Watching for Soviets
The scouts are trained to report any overflight, submarine surfacing, suspicious person or items washed ashore. Military officials said that rarely a day goes by without such a report coming from a scout somewhere along the hundreds of miles of the Alaskan frontier.
Alaskan-based military intelligence officials said that sightings of unidentified persons, particularly men in wet suits, off the coast of St. Lawrence Island also have increased, from one or two a year to about seven in each of the last two years.
Alaskan intelligence officials suspect that the Soviets train special forces on isolated Alaskan islands, but said they have no concrete evidence and have never positively identified a member of a Soviet Spetsnaz team on American soil here.
Pentagon officials discount reports that the Soviets would use even uninhabited Alaskan territory for such operations, but the reports persist. In one typical encounter, scout Michael Apatiki reported that while he and his family were boating off St. Lawrence Island, he spotted what appeared to be a man in a wet suit. The frogman fled when he realized he had been seen, according to Apatiki's report.
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