The tip-off, says an American counterintelligence official, came from information collected over many months suggesting that the Warsaw Pact countries possessed "bits and pieces" of top-secret NATO wartime contingency plans. Investigators then discovered proof that Soviet planners had highly classified documents. Last week West German officials arrested retired U.S. Sergeant First Class Clyde Lee Conrad and charged him with being the linchpin in an "especially grave" Soviet intelligence penetration of Western defenses. Conrad, 41, formerly attached to the headquarters company ...

In 1944 a 15-year-old boy was taken from his home in Sighet, Hungary, and sent to a Nazi death camp. This spring, after a joint resolution of Congress, President Reagan will present him with a gold medal at the White House "in recognition of his humanitarian efforts and outstanding contributions to world literature and human rights." There can be no longer journey than the one Elie Wiesel, 56, has taken from a cell in Auschwitz to the corridors of Washington. ...

The streets of central Kabul's bustling open-air Mandavi market was cleared of shopkeepers and shoppers early this afternoon after Taliban suicide bombers and gunmen attacked a large police station on the area's main street. The three attackers killed five civilians, three policemen and an intelligence officer when they breached the gate of the compound and opened fire, the Interior Ministry confirmed in a statement, according to Afghan news sources agencies. The insurgents were killed when the police ...

TITLE: A MURDER IN WARTIME AUTHOR: JEFF STEIN PUBLISHER: ST. MARTIN'S PRESS; 414 PAGES; $22.95 THE BOTTOM LINE: This is the best military morality tale since The Caine Mutiny. CAPTAIN ROBERT MARASCO, WHO pulled the trigger, said the bullet that killed Thai Khac Chuyen made the sound of a "tire puncture" and splattered "blood, skull and bits of brain" on him and the other two Green Berets in the boat. Undaunted, the trio rolled the body of the alleged North ...

The young Syrian in the white undershirt cradled a toddler in his arms as he sat beneath a line of laundry strung up between two stout gum trees. He stared out from behind the rusty metal gate of the disused tobacco warehouse that is now home to hundreds of Syrian refugees, most of whom are from the flashpoint town of Jisr al-Shughour, some 40 kilometers south of the Turkish border. A gaggle of frustrated journalists waited across ...

By the time President Obama sat down with House Republicans on June 1 to talk about the exploding public debt, the economic data had been grim for days: another decline in home values, a new dip in consumer confidence and, just that morning, the lowest manufacturing-sector growth rate in more than a year and a dismal payroll report showing job growth far below expectations. In another era, these sorts of numbers would have led to a predictable ...

The U.S. is not yet at war with Saddam Hussein. Not officially. But quietly, over the past few months, some of its savviest warriors have sneaked into his country. They have been secretly prowling the Kurdish-controlled enclave in northern Iraq, trying to organize a guerrilla force that could guide American soldiers invading from the north, hunting for targets that U.S. warplanes might bomb, setting up networks to hide U.S. pilots who might be shot down and mapping out escape routes ...

We are a nation grown numb to the seemingly endless fine print that accompanies our purchases. But every now and then a product is sold with a warning that should command attention. Consider the little-noticed bit of legalese that comes in the safety manual for Apple's iPhone 4: "When using iPhone near your body for voice calls or for wireless data transmission over a cellular network, keep iPhone at least 15 mm away from the body, ...

New evidence of Soviet spyingIt read like a chapter of seabed science fiction, but last week Swedes were taking very seriously indeed a report by their government charging the Soviet Union with a spectacular underwater spy effort off the Swedish coast. After a six-month investigation, an official commission concluded that up to six submarines had been involved in a bold intrusion into the waters near Sweden's Musk Island naval base last October. The fleet was said to include three advanced miniature submarines, some equipped with tanklike ...

The economy may be troubled, but one area is thriving: social media. They begin with Facebook and extend through a dizzying array of companies that barely existed five years ago: Twitter, LinkedIn, Groupon, Yammer, Yelp, Flickr, Ning, Digg--and the list goes on. These companies are mostly private but have attracted the ardent attention of Wall Street and investors, with Facebook now worth a purported $75 billion and Groupon valued at close to $25 billion. There can be little doubt that ...