliferation and arms control agreements.

 The bill, which passed the House by a vote of 275 to 146, must pass the Senate
 and be signed by the president before it becomes law. Nonetheless the measure
 and the debate surrounding it brings into public view electronic intelligence
 gathering that gets little publicity within the United States.

 Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the
 Russians pay more than $200 million a year in rent to Cuba for the facility, which
 he said employs 1,500 Russian technicians and is that nation's largest gatherer
 of intelligence about the United States. It gathers not only military
 communications but also ``personal information about American citizens and
 proprietary information about U.S. corporations,'' Goss said.

 But the Clinton administration noted that for both the United States and Russia,
 an important function of such signal intelligence operations is ``to collect
 information to verify arms control agreements.''

 'REBOUND' POSSIBLE

 In its official statement, the administration said the legislation ``may rebound
 adversely to the United States by inviting Russia and other countries to pursue
 similar charges against U.S. facilities they characterize as threatening.''

 Ironically, a U.S. electronic collection program in Europe run for years by the
 Pentagon's National Security Agency under the name Echelon has drawn
 protests from committees of the European Parliament that are similar to those the
 legislators made against the Russian operation.