YURCHENKO LEAVES FOR MOSCOW AS QUESTIONS LINGER

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Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP90-00965R000706870044-9
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RIFPUB
Original Classification: 
K
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2
Document Creation Date: 
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date: 
February 23, 2012
Sequence Number: 
44
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Publication Date: 
November 7, 1985
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OPEN SOURCE
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12 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706870044-9 r?' 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. 9 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706870044-9 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