THE DEFECTIVE DEFECTION OF COMRADE VITALY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504730024-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 24
• Publication Date: November 8, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504730024-0
ARTICLE APPEARED
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
8 November 1985
ON PAGE 07 - /&
The defective defection of Comrade Vitaly
LABS-ERIK
NELSON
W ASHINGTON-Vitaly Yur-
chenko was a genuine, top-
level Soviet intelligence defec-
tor, and how we managed to lose him is
a lesson in the misuse of intelligence
for political purposes.
We were not taken in by a plant. We
were not deceived by a super-clever
KGB plot. We bungled this all by
ourselves.
First, Yurchenko was real. "We
know enough about the KGB to know
who their deputy director of operations
is," says Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
a former member of the Senate Select
Intelligence Committee. "That was Yur-
chenko. He was genuine."
By defecting to the United States in
Rome on Aug. 1, he took his life into his
hands and placed at risk the lives of
family and associates he left behind.
"The one thing he had going for him
was anonymity," says an official who
believes the case was mishandled. "A
defector is like an informant for the
FBI who goes into the federal witness
protection program. He must be given
the utmost faith in his own physical
security. Otherwise, he knows he'll be
found and killed or his relatives will be
killed."
Instead, the administration swiftly
leaked word of Yurchenko's defection.
It fit too well with one of the Reaga-
nauts' pet theories: The Soviet Marxist-
Leninist elite knows that its system has
failed. The proof: The cream of the
crop-the KGB, the most privileged
class in Soviet society-is defecting to
the West for ideological reasons. The
temptation to brag was overwhelming.
Instead of denying any knowledge of
Yurchenko, intelligence officials told
the Los Angeles Times on Sept. 25
exactly how and where he had defected.
Yurchenko was credited with disclosing
the Soviet use of spy dust to track
American diplomats in Moscow.
Next we learned that Yurchenko had
Identified a former CIA agent who was
spying for the Russians, Edward L.
Howard. A story in the Wall Street
Journal Oct. 13 compounded that leak
by naming a Soviet agent, working for
the U.S., who had been betrayed by
Howard.
Our spy, A.G. Tolkachev, "was one
of the Central Intelligence Agency's
most valuable human assets' in the
Soviet Union," a Journal editorial wri-
ter helpfully told the Russians. For all
we know, at the time the Journal article
appeared, Tolkachev was sitting in the
basement of Lubyanka prison, denying
through the remnants of his teeth that
he was a CIA agent. The leak to the
Journal took away his last shred of
protection.
To Yurchenko, allowed to read the
newspapers at his Virginia safe house,
these leaks broke the basic rules of
espionage: Never tell your enemy what
you know about him. Never confirm the
value of what he thinks he knows about
you.
There was more to come. On Oct. 30,
word was put out that Yurchenko had
solved the disappearance of Nicholas
Shadrin, a Soviet defector working for
the CIA who vanished in Vienna in
1975. Yurchenko told the FBI that KGB
agents had kidnapped and killed
Shadrin.
Yurchenko turned on his CIA cap-
tors after this revelation. In the most
agitated moment at his extraordinary
press conference last Monday, Yur-
chenko recalled saying to his handlers:
"Aren't you ashamed? I don't know
anything about Shadrin. You publish
that in the newspapers and they will
start a suit against the CIA. That means
they invite me into court as a defendant
in a trial, as the only witness to this
information."
Yurchenko could see his million-
dollar payoff vanish in a wrongful-
death suit filed by Shadrin's widow,
Ewa. His fantasized love affair with the
wife of a Soviet diplomat in Canada
exploded in his face. (When the CIA got
them together, she told him, "I loved
you as a KGB man, not as a traitor.")
And even the bodyguards for whom
he had such contempt knew the details
of his secret $1 million contract with
the CIA. When Yurchenko complained
that one of them was putting his feet on
the cocktail table, the guard replied,
"Oh, that's right. I forgot they gave you
the furniture, too."
I T WAS TOO much. Instead of secre-
cy, there was a glare of publicity.
Instead of security, his name was all
over town. Instead of money, there was
the prospect of a lawsuit. Instead of a
professional intelligence operation,
there was, to his mind, continual
bungling.
He concluded he was better off back
home, and he just walked away.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504730024-0