YURCHENKO LEAVES FOR MOSCOW AS QUESTIONS LINGER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706870044-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 23, 2012
• Sequence Number: 44
• Publication Date: November 7, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706870044-9
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Yurchenko Leaves for Moscow as Questions Linger
By Bob Woodward
and Patrick E. Tyler
Washington Post Staff Writers
High-ranking KGB official Vitaly
Yurchenko departed Washington
for Moscow late yesterday on a spe-
cial flight of the Soviet national air-
line, leaving behind an embarrassed
Central Intelligence Agency and a
series of questions, some of which
senior administration officials say
may never be answered.
CIA Director William J. Casey
has told the White House that Yur-
chenko's return to the Soviet Union
after his apparent defection is a
public embarrassment but does not
represent a major intelligence fail-
ure for the United States, according
to informed sources.
Casey, these sources said, main-
tains that whether Yurchenko was a
genuine defector who changed his
mind or a double agent, he did not
take any valuable CIA secrets back.
to Moscow.
The president, in an interview,
suggested there could be a pattern
in the Yurchenko case and two oth-
er apparent defection incidents.
"You can't rule out the possibility
that this might have been a delib-
erate ploy or maneuver," he said.
New details were revealed yes-
terday about Yurchenko's final mo-
ments in CIA custody. According to
Senate sources briefed by the CIA,
Yurchenko's last words to his CIA
security officer Saturday night at
the Georgetown restaurant Au Pied
de Cochon were: "If I leave, will you
shoot me?'
When the officer said he would
not, Yurchenko said, "If I'm not
back in 15 minutes, don't blame
yourself."
The KGB official did not return.
He found his way a mile north to
the Soviet compound near Calvert
Street and Wisconsin Avenue,
somehow persuaded security
guards there to admit him and then
spent the rest of the weekend pre-
paring for the Monday evening
news conference in which he an-
nounced he had been kidnaped.
drugged and held against his will.
[Last night, a Canadian television
network reported that authorities
were investigating whether the sui-
cide in Toronto of the wife of a So-
viet trade official was linked to the
mystery woman who was said to be
the object of Yurchenko's affec-
t ions.
["We have found no connection"
between Yurchenko and the woman
who jumped from the 27th floor of a
Toronto building, Canadian spokes-
man Sean Brady told Washington
Post correspondent Herbert H.
Denton. Intelligence sources said
last night that Yurchenko's former
lover is the wife of a Soviet diplo-
mat in Ottawa.)
One senior intelligence source
described Yurchenko for the first
time as an "enforcer" with high-lev-
el administrative and security du-
tie's as the No. 2 man in the KGB
department supervising intelligence
()perations in North America. Yur-
c henko may have known important
Soviet secrets, this source said, but
nay not have been a ,pyniaster who
Fictively directed covert agents and
spy rings in the field.
This view was supported last
night by a source who has worked
with U.S. intelligence agencies,
who said he had information that
Ytirchenko was a colonel working in
a department that included numer-
ous generals of the KGB, and that
descriptions of him as one of the top
five officials in the KGB were ridic-
ulous. "I don't think he was No. 50,"
this source said.
This assessment of Yurchenko's
importance contrasts with earlier
ones, leaked to the news media
while the CIA was debriefing him,
that characterized him as the No. 5
man in the Soviet KGB and his de-
tection as a major-coup for the Unit-
ed States.
Yurchenko's 4:15 p.m. departure
from Washington Dulles Interna-
tional Airport on the Aeroflot
Ilyushin jet, which had an hour ear-
lier brought Soviet Ambassador
Anatoliy Dobrynin from Moscow
where he had participated in pre-
summit negotiations with Secretary
of State George P. Shultz, was
called a "happy day" for Yurchenko
by a Soviet Embassy spokesman.
"I am looking forward with im-
patience to returning to my country
to see my family, friends and com-
rades," a statement attributed to
Yurchenko said.
Yurchenko carried the traditional
bouquet of roses for the departing
traveler as he stepped from an em-
bassy van at the Dulles charter ter-
minal to board the flight. In his
statement. Yurchenko reiterated
his charges that he had been "kid-
naped and forcibly detained by the
American security services." The
statement concluded that he would
respond to additional questions
from journalists in Moscow.
His departure left the CIA facing
intense congressional skepticism
over whether the agency had been
duped by Yurchenko from the day
he walked into the U.S. Embassy in
Rome on Aug. 1 or whether the
agency so bungled the delicate pro-
cess of debriefing and psychological
support for Yurchenko that it drove
away the man the agency has con-
sistently described to Congress as
its most important intellgence de-
fector in decades.
One Senate source said yester-
day that some members of the Sen-
ate Select Committee on Intelli-
gence have asked the CIA to review
hundreds of hours of debriefing ses-
sions conducted with Yurchenko to
determine if his questioners tipped
him off to U.S. intelligence secrets.
Sen. David L. Boren (D-Okla.). a
member of the intelligence panel,
said "there were significant lapses
in what I consider acceptable stan-
dards of security and surveillance"
in the Yurchenko case.
The CIA, however, has defended
itself against such criticism. The
agency told the White House, ac-
cording to informed sources, that it
had adopted a deliberate strategy of
trying to win Yurchenko's confi-
dence over time, in part by convinc-
ing him that even a Soviet defector
was allowed rights and freedoms in
the United States.
The agency said it may have fal-
len victim to this strategy, but still
thinks it was the right approach,
these sources said.
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 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706870044-9
The sources, elaborating on the
agency's strategy, pointed out that
the CIA changed its approach after
it received considerable criticism
for its treatment in the late 1960s
of Yuri Nosenko, a Soviet defector
who was kept in isolation and sub-
jected to abuse over 31/2 years.
With Yurchenko "we were going
for the long ball," said one senior
intelligence official. "and that meant
waiting him out, gaining his trust,
convincing him that American free-
doms were real." The real intelli-
gence prize could have come if Yur-
chenko had disclosed anything re-
lating to sophisticated overhead
satellite systems, elaborate elec-
tronic surveillance or about possible
moles in the U.S. government, the
agency believed.
There were indications yesterday
that President Reagan had accepted
the CIA's version of the affair. Dur-
ing an interview with news agency
reporters, he said. "There's no way
to establish" whether a defector is
sincere or not.
"You just have to accept that we
(lid our best," Reagan said.
The CIA's approach to Yur-
chenko was based on the assump-
tion that he was a bona fide de-
fector, though the CIA has acknowl-
edged that he might have been a
double agent in a "sting" operation
from the first. Several members of
the Senate intelligence panel have
said there is mounting evidence
that Yurchenko was a Soviet plant,
including one senator who said he
had been told that, on some occa-
sions, Yurchenko evaded questions
and complained that the CIA was
guarding him too closely.
A Soviet emigre, who has himself
been debriefed by the CIA, also sup-
ported this view. He said it was ex-
traordinary for the Soviet govern-
ment to authorize a news confer-
ence such as the one that Yur-
chenko gave at the Soviet com-
pound here Monday, particularly
while Secretary of State Shultz was
in Moscow to see the Soviet leader
and foreign minister.
Such a sensitive propaganda op-
eration must have been approved at
a high level in Moscow, the emigre
speculated. Noting that only a hand-
ful of the most senior Soviet offi-
cials have ever been allowed to go
before western reporters for spon-
taneous news conferences, this emi-
gre speculated that Yurchenko was
a double agent from the beginning,
a man in whom Soviet authorities
had complete faith.
Staff writer Dale Russakoff
contributed to this report.
AssoCIATED Puss
KGB agent Yurchenko boards Soviet jetliner at Dulles International Airport.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706870044-9