DEFECTOR WASN'T A DEFECTOR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504160047-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 47
• Publication Date: November 19, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504160047-8
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE ..23. ~?
Yurchenko
Defector
wasn't a
defector
By Alice-Leone Moats
Inqutrer ConvlbWins Writr
To me, the only puzzling aspect of
the case of the Soviet spy who went
back into the cold is why there
should be any speculation as to
whether or not Vitaly Yurchenko's
defection was genuine. Logical de=
duction, based on what is known
about the Soviets' methods, makes it
possible to reach only one conclu-
sion: The defection was a phony.
Ever since World War II, when the
Soviets went from being "those lousy
Reds" to "our gallant allies," we have
been dealing with their dirty tricks
and, through the few top-level spies
we have caught, have been given
some insight into their methods, yet
Washington has apparently learned
nothing. Senator Daniel P. Moynihan
(D., N.Y.) brushed aside the possibil-
ity that the Kremlin might have
played a trick on us by calling such a
theory "bizarre." He insisted that
Yurchenko was too prominent in the'
KGB to be used as "bait."
Arkady Shevchenko - the Soviet
delegate to the United Nations, who
was serving as under secretary gen-
eral when he defected in 1978 -
maintains Yurchenko was just a run-
of-the-mill official at the KGB, and it
was the Central Intelligence Agency,
in its hysterical excitement at hav-
ing a KGB official swim into its net,
that made him out to be a much
bigger fish than he actually was. (By
doing so, of course, the agency ended
up with much more egg on its face
when the Soviet-concocted souffle
exploded than would otherwise have
been the case.) Nevertheless, Yur-
chenko did work for the KGB and
was just important enough to serve
its purpose in having him pretend to
come over to our side.
William Colby, a former CIA direc-
tor and apparently even more naive
than Moynihan, is quoted in the
press as saying that Yurchenko was a
genuine defector who had had sec-
ond thoughts about his family and
had decided to "go home and face the
music." Obviously, even after years
of heading the CIA, Colby has no idea
what kind of music it would be.
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
19 November 1985
Yurcnenko, on the other hand,
having spent 25 years in the KGB,
would have no doubts as to what the
music would be: Chopin's funeral
march. A man in his position would
have to be either insane or suicidal
to return to the Soviet Union after
having defected and spent several
months in American hands; he gave
no indication- of being either.
So, the only question that remains
to be answered is exactly why the
Soviet government thought it worth-
whtte to mount this melodrama. The
moat= obvious and logical reason
would have been to offset the harm
dons' to communism by the new
wave of Soviet spies and bureaucrats
defecting for ideological reasons
rather than the earlier, mundane
reasons, such as falling into debt or
falling out of favor with Moscow.
A very effective way to do this
? would be to make intelligence agen-
cies in the West leery of any Commu-
nist defector. After the Yurchenko
debacle, it undoubtedly will be a
long time before trust is placed in
any East European who says he's
disillusioned with communism and
wants to come over to our side.
There would be an extra benefit to
Moscow in gaining firsthand knowl-
edge of how the CIA goes about de-
briefing a defector.
An intelligence official who re-
cently left the CIA maintains that
Yurchenko wouldn't have learned
much about debriefing methods be-
cause questioning in such cases is
carefully handled to protect impor-
tant information. Did the same kind
of experts do the questioning who,
not only allowed Yurchenko to go
out to dinner at An Pied de Cochon, a
Georgetown bistro, but also sent him
forth for an evening on the town
accompanied by only one agent?
The same kind of experts as the
dope who, when Yurchenko got up,
front-the table and said, "If I'm not
back in 15 minutes, don't blame your-
self," and then walked out the door,
waited obediently for the 15 minutes
to pass before alerting headquarters
thar the big fish had swum away.
The statement on the CIA's very
poor showing from Sen. Patrick Lea-
hy (D., Vt.), ranking Democrat of the
intelligence committee, was, "You as-
sume the CIA is trained profession-
als, that they know what they're do-
ing. That assumption is now being
questioned."
If the assumption is actually being
questioned, the KGB may have done
the United States a favor by staging
the Yurchenko farce: perhaps the
powers-that-be in Washington will
now insist that the CIA agents really
be trained as professionals and that
the agency select people capable of
entertaining the hypothesis that the
mind of a Soviet does not work in
exactly the same way as the mind of
an American.
However, I'm afraid that, to judge
by Washington's track record, the
only person who will have benefited
from this mess is the owner of the
Georgetown bistro who has put a
new item on his menu, "Moskovski
Borscht."
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504160047-8