The FBI estimates that about onethird of the Soviet bloc personnel in the United States assigned to embassies. consulates and the United Nations or other international organizations are fulltime intelligence officers. Over the past 12 years the number of official representatives of governments which engage in hostile intelligence activities in the United States has increased by 400 percent. Immigrants and refugees from the Soviet Union and Cuba also pose a security threat. According to Attorney General William French Smith. Soviet and Cuban intelligence agents have been "a small but significant fraction of these recent refugees." Identifying these covert agents from among the tens of thousands of refugees imposes added burdens on the FBI program. In December 1981. Attorney General Smith stated publicly that "the number of hostile agents has grown so much that our FBI counterintelligence agents are greatly outnumbered." But the administrations budget request for the FBI failed to enhance this vital element of the Nations defense against hostile foreign powers.
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