ACCESSION NUMBER:226085 FILE ID:EU-510 DATE:05/01/92 TITLE:SCHIFTER URGES FURTHER REFORM OF THE KGB (05/01/92) TEXT:*92050110.EUR *EUR510 05/01/92 * SCHIFTER URGES FURTHER REFORM OF THE KGB (Advocates abolition of domestic arm) (540) By David Pitts USIA Staff Writer Washington -- Richard Schifter, former assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs, said May 1 that President Boris Yeltsin should undertake "a fundamental reorganization" of the KGB, including the "abolition of the domestic arm of the KGB." Warning that another KGB-led coup attempt is still possible, he said that if the Russian government puts reform of the organization on the backburner, "it does so at its own peril." Schifter spoke at an American Bar Association conference that featured a panel on intelligence agencies in former Warsaw Pact nations. The problem of disentangling "the intelligence web" is more difficult in Russia than in other Warsaw Pact nations because the KGB "was integrated into all aspects of society," he remarked. Moreover, an oppressive intelligence network predates even the Communist takeover in 1917, having been organized by Peter the Great in 1702, he noted. "In almost 300 years, Russia has been without a secret police network for only about nine months," he added, a reference to the Provisional Government that held office between Czarist and Communist rule. Schifter said that Russia's current democratic leadership should keep in mind that "relics of the old order are still in place, and foremost among them are KGB officials." He recommended "a thorough review" of intelligence. Many of the functions of the KGB "can be transferred to the regular police force," he noted. Michael Waller, director of the international security affairs section of the International Freedom Foundation, said that President Yeltsin has named members of the "old apparat to reshape but not reform" the KGB. He said there is demand in Russia for more oversight of the organization, but he said that the officials currently overviewing the organization "have been co-opted" by the KGB. Elizabeth Rindskopf, general counsel for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), said that U.S. and intelligence officials from former Warsaw Pact nations have met frequently in recent times. "We will share with them what we have learned" about operating an intelligence agency in a democratic society," she noted. But they must shape their own intelligence services 1and design oversight procedures of their own," she added. Jefferson Adams, a professor of history who has written widely about intelligence matters, especially in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), said that the Ministry of State Security in the GDR had employed 85,000 fulltime workers and 150,000 unofficial employees. After the dissolution of the country, more than 125 miles of documents containing information on citizens were discovered, he noted. "Dismantling this enormous apparatus is proving to be one of the most formidable tasks facing Germany today," he remarked. The resentment against the Communist intelligence organization was so great that a recent poll sponsored by the news magazine "Der Spiegel" revealed that 80 percent of the population in the former GDR opposes a general amnesty for former intelligence workers, he explained. Partly as a consequence of the revelations about East German intelligence, he said that the German Bundestag had recently passed a law providing for "much greater oversight" of current German intelligence. NNNN .