Marines Drop Spy Charges Against Ex-Guard Bracy

WASHINGTON — The Marine Corps, citing insufficient evidence, today dropped spy charges against a second former Marine guard accused in the sex-for-secrets scandal at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

Cpl. Arnold Bracy, 21, of New York was released from the brig at the Quantico, Va., Marine base where he had been held since March on espionage and seven other charges, the Marine Corps said. However, the corps said a Naval Investigative Service investigation into allegations against Bracy is continuing.

The dismissal of charges against Bracy raised questions about the case against Sgt. Clayton Lonetree, 25, of Chicago, scheduled to be court-martialed July 22 on 13 charges, including espionage.

The Marines served as guards together at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in 1985 and 1986.

“The government put together a case that is a house of cards and you’re watching the case fall apart,” Ronald Kuby, one of Lonetree’s lawyers, said.

The scandal, in which Bracy, Lonetree and a third Marine, Staff Sgt. Robert Stufflebeam, 25, of Bloomington, Ill., allegedly had affairs with Soviet women, tarnished the spit-and-polish image of the leathernecks and led to an overhaul of training methods for the elite cadre of 300 Marine guards.

All the guards at the Moscow Embassy and the U.S. consulate in Leningrad have been replaced.

Bracy had said under intensive interrogation that he assisted Lonetree in escorting Soviet agents through sensitive areas of the embassy on “numerous” occasions, but he later recanted those statements.

The recantation led to a dismissal of those charges against Lonetree.

The case against Bracy was dismissed because there was no one to corroborate his statements “despite thorough investigation,” the Marine Corps said. “Confessions are not admissible as evidence unless there is independent evidence to corroborate them.”