YURCHENKO SENT TO AID 'MOLE,' OFFICIALS FEAR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807490038-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 18, 2012
• Sequence Number: 38
• Publication Date: November 19, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/18: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807490038-6
ON PAULiv Novemoer iyt55
Yurchenko Sent
to Aid `Mole,'
Officials Fear
By MICHAEL WINES,
Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON-U.S. experts
studying the re-defection of Soviet
KGB officer Vitaly Yurchenko are
increasingly suspicious that he was
a double agent dispatched to de-
bunk another top defector's warn-
ings of a Soviet "mole" within the
CIA, senior intelligence officials
said Monday.
The intelligence officials de-
scribed the suspic,onz-which
arose from a new CIA analysis of
the information Yurchenko provid-
ed before he returned to Mos-
cow-as "not a clear-cut case," and
said CIA opinion on his reliability
remains deeply split.
Pattern Suggested
But they said close study of
independent intelligence data,
combined with disclosures Yur-
chenko made during his three-
month debriefing at a CIA safe-
house in Virginia, suggest a "clear
pattern" designed to steer U.S.
experts away from a possible CIA
mole.
Separate information leads those
counterintelligence experts to con-
clude that if a mole exists, he
probably occupies a "very senior
level" within the CIA, said the
officials, who spoke on condition
that they not be identified.
The officials said they were
making the new fears public be-
cause they hoped to prod the
Administration, Congress and the
CIA itself into a thorough review of
the nation's intelligence apparatus.
They added that President Reagan
last week secretly ordered an in-
vestigation of the CIA's handling of
all defectors.
Double Agent's Tip
Word of a possible Soviet spy
within the CIA came from another
top Soviet agent, 23-year KGB
veteran Oleg Gordievski, the intel -
ligence officials said. Gordievski,
the Soviet secret police's top officer
in Great Britain, had been working
as a double agent for a decade when
he quietly defected to the West in
April, the officials said.
Britain kept the intelligence
coup under wraps until five months
later, when it expelled 25 Soviet
nationals accused of spying. Amer-
ican officials have said Yurchenko
sought asylum at the U.S. Embassy
in Rome in August, four months
after Gordievski's secret jump to
the West.
Yurchenko "told us there were
no moles in the CIA." one official
said Monday. But the official added
that "you can build a fairly solid
case that Yurchenko was con-
ceived, created and set in operation
because of Gordievski.
"When you put it up to a suspi-
cious optic, a lot of pieces fall into
place....," he said. "But it's a hell
of a long way from proof."
Yurchenko's highly publicized
flight Nov. 2 from a Georgetown
cafe to the Soviet Embassy's resi-
dential compound created a
pre-summit propaganda coup for
the Soviet Union and stirred long-
simmering unrest over the way the
CIA handles Eastern Bloc defec-
tors.
Intelligence officials said the
broader White House probe will be
conducted separately from the
agency's own internal investiga-
tion of the Yurchenko debacle. It is
aimed at uncovering U.S. mistakes
in the way defectors are debriefed
and introduced into Western soci-
ety, in an effort to cut the substan-
tial rate at which they return to
their homelands.
Believed Sincere
Until now, most intelligence ex-
perts have assumed that Yurchen-
ko was a sincere defector, wracked
by depression and a broken love
affair, who was grossly mishandled
by his CIA custodians. No other
explanation, they have said, would
easily explain why a man touted by
the CIA as the No. 2 Soviet spy in
North America would place himself
in the hands of the CIA's most
expert interviewers.
But the theory that Yurchenko
was sent to protect a KGB agent
within the U.S. government offers
one plausible explanation for tak-
ing such a risk, officials said.
The CIA was wracked during
most of the 1970s by accusations
'rom within that a Soviet mole or
moles had established a base in the
agency's highest ranks. The widely
publicized allegations, by former
CIA Deputy Director James Angle-
ton and others, were never proven,
but the internal finger-pointing is
believed to have spurred the em-
bittered departure of many of the
agency's most experienced spies.
The officials who spoke Monday
said much undisclosed evidence
points toward the existence of a
CIA mole, but that some agency
officials have been loath to set off
another internal purge on the scale
of that of the 1970s.
Not a Popular Subject
"Everybody wanted to believe
Yurchenko was genuine because of
the turmoil this subject has
caused. . . . It was not a very
popular subject for anyone," one
expert said.
The prevailing belief that Yur-
chenko was a sincere but disillu-
sioned defector did not begin to
crack until late last week, officials
said, when counterintelligence an-
alysts began piecing together a
mosaic of his statements, Gordiev-
ski's rumors and independent data.
As overseer of espionage in Brit-
ain, Gordievski normally would
have known little about the highly
compartmentalized Soviet spy net-
work outside Britain and parts of
Western Europe. He is reported to
have told British intelligence only
that a mole is somewhere "in the
U.S. government," and said his
information came from "corridor
talk."
Early in his CIA debriefing.
Ymu henko fingered a disgruntled
former CIA employee, Edward Lee
Howard, as the man who had
revealed to Soviet agents the iden-
tity of one of the CIA's most valued
contacts in Moscow. That man,
A. G. Tolkachev, was arrested in
Moscow last June. Howard report-
edly has fled to Moscow.
Yurchenko is said to have told
his debriefers that no current CIA
employees are Soviet double
agents. an assertion that rises-or
falls-on Yurchenko's own credi-
bility.
"It's not a clear-cut case. A lot of
Yurchenko's debriefing reports
have been analyzed," one official
said. "The prevailing sentiment to
last weekend was that (Yurchen-
ko) was genuine. . . . But more
and more, the feeling is that he was
sent."
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/18: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807490038-6