SOVIETS: SPY CASE AN INDICTMENT OF US

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706660014-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 19, 2011
• Sequence Number: 14
• Publication Date: November 15, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706660014-5
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
15 November 1985
I
Soviets: spy cage an indictment of US
By Gary ThsWw A high-ranking Soviet physician,
sun water of The Chnsuan Science Monitor Nikolai Zharikov, flanked Yurchenko. He
Moscow
He's the spy who came back to the
cold.
And just in time to throw a further
chill over next week's Geneva super-
power summit meeting.
As November snow flickered through
Moscow's air, Vitaly Yurchenko - the
KGB "defector" who returned to the So-
viet Union - resurfaced at a press con-
ference Thursday to elaborate upon his
tale of kidnapping and captivity by the
US Central Intelligence Agency.
Kremlin spokesman Vladimir
Lomeiko, sitting by Mr. Yurchenko's
side, charged that the United States, by
engaging in such forms of "state terror-
ism," had forfeited its chance to criticize
Soviet human rights policies.
It seemed a clear attempt to defuse
the issue of Soviet human rights abuses
before Mikhail Gorbachev and Presi-
dent Reagan meet in Geneva next week.
To underscore the point, Yurchenko's
press conference was broadcast over So-
viet television. His account, given in a
two-hour briefing, led some observers' to
speculate that Yurchenko may well have
been a double agent from the start.
The "captivity" that Yurchenko de-
scribed was odd indeed. He said he had
played rounds of golf with his CIA
captors, who coached him on how to im-
prove his swing, and that he had dined
with his CIA guards at restaurants and al-
ways had "rolls" of cash to pay the bills.
He gained enough weight, he said, to have
trouble fitting his clothes.
Yet he also described a trip to a private
Washington medical clinic, arranged by
the CIA because it worried about his loss
of weight while in captivity.
Alternately fidgety and rambling, glib
and emotional, Yurchenko's account
seemed worthy of a spy thriller. In Mos-
cow, the US Embassy refused to com-
ment on it. But privately, Western diplo-
mats were openly skeptical of
Yurchenko's convoluted story.
Yurchenko denied any connection with
the Soviet secret police, the KGB, describ-
ing himself as a "counsellor" with the So-
viet Ministry of Foreign Affairs who spe-
cialized in security of embassy buildings.
Ile also denied that romantic entangle-
ments had motivated him to defect or
spurred his return to his "motherland."
said that any apparent nervousness or
lapses in Yurchenko's story were un-
doubtedly the after-effects of the
"psychotropic" drugs that the CIA had
administered to him.
Thus fortified by expert medical testi-
mony, Yurchenko repeated his story of
how he was abducted in Rome and awoke
in a US hospital. Later, he said, and he
was moved to a villa in suburban Virginia
ringed with gua4?$ and security devices,
where he was held a virtual prisoner.
What followed, he said, were nearly
three months of drug-induced stupor, dur-
ing which CIA agents tried to convince
him that he had voluntarily defected.
The CIA, he added, had warned him
that should he try to go back to the Soviet
Union, "what awaits you is Siberia and
handcuffs." Instead, he said he found a
family overjoyed at his return. But he
said he would never meet the press again,
and planned to change his appearance so
that he would not be recognized in public.
He began plotting his escape from the
first day of captivity, he said. His re-
peated appeals to meet with Soviet diplo-
mats in the US, he added, went unheeded.
Yurchenko explained that he was able
to cajole a second-year novice, named
Tom Hanna, into a shopping excursion in
Manassas, Va., unaccompanied by the
usual retinue of henchmen. At a mall
there, Yurchenko said he purchased a hat
and secreted it in his raincoat. And he
said he managed to make a call to the So-
viet Embassy in Washington and plead
for help. (It was "amazing," he said, that
he had been able to recall the phone num-
ber despite the influence of the drugs and
the five years that had elapsed since he
had been stationed in Washington.)
Mr. Hanna then agreed to a spur-ul-
the-moment trip to a French restaurant in
Washington which. coincidentally, was
situated near the Soviet Embassy.
Yurchenko said that when Hanna ex-
cused himself to wash his hands, he fled.
Donning his hat and pulling up his collar
to hide his face, Yurchenko said he
slipped through a cordon of CIA and Fed-
eral Bureau of Investigation agents wait-
ing at the embassy.
He said Hanna has been "arrested" for
his lapses in handling the case and will
probably not be heard from again.
Thus, as the official Soviet news
agency Tass put it, "a Soviet diplomat, on
whose personality and mind an unprec-
edented attempt was made by the US
CIA, has won the cruel battle."
Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706660014-5