KGB AGENT REPORTEDLY FLEES TO U.S.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504130050-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 27, 2012
• Sequence Number: 50
• Publication Date: September 26, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

' Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504130050-7
Lub AN( LhS TIMES
1-- 26 September 1985
KGB Agent
Reportedly
Fletma to U.S.
Action May Have
Sputed Recent
Spy Defections
J By RONALD J. OSTROW
and DOYLE McMANUS,
Than Stag Writers
WASHINGTON-A Soviet dip.
lomat who was a high-ranking
member of the KGB secret police
has defected to the United States
after disappearing in Rome last
month, intelligence officials said
Wednesday.
The fallout from the defection of
Vitaly Dthurtchenkoo 50, will be-
come apparent in the coming
months, the intelligence sources
predicted. And, although US. offi-
cials would not confirm it, a recent
series of East- West defections may
have been parts of a chain reaction
set off by Dahurtchenko's decision
to tell Western intelligence servic-
es what he knows about Soviet
Bloc spies in their midst.
Dzhurtchenko, who held the
rank of first counselor with the
Soviet Foreign Ministry, was on
temporary assignment in Italy
when he dropped from sight Aug. I
after telling Soviet security agents
that he was going to visit Vatican
museums.
CIA Derristift
The intelligence sources, who
declined to be identified, said that
Dzhurtebenko had held a "signitf-
cant rank" in the KGB hierarchy
and possessed detailed knowledge
of Soviet intelligence operations in
the United States and elsewhere.
He has been undergoing debriefing
by the CIA somewhere in the
United States for the last six weeks,
they said
Dsh atdranko could be the higll'-
est-ranldng KGB defector to the
West done the .Mft woes. t301D
generals in the Soviet intelligence
service, fled Moscow during the
purges of Joed Stalin. The Wash-
ington Times reported Wednesday
that. Dshu rtchenko was the No. 5
man in the Soviet secret 'police,
although intelligence officials re-
fused to confirm that.
Dzhurtchenko arrived in Rome
on July 25 for what was expected to
be about a 10-day assignment and
stayed at the Villa Abamalek, the
Soviet ambassador's residence on
the city's western outstirts, on
Aug. 8, the Soviet m * --y in
Rome said he had disappeared a
week earlier and asked Italian
authorities to investigate.
Iwaie. Defied..
Shortly after Dshurtchenke'f
disappearance, three suspected
Communist agents suddenly fled to
East Germany from West Germa-
ny, where. they had held sensittvs
government or political posts. The
defection in London of a high-
ranking Soviet spy followed.
On Aug. 19, a high West German
counterintelligence official, Hans
Joachim Tiedge, fled to East Bet-
lin-touching off a diplomatically
and politically damaging scandal
for the Bonn government.
He was followed shortly by Her-
ta-Astrid Willner, a secretary in
the office of Chancellor Helmut
Kohl, and her husband, Herbert
Willaer. He was an official of the
Naumann Foundation, a think tank
of West Germany's Free Demo-
cratic Party.
Then, on Aug. 25, Martin Wink-
ler, the No. 2 man in East Germa-
ny's embassy in Argentina, defect-
ed to the West-possibly because
he was a longtime West German
agent who feared being exposed by
Tiedge, sources in Bonn said.
And on Sept. 12, the British
government announced that the
chief of the KGB's London opera-
tion, Oleg A. Gordievski, had de-
fected. Gordievski had passed in-
telligence to the West since the
1970x, Danish and British officials
said. but remained in place in the
KGB, where he rose steadily in the
ranks
Acting on information provided
by Gordievski, Britain expelled 25
Soviet citizens suspected of spying.
The Soviet Union retaliated by
expelling an equal number of Brit-
ons from Moscow, and a second
round of expulsions followed that.
Other important Soviet defectors
in recent years have included Ana-
toly N. Shevchenko, a Soviet For-
eign Ministry official who turned
himself over to the CIA in 1978;
Stanislav Levchenko, a KGB major
who fled the Soviet Embassy in
Tokyo in 1979, and Viktor N.
Korolyuk, a KGB major who de-
fected in West Germany in 1981.
But none of them had the rank, or
the-apparent access to intelligence
secrets, of Dahurtchenko, intelli-
gence sources said.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504130050-7