CIA PORTRAYS YURCHENKO AS TOP-LEVEL KGB OFFICIAL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000201160013-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 13, 2010
• Sequence Number: 13
• Publication Date: November 9, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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STAT
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
9 November 1985
CIA PORTRAYS YURCHENKO AS TOP-LEVEL KGB OFFICIAL
BY MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN
WASHINGTON
Countering critics who claim Vitaly Yurchenko was a minor Soviet spy who may
have duped U.S. experts, the CIA said publicly its turnabout defector was the
deputy chief of the KGB section responsible for spying on the United States and
that he was about to be promoted to general.
The CIA also used its first public statement on the Yurchenko affair to
reveal he was having marital troubles before he came over.
The agency hinted those troubles were part of his motive for coming to the
West, as opposed to his being a phony defector sent here to embarrass the United
States.
In a move that would have been uncommon in any defector case, the CIA on
Friday night issued a three-page biography of the 49-year-old Soviet operative
whose return to the Soviets shocked this city. Yurchenko told an extraordinary
news conference at the Soviet Embassy on Monday that he never defected but was a
kidnap victim held against hi's will for three months.
The CIA document listed all of Yurchenko's alleged spying posts and
responsibilities, but gave no indication where the information was obtained or
how it was verified, though some apparently would have had to come from
Yu rchenko.
CIA spokeswoman Patti Volz declined to comment on why the paper was
released now.
But it was learned agency officials were piqued over news reports in the past
two days in which critics inside the Reagan administration, in Congress and
among retired CIA officers suggested Yurchenko was not the top-level Soviet
spymaster described by the State Department on Oct. 11.
The CIA has told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Yurchenko was a
genuine defector from the leadership of the KGB's most important section - the
one assigned to spy on the United States, Senate sources have said.
The CIA told the Senate he provided some useful information but had a
change of heart and opted to return to the Soviets in part because a lover in
Canada broke off an affair with him.
Although the CIA biography showed Yurchenko once worked on placing double
agents in U.S. intelligence services, the document repeated the U.S. claim that
he requested political asylum at the U.S. Embassy in Rome on Aug. 1. It also
stated that "his relationship with his wife was seriously strained prior to his
defection."
U.S. sources had described him in the subsequent three months as the KGB's
No. 5 official, but this week sources told The Washington Post he had little
operational authority over spies in the field, was merely a colonel in a KGB
department with numerous generals and probably wasn't even No. 50 in rank.
The CIA document, however, said Yurchenko was a "general-designate:'
Another published report said he may have been pictured in the Soviet news
media this summer with top KGB officials only to lend credence to a planned
phony defection. (;o unued
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And one report said National Security Council officers characterized the
Information Yurchenko imparted in Washington as minimal - "chicken feed."
President Reagan himself said the incident might have been "a deliberate
ploy, a maneuver," and added, "the information he provided was not anything new
or sensational. It was pretty much information already known to the CIA.
The CIA document indicated Yurchenko would have been in a position to
provide a wide array of valuable information.
It said that from April to July of this year he had been deputy chief of the
KGB's First Chief Directorate's first department, in charge of gathering
intelligence in the United States and Canada. The department supervised KGB
agents here and in Canada and coordinated the KGB's work with other
Communist-bloc spy agencies here.
The CIA said Yurchenko himself personally supervised the KGB staffs in
Ottawa and Montreal, Canada, and supervised a section working against the United
States on Soviet territory and selecting agents in the United States. He also
supervised wartime plans for his department, the CIA said.
Yurchenko transferred to the KGB in 1959 from the Soviet Navy's submarine
service, rising through its ranks with a foreign tour in Egypt in 1968-72 and
later in Washington, the CIA said.
Here is a summary of his career as described by the CIA:
September 1980 to March 1985, a top counterintelligence officer with the
First Chief Directorate, heading the fifth department of its Directorate K.
Responsible for investigating and analyzing suspected espionage or treason by
KGB personnel and probing leaks.
The office worked with defectors to the Soviet Union, including former
British spies Kim Philby and George Blake.
August 1975 to August 1980, security officer at the Soviet Embassy in
Washington a post he acknowledged at his news conference working with KGB
spies and handling foreigners who volunteered to work for the Soviets.
May 1972 to May 1975, deputy chief of the third department in the KGB's
Third Chief Directorate, which handles counterintelligence in the Soviet armed
forces. Reponsible for using Soviet military counterintelligence officers to
recruit foreigners as agents and for inserting Soviet agents, known as
"dangles," into Western, especially U.S., intelligence agencies.
December 1968 to May 1972, on the KGB staff in Egypt as an adviser to the
Egyptian fleet in Alexandria. Responsible for preventing Western spies from
recruiting agents among his colleagues and for recruiting Soviet agents among
Egyptian officers.
He was born in a village near Smolensk in 1936, son of a factory worker
killed in World War II. Married in 1958, he has a daughter born in 1961 and an
adopted son, born in 1969. His wife is an engineer. His son is still in school,
and his daughter teaches English and French at a physical culture institute.
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Ar171CLE AP'EAR
ON PAGE
WSHINGTON TIMES
15 November
Yurchenko repeats
his charges; CIA
reaflirms denials
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The Central Intelligence Agency
again yesterday rejected charges
made in Moscow by Soviet KGB of-
ficial Vitaly Yurchenko that he was
held captive and drugged by the CIA
before his "escape" to the Soviet Em-
bassy compound last week.
The denial was issued at the same
time CIA Director William J. Casey
released a letter to Senate Intelli-
gence Committee Chairman Dave
Durenberger, Minnesota Republi-
can, criticizing the chairman's han-
dling of congressional oversight as
"off-the-cuff" policy that has "gone
seriously awry"
The letter was issued in response
to newspaper reports quoting Mr.
Durenberger as being dissatisfied
with Mr. Casey and the CIAs han-
dling of the Yurchenko case.
Mr. Durenberger, in a letter to The
Washington Post, said the newspa-
per "has done a great disservice to
me and to the director of central in-
telligence." He said the committee
had no plans to restructure the CIA,
as that newspaper reported, or to di-
minish the director's role, and that it
has not scheduled a vote on whether
Mr. Casey should resign over the
Yurchenko affair.
The "re-defection" of Mr. Yur-
chenko has focused renewed atten-
tion on the CIA and Mr. Casey's man-
agement of the intelligence agency.
CIA spokesman Patti Volz said Mr.
Yurchenko's latest Moscow allega-
tions "are absolutely ridiculous."
When asked if the CIA planned to
release details of information pro-
vided by Mr. Yurchenko during his
purported defection, she said the
agency planned to issue no further
response to Mr. Yurchenko's allega-
tions "at this time."
"As far as we're concerned, we
have more important things to do
than to respond to obvious Soviet
propaganda like that," she said.
Ms. %olz said the agency hopes
U.S. media "won't lend itself to such
a transparent Soviet (propaganda]
effort"
The State Department said last
month that Mr. Yurchenko defected
to the United States in Rome last Au-
gust. He walked away from a
Georgetown restaurant Nov 2 and
two days later was featured at a So-
viet Embassy press conference
where he charged the CIA with kid-
napping and drugging him.
A dispute has arisen within the
U.S. government over whether Mr.
Yurchenko was a bona fide defector
who changed his mind or was sent
by Moscow as a disinformation
agent.
The CIA maintains Mr. Yurchenko
was a legitimate defector and re-
leased last week a lengthy biography
indicating he held a senior post in
the Soviet secret police.
So far, there have been no arrests
or expulsions of Soviet agents and no
public revelations about Soviet
agent networks in North America,
actions Mr. Yurchenko could have
precipitated based on his career pro-
file.
Some members of the Senate In-
telligence Committee and the Na-
tional Security Council have said
they suspect Mr. Yurchenko was a
plant.
Mr. Yurchenko made his first pub-
lic appearance in the Soviet Union
yesterday where he told a crowded
Moscow press conference that dur-
ing his two months of captivity, the
CIA forced him to sunbathe and
"made me go in for sports, even play
golf" in an effort make him appear
healthy after being forced to take
drugs.
He said shortly before his "es-
cape," he was taken by a CIA secu-
rity official to a men's clothing store,
where he telephoned the Soviet Em-
bassy.
The CIA official then took him to
a "French restaurant [and] forced
me to eat French food in
Georgetown.... I was at the end of
my tether - it was freedom or
death," Mr. Yurchenko said.
Using a coat, hat and umbrella he
purchased from the men's store, Mr.
Yurchenko said he was able to dis-
guise himself and slip out of the res-
taurant past a line of CIA surveil-
lance cars as he made his way back
to the Soviet Embassy compound
several blocks away.
Mr. Yurchenko, reading from a
prepared text yesterday, said as a
result of his actions, "there will be a
lot of internal changes in the CIA"
Intelligence experts speculate
that Mr. Yurchenko may have been
sent to the United States as a double
agent to disrupt and demoralize the
CIA, or possibly to cast doubt on in-
formation from other recent KGB
An administration official, in a
background briefing, said there
were signs from the press confer-
ence that Soviet officials were pre-
paring to imprison Mr. Yurchenko in
a psychiatric prison hospital.
Dr. Nikolai Zharikov of the Soviet
Academy of Sciences said at the
news conference that Mr. Yurchen-
ko's tale "shows that it was made 1
a person who lived through torture
by monsters of cruelty from Lan,-
ley," the location of CIA headquar-
ters.
He said Mr. Yurchenko suffered
"an acute organic damage of the
brain" as the result of being ted
"psychotropic drugs" and now
shows signs of emotional instability,
including "special psychotic states:'
and that he has trouble with motor
functions and cries easily.
"This gives them an excuse to put
him in a mental institution once they
get enough press conferences out of
him," the official said. "The business
about brain deterioration and psy-
chotic states - that's a tipoff on how
they're going to solve this"
Experts believe Mr. Yurchenko's
public charges against the CIA are a
ploy to prevent the United States
from raising the issue of Soviet hu-
man rights violations at the upcom-
ing summit meeting in Geneva.
Georgetown University professor
Roy Godson, an expert on Soviet dis-
information tactics, said the second
Yurchenko press conference, only
five days before President Reagan
and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorba-
chev meet in Geneva, is part of a
Soviet effort to "heighten the cam-
paign" against discussing human
rights at the summit.
"Tb cynically exploit the incident
five days before the summit tells us
that they are defensive on the human
rights issue and on cue to heighten
the consciousness on their slogan,
'The arms race is the future of the
human race: " Mr. Godson said in an
interview.
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WASHINGTON POST
9 November 1985
YurchenkoHeld
High KGB Rank,
According to CIA
Ending Silence, Agency Issues
Report on Soviet Ex-Defector
By Patrick E. Tyler
Washington Post Staff Writer
The Central Intelligence Agency-under fire for its
recent handling of Vitaly Yurchenko's "defection" from
the Soviet intelligence service-broke its official si-
lence last night by issuing an unusual three-page state-
ment detailing Yurchenko's life and describing him as a
man "whose relationship with his wife was seriously
,strained prior to his defection."
The biography, which described Yurchenko as a
"general-designate" in the KGB with 25 years' experi-
ence, was issued late in the day to news services in
Washington without explanation or comment.
The CIA statement said that from April to July this
year, Yurchenko's duties included supervising the se-
lection of KGB agents in the United States and KGB
joint operations with the spy services of other cofnmu-
nist countries. He had direct authority over "KGB res-
idents" in Canada and coordinated spy "work against
American citizens."
According to the CIA statement, Yurchenko also su-
pervised wartime contingency planning for the KGB in
North America, including "selecting agents to be used
after the beginning of war; and working out agent com-
munications plans."
CIA spokeswoman Patti Volz-who two days ago
said, "The CIA has never commented about Yurchenko.
We don't talk about defectors"-last night said the bi-
ography was issued because "people were asking for it
and it was decided to make it available to certain indi-
viduals."
An intelligence community official said last night that
one explanation for the statement was that the CIA has
been smarting over assertions in the news media that
Yurchenko was not the "big fish" the CIA has claimed in
private briefings on Capitol Hill.
CIA officials have consistently described Yurchenko
as a high-ranking KGB officer, and some intelligence
sources have been quoted saying he was as high as No.
5 in the Soviet secret police.
In a highly embarrassing episode for the CIA, Yur-
chenko walked out of a Georgetown restaurant last Sat-
urday night and ended his three-month defection by
walking into the Soviet Embassy compound in upper
Northwest Washington. There he called an extraordi-
nary news conference last Monday evening to accuse
the CIA of kidnaping him, drugging
him ahd,holding him against his will
at a safe-house near Fredericks-
burg, Va.
The CIA denied Yurchenko's al-
legations and has told Senate and
House intelligence oversight com-
mittees that the agency will try" to
sort out whether Yurchenko was a
genuine defector or a clever double
agent who thoroughly duped U.S.
intelligence.
"I am puzzled," Sen. William S.
Cohen (R-Maine) said last night. "If
this is an attempt to validate his
real identity, we will need more."
Added one congressional over-
sight committee member, "I don't
know what this statement proves.
This is information they obviously
got from him. It doesn't disprove
other statements about how high he
was."
The biography says Vitaly Ser-
geyevich Yurchenko was born on
May 2, 1936, near the village of
Smolensk, the son of a factory
worker who died at the siege of
Leningrad during World War II and
a mother who worked on a collec.
tive farm and died in Leningrad ear-
lier this year.
Yurchenko, the statement says,
went to military training school and
entered the Soviet submarine ser-
vice, graduating with a degree in
navigation in 1958. He was com-
missioned as a navy lieutenant as-
signed to the Pacific fleet headquar-
tered in Vladivostok.
Married in 1958 to a woman who
works as a engineer in a Moscow
planning institute, Yurchenko has a
daughter born in 1961 and an
adopted son born in 1969. His KGB
career reportedly began in 1959,
when he joined the KGB third Chief
Directorate as a counterintelligence
officer in the armed forces. He re-
mained attached to the armed
forces during most of the 1960s.
The statement confirmed that
Yurchenko worked as the internal
security officer at the Soviet Em-
bassy here from 1975 to 1980,
when he was transferred to Mos-
cow as a top counterintelligence
officer in charge of internal security
within the KGB, guarding against
leaks and espionage by KGB em-
ployes. This office worked with de-
fectors to the Soviet Union, includ-
ing former British spies, H.A.R.
(Kim) Philby and George Blake, the
statement said.
L/
Finally, in April of this year, Yur-
chenko was promoted to be deputy
chief of the First Department of the
KGB's First Chief Directorate,
which supervises intelligence gath-
ering in the United States and Can-
ada. The CIA said Yurchenko per-
sonally supervised the KGB staff in
Montreal and Ottawa.
Intelligence sources said earlier
this week that after his August de-
fection, Yurchenko was clandestine-
ly taken to Ottawa to meet the wo-
man with whom he had been roman-
tically involved and who, Yurchenko
hoped, would join him. But the wo-
man reportedly spurned him.
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04a
NEW YORK TIMES
7 November 1985
Safe Houses and Such, in Capital's Backyard
By JEFF GERTH
Special to The New York Times
WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 - When he
announced his deeision to return to
the Soviet Union on Monday, Vitaly
Yurchenko shed some light on the
normally secret world of safe houses
and intelligence sites.
"It's not my secret, it is your se-
cret," Mr. Yurchenko told reporters
while describing the house provided
him by the Central Intelligence
Agency some 22 miles from Fredicks-
burg, Va., on a 500-acre subdivision
with a lake.
Mr. Yurchenko's temporary home
in Virginia, like many other C.I.A.
sites, is convenient to agency head-
quarters in McLean, Va., but suffi-
ciently obscure to meet the secretive
requirements of intelligence work.
As might be expected, the C.I.A.
does not advertise its installations.
"We simply don't talk about the
location of any of our facilities," Patti
Volz, a C.I.A. spokesman, said.
But interviews with present and
'former intelligence officials as well a
number of published reports reveal
that the C.I.A. uses various Virginia
locations to house defectors as well as
train agents, provide paramilitary
support or handle agency trust funds.
The Washington area is not the only
location for safe houses or other intel-
ligence installations; they are scat-
tered throughout the country and
some are overseas in critical East-
West junctions such as Berlin and
Vienna, according to intelligence offi-
cials. Furthermore, other agencies,
such as the Federal Bureau of Inves-
tigation, maintain safe houses of their
own, officials said.
But northern Virginia is a favorite
location for the C.I.A., which in addi-
tion to its McLean headquarters has
offices in places like Rosalyn, Va.
One former intelligence official
said the C.I.A. maintains several safe
houses in northern Virginia, some
rented, some owned, for debriefing
Soviet bloc defectors. The houses are
within an hour's drive of McLean, he
said, "because you don't want an offi-
cer wasting time driving a long way"
or exposing himself any more than is
necessary.
Former intelligence officials also
described a C.I.A. training camp
near Williamsburg, Va., called the
Farm. The camp is actually part of a
scrawling military installation,
Camp Peary, on the banks of the York
River. The C.I.A. has used the camp
for a variety of purposes, including
paramilitary training for agents and
debriefing of defectors.
Since Camp Peary is more than 100
miles from Washington, the C.I.A.
has used a local Washington aviation
company to shuttle officials between
the two, as well as a number of other
locations, according to former offi-
cials.
The C.I.A. also uses a number of
corporate entities, ranging from fully
operational businesses controlled by
the C.I.A., called proprietaries, to
shell companies, which perform little
business but are used for cover, to
contractual arrangements with vari-
ous fraternal corporations.
Many of these organizations are
based in Washington or northern Vir-
ginia. For example, an aircraft leas-
ing corporation with, contractual ties
to the C.I.A. and staffed by former
C.I.A. officials operates near Dulles
Airport in northern Virginia, accord-
ing to present and former intelligence
officials. However, the company has
an unlisted telephone number and its
office is not traceable.
The C.I.A. has divested itself of
many of its proprietary holdings,
especially aircraft companies. A Sen-
ate report noted that the C.I.A.'s larg-
est proprietaries were two air support
companies, which were dissolved,
and an insurance company, which
was not disbanded and which handles
trust funds and insurance.
But the agency still maintains
shadowy links to the companies that
absorbed the C.I.A. assets, according
to intelligence officials and the 1976
report of the Senate Select Commit-
tee on Intelligence.
"In a very real sense, it is nearly
impossible to evaluate whether,' a
'link' still exists between the agei1 y
and a former asset related to a ptio-
prietary," the Senate report said"
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_;;,~~'E KCU WASHINGTON TIMES
11 November 1985
Shultz still thinks Yurchenko
was real defector, not a plant
By Bill Gertz
THE NYISHINOTON TIMES
Secretary of State George Shultz
said yesterday that U.S. officials re-
main convinced Vitaly Yurchenko,
the supposed prize KGB defector
who walked back into Soviet hands,
was not a Soviet plant but "defected
and, for some reason or another,
changed his mind:'
"What he said was just a packet of
lies;' Mr. Shultz said on CBS' "Face
the Nation. "`He was not kidnapped,
he was not drugged or any of those
things:'
The Central Intelligence Agency
has identified Mr. Yurchenko as a
"general-designate" of the KGB in
an apparent attempt to counter spec-
ulation that the Soviet spymaster ac-
tually was a low-level plant dis-
patched by Moscow to disrupt CIA
operations.
In an unusual three-page
statement released Friday, the CIA
described Mr. Yurchenko's relation-
ship with his wife of 27 years as "se-
riously strained prior to his defec-
tion:'
The document provides details of
Mr. Yurchenko's responsibility for
KGB operations in North America,
which involved coordinating KGB
"work against American citizens:'
He also coordinated Soviet bloc in-
telligence operations, ran KGB sta-
tions in Ottawa and Montreal,
Canada, and selected "agents" in the
United States.
Other duties included "selection
of agents to be used after the begin-
ning of war and working out agent
communications," the CIA
statement said.
The White House refused to com-
ment yesterday on a report that
President Reagan is considering or-
dering an investigation into the CIA's
handling of the Yurchenko case.
The Los Angeles Times yesterday
described Reagan as "upset" over
the incident and quoted unnamed
sources as saying he is considering
an investigation into the case - a
review that could embrace the way
other defectors have been treated.
Mr. Yurchenko allegedly defected
to the United States last summer but
walked away from a Georgetown
restaurant Nov 2 and returned to the
Soviet Embassy compound several
blocks away. TWo days later, he ap-
peared at a news conference at the
Soviet embassy and said he had been
kidnapped and drugged by the CIA.
The newspaper quoted an
unnamed administration official as
saying, "The people involved will get
letters of reprimand, but I wouldn't
put this all on the junior people. It's
the senior people's fault."
Questions have been raised by
members of Congress and intelli-
gence experts about Mr. Yurchen-
ko's seniority in the KGB. When he
first came over, intelligence officials
had described Mr. Yurchenko as a
senior KGB official who may have
held the No. 5 post in the KGB. Other
intelligence officials have said Mr.
Yurchenko's seniority was far lower
in the chain of command.
The CIA statement said Mr. Yur-
chenko was a 25-year veteran of the
KGB who most recently was chief
counterintelligence officer in the
First Chief Directorate (foreign in-
telligence operations). He directed
the Fifth Department of the counter-
intelligence Directorate K, which in-
vestigates espionage by KGB per-
sonnel and penetrations by enemy
spies.
Mr. Yurchenko would have known
many details of KGB agent oper-
ations in North America, including
agent code-names. It was this KGB
division that handled the case of no-
torious British spies Kim Philby and
George Blake, Soviet agents during
the 1950s and 1960s, the statement
said.
CIA spokeswoman Patti Volz de-
clined to comment on why the paper
was released after months of official
silence on the matter.
Comparing Mr. Yurchenko to an-
other Soviet KGB defector in Great
Britain, Oleg Gordievski, one CIA
official remarked two months ago
that Mr. Yurchenko "makes Gordiev-
ski look like a throwaway." In spy
parlance, a throwaway is an agent
given away in order to protect more
important spies. At the time of his
defection, the official said, Mr. Yur-
chenko exhibited "no abnormal-
ities," such as drinking or emotional
problems.
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