The Conrad Spy Ring
 

    On August 25, 1988, Clyde Lee Conrad, a retired US Army Sergeant, was arrested in West Germany on charges of espionage.  Conrad was passing on sensitive NATO information to the Hungarian State Defense Authority (AVH).  At the time of Conrad’s arrest, two Hungarian born Swedes were also arrested in Gothenburg, Sweden. The Swedes turned out to be the contact between Conrad and Budapest.  Five years of coordinated effort of the US, the West German and Swedish intelligence authorities, resulted in the arrest of the members of the Conrad spy ring.  The Conrad spy ring was regarded as one of the most successful Soviet Bloc spy rings of recent times.

    The AVH is regarded as one of the better intelligence agencies of the world.  Yet, it is one of the least successful intelligence agencies of the Soviet Block.  The AVH is relatively small intelligence agency within the Bloc with only two to three thousand employees.  In the past, the AVH’s success was mostly in providing domestic security.  The external operations of the AVH were limited more or less to the classical propaganda activities of the “Active Measures” and to keeping up with the activities of the Hungarian émigré groups.  Although monitoring the Hungarian émigré groups can also be regarded as an extension of the internal security, most of these operations monitor émigré groups in order to counter any possible danger that these groups could cause to the current Hungarian Government.

    The AVH recruitment mostly targets, first and second generation Hungarians living outside Hungary.  If the AVH succeeds in recruiting the target ,then in turn this agent is asked to recruit non-Hungarian targets.  This tactic is not unique to the Hungarian Intelligence Agency.  It is practiced by several intelligence agencies such as, theIsraeli intelligence agency, the Mossad,  and by the intelligence services of both the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan just to mention a few.

    For the AVH the most vulnerable part of network building is when the Hungarian agent approaches other non-Hungarians in order to recruit them.  For example, in the late 70’s the AVH recruited a Hungarian-American who had social contacts with well placed US government officials.  In 1982, the agent approached an FBI employee in hope to recruit him.  However, he failed to do so and the agent was arrested.  In the case of the Conrad spy ring it is not known yet whether Conrad was recruited by his AVH contacts in Sweden or the AVH used some other recruiting methods in order to ensure success.

    Although the Conrad spy ring’s success was due primarily to the AVH, not only the Hungarians benefited from the information provided by Conrad.  The AVH shared the information with the Soviet Intelligence Community in full and to a lesser degree with other Soviet Bloc countries.  The AVH, like other intelligence agencies of the Soviet Bloc, work under the supervision of Moscow.  Once a year Major General Istvan Kukk, the director of the AVH, visits Moscow to attend the meeting that is held for the heads of the Soviet Bloc intelligence communities to coordinate their intelligence activities.  Important information such as, the existence of the Conrad spy ring has to be discussed in order to avoid overlapping or contradicting intelligence activities.  Recruitment of potential agents by one intelligence agency to provide intelligence to another is also part of the cooperation between the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO) members’ intelligence agencies.  In July of 1988, just one month before  the Conrad spy ring was rolled up, a Canadian-Hungarian, Steven Ratkai, was accused of gathering ] information on US submarine monitoring operations.  Since Hungary is a landlocked country it is obvious that the information provided by Ratkai benefited other WTO  countries.

    However, information proved by the Conrad spy ring did prove useful for Hungary as well as for the Soviet Union and other Soviet Bloc countries.  At the same time, the existence of the Conrad spy ring released valuable intelligence  assets of the WTO countries to penetrate other military targets of NATO.

    How long will it take for NATO to fully discover the losses of its defense capability caused by the Conrad spy ring is not known yet.  However, the Conrad spy ring clearly showed to the West that neither the Hungarian Goulash Communism nor the Soviet Glasnost means that the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies have become less eager to obtain secrets from the West.