KGB AGENT NOW SAYS HE DIDN'T DEFECT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000301850008-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 25, 2012
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: November 5, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301850008-0
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
5 November 1985
.CLE APPEARED
PAGLIA_
KGB agent
now says he
didn't defect
By Aaron Epstein
Inquirer Washington Bursau
WASHINGTON ? In a bizarre twist
to an extraordinary spy story, high-
ranking Soviet KGB officer Vitaly
Yurchenko said yesterday that he
had not defected to the United States
as reported, but had been kidnapped,
drugged, brought to this country
while unconscious and kept captive
for months by the CIA.
"On a business trip to Italy, I was
forcibly abducted in Rome," Yur-
chenko said. "I was kept in isolation
and forced to take some drugs and
denied the opportunity to get in
touch with official Soviet representa-
tives."
US. officials promptly denied Yur-
chenko's account, made during a
news conference at the Soviet Em-
bassy hem Sem David Durenberger
(R., Minn.), chairman of the Senate
intelligence committee, called it "a
lot of baloney," adding that Yur-
chenko was a defector who had
"never been held against his will or
coerced by any means."
State Department spokesman
Charles Redman said Yurchenko's al-
legations were "completely false and
without any foundation. ... At no
time was Mr. Yurchenko held or co-
erced by improperritiegal or unethi-
cal means."
On the contrary, Redman said, on
Aug. 1 Yurchenko defected "of his
own volition to the American Em-
bassy in Rome." He asked for asylum,
"signed a statement to that effect,
and asylum was granted."
Yurchenko expressed a desire to
return to his wife, 17-year-old son
and friends in the Soviet Union. But
Redman said the United States would
not allow ? him to leave until US.
officials meet with him "in an envi-
ronment free of Soviet coercion to
satisfy ourselves ... that this action
is genuinely of his own choosing."
Yurchenko spoke at a hastily
called, hour-long news conference at
the Soviet Embassy attended by
about 25 U.S. and Soviet reporters. He
said that despite repeated interroga-
tions by what he termed his U.S.
captors, he did not disclose any So-
viet secrets. He said he refused to
sign a contract that he said would
have provided him with a $1 million
down payment and SI80,000 a year
for life.
He said he was kept in isolation
under constant guard by six CIA
agents at a "safe house" on 500 acres
of property 22 miles from Fredericks-
burg, Va. He called it "a typical exam-
ple of state-sponsored terrorism."
On Saturday, he said, he took ad-
vantage of "a momentary lapse" in
security and was able to "break out
to freedom," making his way to the
Soviet Embassy in the northwest sec-
tion of Washington. However, he
would not provide details of what he
termed his capture, escape and inter-
rogation or of a dinner meeting he
said he had with CIA Director Wil-
liam J. Casey at the agency's head-
quarters in Langley, Va.
Yurchenko, 50, was believed to be
the number-five man in the KGB
when he dropped from sight Aug. 1
in Rome and later turned up in the
hands of US. intelligence operatives.
The State Department said he was
responsible for KGB intelligence
work in the United States and Can-
ada.
There were widespread reports in
recent months that in disclosures to
U.S. officials, he was fingering Soviet
"moles" within the CIA and disclos-
ing other US. security problems.
At the same time, however, there
was speculation that Yurchenko had
come over to the West in a Soviet plot
to create chaos in the U.S. intelli-
gence community by spreading de-
liberately misleading information
known as "disinformation."
U.S. authorities said they learned
from Yurchenko that Edward L.
Howard, 33, a former CIA employee,
had sold U.S. intelligence secrets to
the Soviet Union. In October, while
under FBI surveillance, Howard left
his job as an economic analyst for
the New Mexico state legislature and
vanished. He was last reported to be
in Helsinki, Finland.
Yurchenko, a man with slicked-
down hair and a drooping mustache
who appeared nervous as he told his
story in Russian and halting English,
said that he was kept "helpless" in
"total isolation" at the CIA safe
house. He said that one of his guards,
whom he described as "fat, quiet,
stupid, unemotional," would not al-
low him to close the door to the room
where he slept.
Durenberger said that on the con-
trary, Yurchenko was treated as a
defector and was given "a certain
amount of freedom" by the CIA,
which sought "to protect him, not to
imprison him."
"This g u y is a little bit too smooth.
Eveathing he said about the kidnap-
ping and the drugging flies in the
face of everything that has happened
over the last few months," Durenber-
ger added,
The senator said that Yurchenko
was headed for dinner at the CIA
headqparters Saturday night and
then disappeared. "Casey gave me
tne impression tnat tneiuy mace the
decision [to return to the Soviet
Unionl sometime between Saturday
night and this evening," Durenber-
ger said last night. "We can't be iuu
percent sure that there wasn't some
coercion on the part of the Soviet
Union."
?11--giiate intelligence committee
aide said that the entire episode
"raises the question of whether the
original defection was a ploy all
along. "But if it was, to what pur-
pose? He gave us accurate informa-
tion on Howard, which certainly
built his credibility. What did they
gain out of it? It is absolutely bi-
zarre."
Inquirer Washington Bureau re-
porters Ellen Warren, James McGre-
gor, Patricia O'Brien and Frank
Greve contributed to this article.
.47
William J. Casey
Dinner with KGB agent reported
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301850008-0