SPIES WHO SPY ON SPIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807640007-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: November 6, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807640007-3
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
6 November 1985
Spies who spy on spies
By Edwin M. Yoder Jr.
John Le Carre's famous picture of
the counterspy game - a hall of
mirrors producing a bewildering re-
gress of illusion - exactly fits the
real-life tale of Vitaly Yurchenko.
Life once again imitates craft.
Yurchenko had been touted as a
prize catch - the KGB man running
U.S. and Canadian intelligence and
the fifth highest official in the Soviet
spy hierarchy. The boasting about
his defection has been indiscreetly
loud, and included the claim that it
was the most useful defection since
that of Col. Olav Penkovsky 25 years
ago.
Now suddenly Yurchenko turns up
at the Soviet Embassy, publicly
claiming that he was no true defec-
tor; that he was abducted from the
streets of Rome in August, drugged
and slipped into the United States,
then "tortured" by the CIA.
This very inopportune reversal
comes two weeks before the Reagan-
Gorbachev summit. It is a meeting
whose substantive barrenness the'
President would like tb hide by put'
ting all the old Soviet outrages on the
agenda, including the wanton abuse
of human rights.
So isn't it logical to suppose that
Yurchenko was a bold plant from the
first, his supposed defection a poi-
soned pawn? The Soviets are great
chess players, after all; they know
the value of a trap set by the decep.
tively weak move.
The plausibility of the poisoned-
pawn theory is enhanced by the first
question addressed to Yurchenko at
his stagy press conference. The Tass
correspondent, whose style is not
about the "violation of your every agents by the British in World War
human and personal right ... perpe- II, told far less than broken codes
trated by the same people ... who, and gave mostly psychological satis-
louder than others, speak about the faction.
need to uphold human rights."
It was like the dialogue of a well-
rehearsed play. Yes, Yurchenko re-
sponded, it is "a typical example of
lies and hypocrisy," and so much for
any U.S. design to make summit mile-
age of the detention of the Sakharovs
and the Jewish refuseniks.
The poisoned-pawn theory is so
very logical,. however, that students
of this blundering world will find it
a bit too contrived to be plausible,-
Such stories occur in well-plotted
books, but rarely in life.
More prosaically, but more plausi.
bly, the shaking and stuttering Yur-
chenko was confused from the outset
and simply changed his mind. He
had asked for discretion, but found
that his tale-telling had been splashi.
ly leaked to the press. Knowing what
KGB people must know of the treat.
ment of families left behind as hos?
tages, he could be trying to buy his
way back with a cock-and-bull story.
Whichever theory of Yurchenko is
true, it probably matters less than
you will hear claimed by the protec-
tors of counterintelligence budgets.
Counterintelligence operations ris-
ing to real strategic value are rare.
Even the best of them, the "double.
Counterintelligence genius is in-
variably more plentiful in the fabri.
cated world of James Bond and
George Smiley than in history - and
not by accident.
It is a very problematical craft.
Counterspying is a dark luxury most
modern states dare not deny them.
selves. But it notoriously attracts, at
the margins and sometimes even at
the center, unstable, neurotic people,
who possess what psychologists call
"thin personal boundaries." Yur-
chenko may be one such.
Their primary loyalties, none too
well anchored, may be so stretched
by the strain of duplicity and furtive.
ness as to become as vague to the
deceiver as to the deceived. In the
mirrored world where spies spy on
other spies watching still other spies,
personal stability takes a murderous
battering. And the yield is usually
meager.
Just where Yurchenko fits this pic-
ture may not soon (or ever) be
known. But it is useful to be re-
minded, even by a spectacular em-
barrassment, how easy it is to exag-
gerate the stakes in the spy-
counterspy game. Spies do know
secrets all right, but most of them
are about one another and the really
valuable information can usually -
not always - be found for a price on
the open market.
When you also add embarrass.
ments into the balance, the wonder
is that the counterintelligence mys-
tique survives. But it does. For ro-
mantics, too, are born every minute.
(Edwin Yoder won the Pulitzer
Prize for editorial writing in 1979.)
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807640007-3