THE DEFECTOR: TALES FROM THE OTHER SIDE
Document Type:
Collection:
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
CIA-RDP90-00552R000404310001-0
Release Decision:
RIPPUB
Original Classification:
K
Document Page Count:
1
Document Creation Date:
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date:
June 21, 2010
Sequence Number:
1
Case Number:
Publication Date:
November 19, 1985
Content Type:
OPEN SOURCE
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STAT - _ -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/21: CIA-RDP90-00552R000404310001-0
WASHINGTON POST
19 November 1985
The Defector:
Tales From the
Other Side
Yelena Mitrokhina, Remembering the Dark Secrets
By David Remnick
W*ihmgtw Pwt SW Wnter
You know Yelena Mitrokhina.
She's the Woman in the Blond Wig.
One August afternoon seven. years ago,
while her husband was working at the So-
viet Embassy, she met with four FBI agents
and drove off in a taxi. She was the first
person ever to defect from the Soviet Em-
bassy in Washington.
Two weeks ago when high-ranking KGB
officer Vitaly Yurchenko walked away from
his CIA handlers in a Georgetown bistro
and made headlines by redefecting, Yelena
Mitrokhina donned a frumpy blond wig and
sunglasses and, for the first time, spoke out
in public, appearing on ABC's "Nightline,"
Cable News Network and the front, page of
The Washington Post. Although there is no
way to check all the details of her story as
she tells it, sources including the FBI and,
the Wharton School of Business, where she
earned a degree in 1980, confirm Yelena's
saga. She became an American citizen last
year.
In her way, Yelena Mitrokhina knew Vi-
taly Yurchenko like no one else:
"My closest encounter with Mr. Yur-
chenko was in October 1977. He was head
of embassy counterintelligence. There had
been a woman, an embassy wife, who had
struck up a friendship with an American
neighbor. She started seeing him, quite
openly, just walking together, talking. When
Yurchenko found out, she was sent home to
Moscow within 24 hours.
"By that time I. was in a similar situation.
I was very friendly with an American man.
He was my car dealer. I had a lot of prob.
lems and thought I could confide in him.
The night that woman was sent home, Yur-
chenko called a meeting of all embassy
wives. He started talking about the weak-
ness inherent in women, about how we
must not succumb.
"Have you ever been in a theater and you
get the feeling that the actor is talking di-
rectly at you and no one else? That was how
I felt. I thought Yurchenko knew all about
me. I sat there, with 30 other women in the
room, the wives of all the most powerful
Russian diplomats in Washington, and I
thought to myself, 'Well, Yelena, you're
next.' "
In her wig and sunglasses, Yelena Mi-
trokhina suggests Tony Curtis' drag per-
formance in "Some Like It Hot." In reality,
she is dark-haired, dark-eyed, attractive and
smartly dressed. Her English would shame
a native.
"My friends say that I was born in Russia
only by accident," she says. "And they're
right. I was born to live in America." Yelena
says, "I did not want to spend my life work-
ing for a system. I wanted to live for my-
self."
Born 41 years ago in Leningrad, she
grew up a privileged and only child. Her
father was an air force colonel "whose phi-
losophy was the front page of Pravda." Her
mother was more irreverent, "a free spirit
who taught me how to live my own life."
Yelena, like many Russians, favors
a certain bluntness of speech. She is
not shy, announcing "that I got
straight As in school. I have an IQ of
154." At the University of Leningrad
she studied Norwegian and English.
She worked summers as an interpret-
er for visiting delegations from Nor-
way, Britain and the United States. "I
guess that's when I first got a taste
for the West," she says. "It wasn't
really political, it was the people I
met, their openness."
At 19, Yelena married the son of a
prominent Soviet writer, "a kind of
playboy" who was later diagnosed as
schizophrenic. "I was very much in
love with him, but we just could not
live together," she says. "He threat-
ened me and almost killed me. We
divorced after a year. I was devas-
tated."
While a graduate student in soci-
ology, she met Lev Mitrokhina. a pro-
fessor at the Academy of Sciences. As
soon as he could divorce his first wife.
they married in 1970. Yelena was
again a member of the privileged
class, the nomenklatura.
"People who know that I'm a de-
fector assume that I was a dissident,"
she says, "hut I was never anything
close to that when I was living in Rus-
sia. I was born with a silver spoon in
my mouth. When I moved to Moscow
with my husband, my status just went
up. Lev was a member of the Russian
old boys' network. He'd been ui
charge of propaganda when he wa;
young and in the Komsomol [Commu-
nist Party youth organizations. We had
a car, good food, a nice apartment.
Like any Russian with a little money
and brains, I could get lots of foreign
goods. I don't ever remember wear-
ing any Soviet-made clothes."
One of Lev Mitrokhina's "old-boy"
friends in 1975 was Boris Pankin,
head of the newly formed Soviet copy-
right agency. Pankin asked Lev to
become a first secretary at the em-
bassy in Washington and open a copy-
right office on K Street. Yelena was
delighted.
"At the embassy you get the best of
the two worlds," she says. "You live
with diplomatic immunity, a free
apartment, medical care and an en-
vironment of familiar Russian people.
The majority of the intellectual elite in
Moscow paled by comparison with the
top rank of diplomats in Washington.
"We had access to so many more
books, to magazines and journals and
the television news. I remember some
friends and I played a game by com-
paring an issue of Pravda and The
Washington Post, and we discovered
that in Russia certain events just do
not exist. And the TV! I remember
'The Six Million Dollar Man' was very
big. We would race back from Pioneer
Point [the Soviet "dacha" in Maryland)
on Sunday nights to watch it. I guess
we didn't know about reruns yet."
There were a few restrictions. Em-
bassy personnel were not allowed to
have credit cards or checkbooks. "We
always carried cash," Yelena says.
"That made us`the best mugging tar-
gets in the city."
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/21: CIA-RDP90-00552R000404310001-0