IN YURCHENKO CASE, TRUTH REMAINS A COVERT FACTOR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100660009-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 28, 2010
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: November 10, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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CN PAGE _' 10 November 1985
In Yurchenko Case, Truth
Remains a Covert Factor
A Genuine Defector, or a Soviet Plant?
By Dale Russakoff
Washington Post Staff Writer
On Aug. 1, Vitaly Yurchenko
slipped into the U.S. Embassy in
Rome with one goal: he wanted a
new life. Frustrated by a stagnant
spy career in Moscow, despairing
over failed relationships with his
wife and son, lovesick for a Russian
mistress in Canada, he would "dis-
appear," and secretly defect to the
country most eager to buy what he
had to sell.
Or: On Aug. 1, Vitaly Yurchenko
slipped into the U.S. Embassy in
Rome to set off the most dazzling
"sting" operation in modern espio-
nage history. Reeling from recent
defections of key Soviet agents to
the West, infuriated by American
gloating, desperate for an intelli-
gence coup of its own. the Soviet
government would plant Yurchenko
as bait in a trap timed to snap shut
before a worldwide audience, turn-
ing U.S. exhilaration to embarrass-
ment.
Which version is true? In spy sto-
ries of this kind, truth is a rare com-
modity. An intelligence analyst
would ask, which version is most
credible? A layman might reply that
Yurchenko's three-month odyssey
through the U.S. intelligence appa-
ratus and out of it again was totally
incredible, even mind-boggling.
"You could sit two people down
with exactly the same set of facts,
and they would come up with op-
posite conclusions: He was a double
agent; no, he was a defector who
became depressed," said Sen. David
L. Boren (D-Okla.), a member of
the Select Committee on Intelli-
gence. "I can argue it round or I can
argue it flat. It comes down to your
own intuition." Even the consequences are un-
clear. Some U.S. officials say Yurchenko spilled
valued information. Others say he gave and took
little. Maybe he was just a bird that flew into the
jet engine: a freak accident, not a systemic fail-
ure.
At the least, he escorted a wide-eyed world
into the secret and seductive realm of espionage,
where the bizarre and unexpected are common-
place, where the most skilled practitioner is
prone to see the implausible as plausible, the un-
real as real. In this realm, illogic harbors a logic
all its own.
The tale is beyond logic, from Yurchenko's
disappearance in Rome to his tete-a-tete over
supper with America's chief spymaster in Lang-
ley, Va., to an unprecedented, internationally
televised news conference in Washington, where
he said he was drugged and kidnaped?
Here is the tale, told twice, of V.S. Yurchenko:
once as genuine defector, once as double agent.
The facts are the same, only the motivation-
and therefore the interpretation-changes. The
motivations offered here were suggested by in-
telligence officials and experts, but they are
largely guesswork.
'In time, more facts may emerge to make one
version markedly more persuasive, or that intro-
duce a new explanation, such as the intriguing
scenario that Yurchenko was deliberately sent
back to Moscow by the Central Intelligence
Agency as a triple agent.
The Genuine Defector
Yurchenko. 49, was entering middle age, un-
happy in love and in work. His heart belonged to
a woman in Ottawa, the wife of a Soviet Embassy
official whom he had known since the 1970s.
According to the CIA, he was listed as No. 2 in
the KGB department overseeing spying in North
America, but his career was arguably going no-
where. He was the security officer, an inglorious
watchdog.
It was not the kind of life he might have en-
visioned in the late 1970s, when he was the
feared chief of security at the Soviet Embassy in
Washington and a sort of man-about-town known
as "Vity" to bartenders in posh downtown hotels.
If he was looking for a way out, the Soviets un-
knowingly gave him one last July. They sent him
to Rome to investigate the disappearance of nu-
clear scientist Vladimir Alexandrov, last seen in
Madrid in April.
While strolling with Soviet officials on the hot
summer morning of July 28 (according to Italian
press accounts), he excused himself near the am-
bassador's residence, saying he wanted to tour
the Vatican museum on nearby Via delle For-
naci.
He never came back.
Coat as,d
STAT
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:.y, Yurchenko had reason to believe he was on contract-$1 million down and $62,500 a year
the threshold of a new life, with plenty of money for life in return for information, according to
and security, and perhaps his sweetheart to boot. Yurchenko-but he put them off.
And he was counting on his new protectors at Heartsick, lonely for someone to whom he
the CIA, as fellow espionage types. to keep it all could open his soul-in Russian-Yurchenko's
secret so that his superiors, his wife and most thoughts may have turned to his adopted son,
importantly his 16-year-old son would not know who had difficulty in school and was a discipline
that he had abandoned the Soviet motherland. problem.
The evidence would show that he had "disap- He knew that some defectors had been al-
peared." a plausible end for a KGB agent. lowed home after declaring they were kidnaped
Soviet Embassy officials reported Yurchenko and drugged, then swearing unswerving loyalty
missing on Aug. 2, providing Italian police with a to the motherland. Maybe he, too, could pull it
description, but no photograph. and saying they off.
suspected the CIA had kidnaped him. By Sep- The debriefers by mid-October had relaxed his
tember, Soviet officials here queried the United security, emphasizing that he was free to go any-
States on Yurchenko's whereabouts. where. On Saturday, Nov. 2, Yurchenko was as.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials whisked their prize signed a fairly new employe, a young and inex-
defector to Washington under Attorney General perienced agent who agreed to take him to Au
Edwin Meese III's "parole power" for emergency Pied de Cochon, a Georgetown brasserie, 1'
immigrations, and installed him in a "safe house" miles from the Soviet compound on Tunlaw Road
on 10 acres about 90 minutes south of Washing- NW.
ton. As they finished their dinner about 8 p.m.,
Then, the debriefings began, and the CIA Yurchenko looked at the young agent, said he
quickly found that Yurchenko was a good catch. wanted to take a walk, and asked, ,if I walk
He exposed Edward Lee Howard. a former away, will you shoot me?"
CIA agent fired from the agency who then. be- Of course not, came the answer. This is Amer-
trayed to the Soviets a valued U.S. source in ica.
Moscow. He told them about three other Amer- Perhaps out of fatherly feeling toward a young
icans who had worked for Soviet intelligence, agent, perhaps out of anger at his debriefers, he
some sources say. He cleared up a decade-old parted with these words: if I don't come back, don't
mystery by revealing that the Soviets had acci- blame yourself."
dentally killed U.S. double agent Nicholas G. And with that, Yurchenko vanished.
Shadrin in 1975.
But the debriefings became emotionally de- He made his way through the big iron gates of the pleting and ultimately depressing-normal feel- Soviet compound, apparently recognized by old friends
ings, according to other defectors. Day after day, from his days in Washington. According to intelligence
professional questioners picked Yurchenko's sources, embassy officials likely consulted senior au-
brain. He later complained that he had to speak thorities in Moscow, possibly even the Politburo, to de-
English all the time, an added strain. cide how to treat this traitorous defector.
At night, he said later, he had to sleep with his It was Yurchenko who proposed a news conference,
door open under the watchful eye of a "fat, quiet, according to a Soviet official. It seemed a clever way to
stupid-excuse me-unemotional person who is discredit the United States. The Soviets initially
following the orders." During the day, he planned to hold it on Sunday, but realized that football
claimed, he was watched much of the time by six games frequently preempt Sunday network news shows
1 CIA officers, including a Vietnam veteran named and that the publicity would be better on Monday, the
Colin Thompson, who called himself "Charlie." Soviet official added.
Within weeks, his new life in the United States The turncoat Yurchenko surely could be trusted with
began to look worse than the one left behind. this unprecedented assignment because as an old KGB
Both Soviet and American sources agree that hand, he knew his life was riding on it.
Yurchenko, while in U.S. custody, was treated And so, Yurchenko played his part like a master last
for an ulcer-"All of us have stomach trouble Monday afternoon, accusing the United States of "state
say y the mhermost t official commonly said-and nly pre- -
terrorism." But there was a tantalizing clue to his real
medical l authorities over a Soviet
scribed ulcer medication could have caused the thinking. When a reporter asked how he escaped, Yur-
defector to feel disoriented and confused. chenko answered by talking of his son, convincing some
In late September, with the help of the Royal skilled observers he was going home for the boy:
Canadian Mounted Police, the CIA reunited Yur- "I have a 16-year-old son and he had his problems
chenko in Ottawa with his beloved. But the wo- with his studies and with his behavior .... I used to
man spurned him, and Canadian sources ob- tell him that there can be no situation without an exit. If
served him to be "emotionally upset" after the you really think about it you can always find a way out
visit. of any situation."
Meanwhile, far from keeping his defection a
secret. U.S. officials crowed about him. Some- The Double Agent
how, his role in the Shadrin and Howard cases
peaked to the news media. He had a private din- Soviet intelligence officials were desperate. Both the
1ner with CIA Director William J. Casey, and Yur- London station chief of the KGB and the deputy direc-
chenko saw it reported in a Newsweek magazine tor of Soviet intelligence in Greece had defected to the
article calling Yurchenko "the highest-ranking West. Americans had boasted that it was like losing two
Soviet defector in years" and quoting a "senior CIA station chiefs to Moscow.
administration aide" boasting, "He's for real." With the summit near, the Soviets urgently wanted
On Oct. 11, after newspapers and television to epibarrass the United States, shake CIA confidence
networks had been flooded with news of the Yur- in their newly won defectors and stanch any future
chenko defection, the State Department an- westward flow of intelligence.
nounced it officially.
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They concocted a plot of rare audacity: plant a de-
fector in the United. States, manipulate the Americans
into believing he is one of the KGB's top five officials,
give him a few choice intelligence tidbits to divulge to
enhance his cover, but mainly pump him full of disinfor-
mation.
Once the Americans take the bait, he escapes in a
spectacular surprise ending, staging an unheard-of
Washington news conference, leaving even some of the
most skilled observers believing he was a real defector
who "redefected."
And who better for the job than Vitaly Yurchenko?
He was as plausible a defector as any-competent in
English, with an un-Russian, man-about-town air. He
would tell his CIA handlers that he had tired of Soviet
life and of an unsatisfactory marriage, and that he had
liked the freedoms of America.
To sweeten the story, the Soviets would fabricate for
him a love affair in Ottawa with an embassy wife. Intel-
ligence types always believed that love, more than ide-
olggy, moved people to defect. -
~Yurchenko was also as tough as they came. He struck
terror into embassy employes ffere as security chief
from 1975 to 1979-a watchdog against defectors. And -
in any case, he did not have the kind of job that gave
him access to the sort of information the Soviets most
feared losing.
So off he went to Rome, into the U.S. Embassy.
Everything went as planned. The United States
agreed to Yurchenko's basic demands fora new life, a
reunion with his sweetheart in Ottawa and utmost se-
crecy-with the Soviets knowing full well that in the
open U.S. system, the news would leak.
As arranged, Yurchenko turned in Howard, who was
believed to be of no more use to the Soviets. Howard
escaped, apparently thanks to U.S. bungling. And Yur-
chenko explained Shadrin's mysterious 1975 disappear-
ance, but that was only a footnote to history, anyway.
Still, U.S. officials trumpeted these as major intelli-
gence coups, and in return, intelligence officers took
Yurchenko in late September to Ottawa to see his lov-
er. She spurned him as planned, possibly receiving in
the process a valuable report on his first weeks with the
Americans that she passed on to Moscow.
Meanwhile, the leaks in the media went beyond even
the Soviets' wildest imaginings. They surfaced in so
many different places, billing Yurchenko as such a big
"catch"-all on the authority of unnamed intelligence
sources-that the ombudsman of The Washington Post
publicly chided the newspaper for failing to report Yur-
chenko's defection as prominently as its competitors.
Then Yurchenko hit the ultimate propaganda jackpot:
an intimate meeting with CIA Director Casey in his pri-
vate dining room. Before long, this meeting also was
leaked by gloating intelligence sources, setting the Rea-
gan administration up for a bruising fall: America's chief
spy dining intimately with a Soviet plant.
Everything was in place for the grand finale. Know-
ing the CIA ultimately wanted to let him exercise his
new freedom, Yurchenko persuaded his young handler
to drive him into Georgetown, on the drizzly night of
Nov. 2. At a noisy all-night bistro called Au Pied de Co-
chon, where one can easily get lost amid the crowds and
the eclectic, Franco-Washingtonian decor, he excused
himself for a walk.
He was welcomed back to the Soviet compound as a
hero, and preparations were made for Monday's news
conference in which he would charge that he had been
drugged and kidnaped in Rome, then held prisoner. Ev-
ery major news organization in the country by now
knew Yurchenko's name and would give the session top
billing.
Yurchenko, the star witness, appeared to have noth-
ing to fear. This was hardly a defector, terrorized as to
whether he would be executed or spared. This man was
so composed that he brushed aside the third-ranking of-
ficial in the embassy who sought to end the briefing be-
fore Yurchenko was through talking.
"Don't try to press me. I am used to such pressing
.... It doesn't work against me," Yurchenko told a re-
porter who questioned his story. Then he peremptorily
called an end to the questioning.
"Thank you for your time," he said smiling. "Bye-
bye."
Staff writer Patrick E.. Tyler, Canada correspondent
Herbert H. Denton and staff researchers Barbara
Feinman and James Schwartz contributed to this report.
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