YURCHENKO CASE LEAVING CIA WITH BLACK EYE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504130045-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 27, 2012
• Sequence Number: 45
• Publication Date: November 6, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504130045-3
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ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE I
Yurchenko Case
Leaving CIA
With Black Eye
By DOYLE McMANUS,
E , ~??
Tim" WT
WASHINGTON-Whether V1-
taly Yurchenko was a brilliant
Soviet agent or merely a confused
and homesick man, the KGB offi-
cer's sudden decision to return to
Moscow has given the CIA an
aching black eye, Reagan Adminis-
tration officials and members of
Congress said Tuesday.
Senior administration officials
insisted that Yurchenko could not
have learned much about U.S.
intelligence operations during his
three months of interrogation.
"He gave us stuff; we didn't give
him anything," Secretary of De-
fense Caspar W. Weinberger said.
?There wasn't the slightest damage
to us."
But former CIA officials and
members of the Senate Intelligence
Committee said the KGB man un-
doubtedly learned some U.S. se-
crets "that will be valuable to
Moscow, although the degree of
damage has not yet been fully
assessed.
Waralag for Others
Perhaps more important, one
former U.S. spy said. the KGB will
use the strange saga of Vitaly
Yurchenko to warn other potential
defectors that "anyone who even
thinks of putting his life on the line
depending on the professionalism
of U.S. intelligence organisations
had better forget it."
While U.S. officials dismissed as
absurd Yurchenko's charge that
the CIA kidnapped, drugged and
tortured him, the incident never-
theless complicates President Rea-
gan's effort to raise human rights
issues at his summit meeting with
Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev
in less than two weeks.
"The damage which may have
been intended. if there was any, is
in giving them a kind of talking
point to try to embarrass the
United States in a particularly
important time," Weinberger con-
ceded.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
6 November 1985
And the CIA's apparent bungling
inof the case e>
agency's most secret operations
and methods-and its managers'
competence-to unwelcome public
scrutiny.
"You're assured that the CIA
knows what they're doing," said
Se%t. Patrick J. Leahy (D Vt.) , vice
chairman of the Intelligence Com-
mittee. "That's an assumption
thft's now being questioned.
?Other than walking away with
ot? credibility and our national
honor, I don't see him walking
av4ay with a great deal," he said
wryly.
Leahy and Sen. Dave Durenber-
gec (R-Minn.), the panel's chair-
m4n., said they plan a full investi-
ga ion of the CIA's handling of
Yurchenko and will summon intel-
ligence director William J. Casey
fot questioning.
According to U.S. Officials, Yur-
chenko, the KGB officer in charge
of: Soviet espionage operations in
North America, defected last July
by walking into the U.S. Embassy
in, Rome. They said Yurchenko
voluntarily submitted to extensive
CPA debriefings and provided valu-
able information about Soviet spy-
in$.
But on Monday, Yurchenko sur-
faced inside the Soviet Embassy in
Washington and told reporters that
he had been kidnaped on the
strets of Rome and held captive by
the CIA until he managed to escape
S$turday night.
most intelligence experts said an
a&arent defector like Yurchenko
should not have learned much
allput CIA operations in Moscow-
asleast, not if his American inter-
rotators were careful. But he
would clearly have learned a great
dial about the CIA's methods in
handling defectors, information
that could be useful to the KGB in
ever planting false defectors or
recapturing real ones.
"'In talking to him, we would be
careful in protecting the identities
of our people (in the Soviet Un-
ion)." former CIA chief William E.
( ilby said. "We wouldn't be talk-
ing about our operations-we
vauld ask him about theirs....
We would be very cautious about
vAat we would tell him or let him
kQow, particularly in three
months."
tILE ONLY
Yormer Deputy Director George
Carver was less sanguine.
"'It's aggravating. it shouldn't
hive happened," he said. "It is
going to provide the KGB with a lot
o>: details about agency practices
acid locations of safehouses and
other information you would just as
soon the KGB didn't have.
"More damaging is the KGB's
message to their own people that
anybody who is thinking about
leaving Mother Russia had better
forget it, because our arm is very
long and we will get you back,"
Carver said. "Also, anyone who
even thinks of putting his life on
the line depending on the profes-
sionalism of U.S. intelligence or-
ganizations had better forget it-
the U.S. talks a better intelligence
game than it plays. That image is a
lot easier to get than it is to get rid
of."
Much of the debate over the
amount of damage Yurchenko did
turns on the unresolved question
whether he was a genuine defector
who had a change of heart, or a
deliberate KGB "plant" who buffa-
loed the CIA's counterintelligence
branch for three months.
The experts remained divided on
that issue. On the Senate commit-
tee, Republican Durenberger said
he agrees with the CIA's conten-
tion that the Russian was "a very
troubled man"; Democrat Leahy
said he had "a nagging and persis-
tent feeling" that Yurchenko was a
phony.
Either way, however, Congress
planned to call Casey and his aides
for questioning-a process that will
inevitably expose the agency to
closer public scrutiny of its opera-
tions and management than the
CIA chief likes. The case has
already subjected the intelligence
agency to more public criticism of
its competence in basic spycraft
than any operation since congres-
sional investigations of the mid-
1970s revealed bungled assassina-
tion plots and other scandals.
"If it turns out that he was a
double agent, then, of course, there
was a great problem and a grave
mistake," Leahy said. "If he was a
real defector, the question is why
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was he out having dinner just a
short distance from Mount Alto
(the Soviet Embassy compound),
and he just walked off."
"They ought never to have let it
-be known that they had him and
they should not have let things
dribble out into the press about
what he was telling them," said
Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-
N.Y.), a former member of the
Intelligence Committee. "That's
the kind of self-promotion that an
intelligence agency very wisely
avoids."
"It was as unprofessional as you
can get," charged a former top CLA
official who refuses to allow him-
self ever to be quoted by name.
"It's a basic problem of manage-
ment over there."
Durenberger and Carver warned
that some of the criticism may be
undeserved.
"You've got to keep in mind that
something like one out of every
two defectors goes home," the
Senate chairman said.
"The sun will still rise in the east
and set in the west," said Carver.
"There is going to be some obvious
embarrassment in the CIA, and
some people will raise some ques-
tions about the professional compe-
tence of their colleagues-perhaps
unfairly."
Yurchenko's turnabout failed to
cause any clear damage in one area.
the preparations for the Reagan-
Gorbachev summit in Geneva later
this month. Secretary of State
George P. Shultz discussed the
affair briefly with Gorbachev dur-
ing their meeting in Moscow on
Tuesday, but aides indicated it did
not disrupt the discussions.
One U.S. intelligence official said
Yurchenko appeared to starer away
from accusing Reagan of wrongdo-
ing in his dramatic news confer-
ence Monday-"so it's not embar-
rassment they're trying to
accomplish."
In any case, thr White House
official said, "We: won't be pro-
voked into anyhing that could
cause problems leading up to the
summit, whether or not that's what
the Soviets want to do."
"We are proceeding with our
preparations for the meeting,"
State Department spokesman
Charles Redman said. "We already
have stated our desire that Presi-
dent Reagan's meeting with (Com-
munist Party) General Secretary
Gorbachev should set an agenda for
more productive U.S.-Soviet rela-
tions in the coming years.... We
do not believe that the Yurchenko
case should affect these plans."
Times staff writers Maura Dolan
and James Oerstenzang contribut-
ed to this report.
a
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504130045-3