WASHINGTONIAN ARTICLE ON YURCHENKO

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00845R000201240003-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 2, 2012
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: May 2, 1986
• Content Type: MEMO

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/02 : CIA-RDP90-00845R000201240003-6 STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/02 : CIA-RDP90-00845R000201240003-6
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/02 : CIA-RDP90-00845R000201240003-6
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE
WASHINGTONIAN
May 1986
Mr. Yurchenko Goes Back Home
Was It Too Much Wine and Not Enough Women?
By Charles Fenyvesi
Strange but poten-
tially valuable?
that was the proph-
etic assessment of
US intelligence of-
ficers after meeting
Vitaly Yurchenko
in 1975, shortly af-
ter he was posted in Washington as the
KGB officer in charge of overseeing So-
viet Embassy personnel. He had the title
"first secretary," but in his meetings
with FBI officials he made no bones
about his real job, and he joked about the
responsibility he and the FBI shared in
watching over the Soviet diplomatic
community.
Yurchenko proposed to meet with the
FBI to exchange phone numbers and dis-
cuss routine procedures in case anyone
under his jurisdiction was arrested, got
into a car accident, or died. However.
the FBI picked up something else: Yur-
chenko enjoyed spending time with
Americans. and he was impatient with
the restrictions placed on him by his
wife, by his bosses, by the Soviet sys-
tem. He hated to have to account for the
way he spent his time and money. He
drank a lot, swore a lot, and spoke with
surprising openness about other Soviet
Charles Fenyvesi is a writer for US News & World
Report.
officials even when he was sober. Un-
mistakably, he was attracted by the free-
dom of American life.
The FBI found out about an American
woman he had picked up in a bar he
frequented. A casual affair developed.
which, Yurchenko made clear to his US
contacts, was not the only one in his life.
"We didn't nail him, but we let him
know that we knew all about the Ameri-
can woman," says one US source. "We
developed a working relationship?call
it an understanding." The source will
not say whether Yurchenko supplied in-
formation or received any money. "He
was not really our agent," the source
says. stressing the word "really," "hut
he agreed to be in touch with us and he
helpful when the opportunity presented
itself." However, when Yurchenko re-
turned to Moscow in 1980. he said that
he would be watched closely, that it
would be too dangerous for him to have
any contact with Americans.
US officials heard nothing from him
until July 25. 1985, when he walked up
to a Swiss guard in Rome's Vatican Mu-
seum, introduced himself as Colonel
Yurchenko of the KGB. and asked to be
taken to the American Embassy.
Yurchenko was taken to the Italian
police, the Americans were alerted, and
he spent a month being debriefed at a US
Air Force base in Italy. As a defector, he
made a mixed impression. He boasted
that he had just been promoted and was
the fifth-most important man in the
KGB. which US experts questioned. He
claimed he had had to flee Moscow be-
cause he was in danger of being identi-
fied as an American spy by the KGB's
rival, the military intelligence GRU.
The story seemed implausible. as was
his claim that he had signed his own
permission to fly to Italy as the security
officer for a delegation of Soviet nuclear
scientists attending a conference in Sici-
ly. But he did provide some critical in-
formation: The counterintelligence bu-
reau he headed had pinpointed the KGB
station chief in London, first secretary
Oleg Gordievsky, as a Western spy.
Alerted. Gordievsky. a British agent for
nineteen years, promptly left the embas-
sy and asked for political asylum.
Yurchenko arrived in the US in the last
days of August 1985. He was in high
spirits. He said he wanted to start a new
life: he was done with his wife, with the
Soviet regime. "He kept talking. and he
tired everyone out. says one CIA spe-
cialist. He gave us plenty of good in-
formation. He seemed to know ever?-
thing. He was amazing...
The CIA's practice is to assign one
officer?known as a handler or babysit-
ter?to an important defector. As mans.
as twenty people do the debriefing?
which may go on for a vear?hut one
?,-Tr-t41
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/02 : CIA-RDP90-00845R000201240003-6
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/02: CIA-RDP90-00845R000201240003-6
experienced officer fluent in the defec-
tor's language is in control, deciding the
defector's schedule and running his new
life. In some cases, the handler becomes
the defector's lifelong friend.
In Yurchenko's case, several officers
were assigned to him, taking turns.
None had a good command of colloquial
Russian. none warmed to him. His men-
tor was CIA Director William Casey,
who showed an immediate, personal in-
terest in him. Though some experts had
serious doubts about some of Yurchen-
ko's statements and pointed to contradic-
tions, Casey was fascinated with Yur-
chenko and defended him. "Casey
behaved as if Yurchenko had been his
trophy." says one CIA officer. "Casey
kept citing him as the source of all wis-
dom on the Soviet Union."
Yurchenko's spirits began to flag
when his handlers kept stalling in re-
sponse to his demand that they find his
old American girlfriend. When she was
finally found, she said she wouldn't have
anything to do with him. He blamed his
handlers, and his relationship with them
worsened.
He also tried to get in touch with the
wife of a Soviet diplomat in Canada.
with whom he had had an affair in the
1970s. also in Washington. Her reaction
was a hysterical rejection, and Yurchen-
ko sank into depression. He became mo-
rose and began to drink heavily. He
swore at his handlers and demanded to
see Casey. In earlier days. Yurchenko
had tried to explain the inconsistencies in
his testimony. now he turned sullen.
By mid-October, his handlers knew
they faced a crisis. They hastily ar-
Vitaly The spy who twice
came in from the cold,
ranged social occasions with people who
spoke Russian. Included were Soviet
refugees, who were told not to ask ques-
tions but to cheer him up and talk about
the good life that awaited him. Yurchen-
ko paid little attention, and he kept
drinking heavily, arguing with his han-
dlers, who asked him to slow down.
One afternoon, a group of Russian-
speaking visitors suggested to Yurchen-
ko that he would soon be teaching in a
nice college, which is what many former
Eastern-bloc officials end up doing here.
Yurchenko replied that he could never
do that, because he could never learn
English or catch up with people who
had a proper education. "I am igno-
rant," he said. "I have no future in this
country. I am a nothing."
Yurchenko stunned the CIA when he
walked out of a dinner with two of his
handlers at the Georgetown restaurant
Au Pied de Cochon and took a taxi to the
Soviet compound a mile up Wisconsin
Avenue. To date. CIA officers are cer-
tain that he was a genuine defector and
not a KGB plant. One veteran handler
calls the redefection "a suicide." A col-
league added that it was "an act of ex-
treme desperation" by an unstable per-
sonality. "Like many other Russians.
Yurchenko is a serf looking for a lord,"
he says. "He was a poor, lost soul look-
ing for moral authority, and the CIA
didn't even provide him with an escort
who could tune in on his wavelength."
Since Yurchenko's return to Moscow
on November 2, one rumor had him
jumping to his death from a fourteen-
story building, and another had him shot
by a firing squad. Then, in March, a
West German television crew ran into
him on a Moscow street, allegedly by
coincidence. He told them he was writ-
ing a book about the torture and the
drugs to which the CIA had subjected
him.
One American who met Yurchenko
remembers him as "a coarse, primitive,
brutal type" who concluded, after two
women jilted him and his CIA handlers
soured on him, that while he was a smart
enough brute to rise in the KGB, he
would never have the finesse to be very
successful in American society.
"Yurchenko realized that nobody
here liked him." he says. "and that he
was indeed a nothing.''
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/02 : CIA-RDP90-00845R00020124norn_R
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/02 : CIA-RDP90-00845R000201240003-6 UMW
Mr. Yurchenko Goes Back Home
Was It Too Much Wine and Not Enough Women?
By Charles Fenyvesi
Strange but poten-
tially valuable?
that was the proph-
etic assessment of
US intelligence of-
ficers after meeting
Vitaly Yurchenko
in 1975, shortly af-
ter he was posted in Washington as the
KGB officer in charge of overseeing So-
viet Embassy personnel. He had the title
"first secretary," but in his meetings
with FBI officials he made no bones
about his real job, and he joked about the
responsibility he and the FBI shared in
watching over the Soviet diplomatic
community.
Yurchenko proposed to meet with the
FBI to exchange phone numbers and dis-
cuss routine procedures in case anyone
under his jurisdiction was arrested, got
into a car accident, or died. However,
the FBI picked up something else: Yur-
chenko enjoyed spending time with
Americans, and he was impatient with
the restrictions placed on him by his
wife, by his bosses, by the Soviet sys-
tem. He hated to have to account for the
way he spent his time and money. He
drank a lot, swore a lot, and spoke with
surprising openness about other Soviet
Charles Fenyvesi is a writer for US News & World
Report.
officials even when he was sober. Un-
mistakably, he was attracted by the free-
dom of American life.
The FBI found out about an American
woman he had picked up in a bar he
frequented. A casual affair developed,
which, Yurchenko made clear to his US
contacts, was not the only one in his life.
"We didn't nail him, but we let him
know that we knew all about the Ameri-
can woman," says one US source. "We
developed a working relationship?call
it an understanding." The source will
not say whether Yurchenko supplied in-
formation or received any money. 'life-
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US officials heard nothing from him
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rivairtherrititeryinte414goace-GEW.
The story seemed implausible, as-was
his-Q-litillt-thet-he-had-signett-ftis-tywn
permission to fly to Italy as-tiae..cPcmrity
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formation: T-be counterintelligence b'u-
reau he headed had pinpointed the-KGB
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dayeef August-1185. He was in high
spirits. He said he wanted to start a new
life; he was done with his wife, with the
Soviet regime. "He kept talking, and he
tired everyone out," says one CIA spe-
cialist. "He gave us plenty of good in-
formation. He seemed to know every-
thing. He was amazing."
The CIA's practice is to assign one
officer?known as a handler or babysit-
ter?to an important defector. As many
as twenty people do the debriefing?
which may go on for a year?but one
"Doby," as he was known around
town, played chess with national-securi-
ty adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, drank
pepper vodka with Dean Rusk, and
counted as friends other presidential ad-
visers and Secretaries of State.
If you watched the Soviets come and
go from the embassy during the Dobry-
nin years, as FBI agents have from rent-
ed rooms in the University Club and
apartment buildings nearby, you would
have noticed the arrival several years
ago of a new breed of Soviet diplomat.
Their role model is the embassy's sec-
ond-in-command, Oleg Sokolov, who
could be easily mistaken for an Ivy
League-educated investment banker in
both dress and speech.
Once the uniform of Soviet officials
was a drab, ill-fitting suit. Then, about
ten years ago, some Soviets adopted a
new look: a blue blazer with gray or tan
slacks. Now the dress of some of the
younger diplomats is even more West-
ern: well-cut suits from Lord & Taylor
155 The Washinetoni,,, 1"6
for business hours, corduroys and Shet-
land-wool sweaters for leisure wear.
"We're getting a new generation of
junior diplomats," notes Dimitri Simes,
an ?gr?ho today writes frequently
on Soviet-American affairs from his post
here at the Carnegie Endowment for In-
ternational Peace. "They are better edu-
cated, more sophisticated, more prag-
matic, and more comfortable with
Western ways. They are in their late
twenties or early thirties, graduates of
the Institute of International Relations in
Moscow."
Members of the new breed speak Eng-
lish very well, far better than their
American counterparts in Moscow
speak Russian, according to American
diplomats who have lived in Moscow.
Some Soviets perfected their accents as
children of diplomats in English-speak-
ing countries. For example, the former
Soviet ambassador to the United Na-
tions, Oleg Troyanovsky, spoke flaw-
less English; his father was the Soviet
ambassador to the US in the 1930s, and
young Oleg attended prep school in
Washington.
There is a tendency on the part of many
Washingtonians, especially in the wake
of recent stories about Americans arrest-
ed for espionage, to assume that a Soviet
whose dress is stylish and whose English
is fluent is in the spy business.
"Let's face something," says Simes.
"A junior diplomat in the Soviet Embas-
sy who goes around town and socializes
with Americans has to work very closely
with the KGB. Here you have an inter-
esting question. Is it really very impor-
tant whether they are KGB staff officers
or if they're just running errands for the
KGB? Bureaucratically, there's a differ-
ence, but operationally, if you're an
American on the receiving end, I don't
know what the difference is. Junior So-
viet diplomats are just not in a position to
have expense-account lunches or to visit
Americans at home unless they -kr. ;r?
in Dart- - Saniti7ed CODV Approved for Release 2012/11/02 : CIA-RDP90-00845R000201240003-6
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/02 : CIA-RDP90-00845R000201240003-6
experienced officer fluent in the defec-
tor's language is in control, deciding the
defector's schedule and running his new
life. In some cases, the handler becomes
the defector's lifelong friend.
In Yurchenko's case, several officers
were assigned to him, taking turns.
None had a good command of colloquial
Russian; none warmed to him. His-man-
ter---was-CIA-Difeeter- Williafe-Gaser
who showed an immediate, personal in-
terest in him. Though some experts had
serious doubts about some of Yurchen-
ko's statements and pointed to contradic-
tions, Casey was fascinated with Yur-
chenko and defended him. "-C-asey
behaved-as-if--Y-ttreltenker hartteerriris-
troplayi'2---sayt-one-ef-A-offteer-,-!:-C. asey
kept_citing_hirw as-the-604ifee-Eif-aff-vria-
clenven-theSevier-13ftienr:"
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whon-IfirtantriElTTEr-nrsorgrirrTe-
spanetterfttrZIEtralffTnar !icy ftttitis
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fiaally-fewasir she-saiii.she-weaklalt.hatze
anittlying-terchr wittririrrr-He-binmerHTis
handlersrand-hts-retatt15/11111/Mitfrtheor-
worsened.
He also tried to get in touch with the
wife of a Soviet diplomat in Canada,
with whom he had had an affair in the
1970s, also in Washington. Her reaction
was a hysterical rejection, and Yurchen-
ko sank into depression. He-became mo-
rose and begaa-to-drink-heavilr. He
swore at his handlers and 4lemeadigl-te
see-Gasey. In earlier days, Yurchenko
had tried to explain the inconsistencies in
his testimony; now he turned sullen.
By mid-October, hico-liandless knew
they faced a crisis. They-hastily_ar-
Vitaly Yurchenko: The spy who twice
came in from the cold.
c2ngoisociaL,accasions-with-peop1e-who
fnt.litded
refugeesovho-were-tokl-not-to ask ques-
tiens-but-t!reheer him up anti-talk-abet*
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attentien7-nnil-ha-kept.
drinking heaviir-argutrtg--widthis-heo-
dlefs;-voiarasiceditirtrarstrrardown.
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dertiteerbeellEVETteerrr
Efteiolt-or-catctrup-wittrpenple-wtra
had-o-proper-oducatica. "I am igno-
rant," he said. "I have no future in this
country. I am a nothing."
Yurchenko stunned the CIA when he
walked out of a dinner with Ave of his
handlers at the Georgetown restaurant
Au Pied de Cochon and took a taxi to the
Soviet compound a mile up Wisconsin
Avenue. To date, CIA officers are cer-
tain that he was a genuine defector and
not a KGB plant. One veteran handler
calls the redefection "a suicide." A col-
league added that it was "an act of ex-
treme desperation" by an unstable per-
sonality. "Like many other Russians,
Yurchenko is a serf looking for a lord,"
he says. "He was a poor, lost soul look-
ing for moral authority, and the CIA
didn't even provide him with an escort
who could tune in on his wavelength."
Since Yurchenko's return to Moscow
on November 2, one rumor had him
jumping to his death from a fourteen-
story building, and another had him shot
by a firing squad. Then, in March, a
West German television crew ran into
him on a Moscow street, allegedly by
coincidence. He told them he was writ-
ing a book about the torture and the
drugs to which the CIA had subjected
him.
One American who met Yurchenko
remembers him as "a coarse, primitive,
brutal type" who concluded, after two
women jilted him and his CIA handlers
soured on him, that while he was a smart
enough brute to rise in the KGB, he
would never have the finesse to be very
successful in American society.
"Yurchenko realized that nobody
here liked him," he says, "and that he
was indeed a nothing."
coordination with the KGB."
Not that all Washingtonians are put
off by contacts with Soviet officials.
"Some Americans who hang out with
Soviets flatter themselves by thinking
they're important enough to have a con-
trol agent attached to them," says Strobe
Talbott, the bureau chief of Time maga-
zine here and a Soviet expert.
But American intelligence officers as-
sume that Soviets cultivate Washingtoni-
ans for specific information-gathering
purposes, and it's not uncommon for the
FBI to chat with any Washingtonian who
has regular dealings with Soviets.
Soviet gregariousness does not extend
to lower-level personnel or families.
Only Soviet journalists and high-ranking
embassy officials are permitted to live
outside the Mount Alto complex and
therefore occasionally entertain Ameri-
cans in their residences. Some Soviets
live near Wisconsin and Western ave-
nues in the Irene or the Willoughby
apartments, where one-bedroom rents
can run as high as $1,000 monthly, an
expense paid by the embassy.
While other countries?including the
US?encourage their diplomats to culti-
vate friends in their host country by liv-
ing around town, the Soviets traditional-
ly group their embassy staffs in com-
pounds. "They want to prevent their
people from escaping, from becoming
infected," says a retired intelligence of-
ficial from the State Department.
"They build little fortresses wherever
they go," notes a retired CIA Soviet-
watcher.
The wives of Soviet Embassy person-
nel here seem especially vulnerable to
the loneliness such enforced isolation
can breed, especially if their children are
not here. The Soviet school in the Mount
Alto compound stops at the seventh
grade, when it is mandatory that children
return to the motherland for education.
Before she defected, Yelena Mitro-
khina attended a meeting of about 30
wives of top-ranking Soviet Embassy of-
ficials. The meeting was called by the
head of embassy counterintelligence,
Vitaly Yurchenko. He had just sent back
to Moscow a Soviet woman who had
struck up a friendship with an American
neighbor, a man with whom she had
begun walking and talking.
Yurchenko called the wives together
to remind them of "the weaknesses in-
herent in women" and to warn them
"not to succumb." Ironically, it was
Yurchenko who later defected?al-
though he returned last year to the arms
of the Soviet Embassy to renounce his
defection.
Do real friendships ever develop be-
tween Washingtonians and Soviets liv-
ing here?
"If you're talking about pleasant rela-
tionships, pleasant casual friendships, I
think absolutely," says Simes. "But if
you're talking about real friendship, the
bottom line is they are officers of the
Soviet state, and they would have to do
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/02 : CIA-RDP90-00845R000201240003-6