THE DEFECTOR: TALES FROM THE OTHER SIDE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605430001-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 8, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: November 19, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605430001-6
Y- --~ 19 November 1985
The Defector.?
Tales From the
Other Side
Yelena Mitrokhina, Remembering the Dark Secrets
By David Remnick
Washington Post SSH Writer
You know Yelena Mitrokhina.
She's the Woman in the Blond Wig.
One August afternoon seven. years ago,
while her husband was working at the So-
viet Embassy, she met with four FBI agents
and' drove off in. a taxi. She was the. first
person ever to defect from the Soviet Em-
bassy in Washington.
Two weeks ago when high-ranking KGB
officer Vitaly Yurchenko walked away from
his CIA handlers in a Georgetown bistro
and made headlines by redefecting, Yelena
Mitrokhina donned a frumpy blond wig and
sunglasses and, for the first time, spoke out
in public, appearing on ABC's "Nightline,"
Cable News Network and the front. page of
The Washington Post. Although there is no
way to check all the details of her story as
she tells it, sources including the FBI and,
the Wharton School of Business, where she
earned a degree in 1980, confirm Yelena's
saga. She became an American citizen last
year.
In her way, Yelena Mitrokhina knew Vi-
taly Yurchenko like no one else:
"My closest encounter with Mr. Yur-
chenko was in October 1977. He was head
of embassy counterintelligence. There had
been a woman, an embassy wife, who had
struck up a friendship with an American
neighbor. She started seeing him, quite
openly, just walking together, talking. When
Yurchenko found out, she was sent home to
Moscow within 24 hours.
"By that time I. was in a similar situation.
I was very friendly with an American man.
He was my car dealer. I had a lot of prob-
lems and thought I could confide in him.
The night that woman was sent home, Yur-
chenko called a meeting of all embassy
wives. He started talking about the weak-
ness inherent in women, about how we
must not succumb.
"Have you ever been in a theater and you
get the feeling that the actor is talking di-
rectly at you and no one else? That was how
I felt. I thought Yurchenko knew all about
me. I sat there, with 30 other women in the
room, the wives of all the most powerful
Russian diplomats in Washington, and I
thought to myself, 'Well, Yelena, you're
next.' "
In her wig and sunglasses, Yelena Mi-
trokhina suggests Tony Curtis' drag per-
formance in "Some Like It Hot." In reality,
she. is dark-haired, dark-eyed, attractive and
smartly dressed. Her English would shame
a native.
"My friends say that I was born in Russia
only by accident," she says. "And they're
right. I was born to live in America." Yelena
says, "I did not want to spend my life work-
ing for a system. I wanted to live for my-
self."
Born 41 years ago in Leningrad, she
grew up a privileged and only child. Her
father was an air force colonel "whose phi-
losophy was the front page of Pravda." Her
mother was more irreverent, "a free spirit
who taught me how to live my own life."
Yelena, like many Russians, favors
a certain bluntness of speech. She is
not shy, announcing "that I got
straight As in school. I have an IQ of
154." At the University of Leningrad
she studied Norwegian and English.
She worked summers as an interpret-
er for visiting delegations from Nor-
way, Britain and the United States. "I
guess that's when I first got a taste
for the West," she says. "It wasn't
really political, it was the people I
met, their openness."
At 19, Yelena married the son of a
prominent Soviet writer, "a kind of
playboy" who was later diagnosed as
schizophrenic. "I was very much in
love with him, but we just could not
live together," she says. "He threat-
ened me and almost killed me. We
divorced after a year. I was devas-
tated."
e a graduate student in soci-
ology, she met Lev Mitrokhina, a pro-
fessor at the Academy of Sciences. As
soon as he could divorce his first wife,
they married in 1970. Yelena was
again a member of the privileged
class, the nomenklatura.
"People who know that I'm a de-
fector assume that I was a dissident,"
she says, "but I was never anything
close to that when I was living in Rus-
sia. I was born with a silver spoon in
my mouth. When I moved to Moscow
with my husband, my status just went
up. Lev was a member of the Russian
old boys' network. He'd been ni
charge of propaganda when he was
young and in the Komsomol [Commu-
nist Party youth organization]. We had
a car, good food, a nice apartment.
Like any Russian with a little money
and brains, I could get lots of foreign
goods. I don't ever remember wear-
ing any Soviet-made clothes."
One of Lev Mitrokhina's "old-boy"
friends in 1975 was Boris Pankin,
head of the newly formed Soviet copy-
right agency. Pankin asked Lev to
become a first secretary at the em-
bassy in Washington and open a copy-
right office on K Street. Yelena was
delighted.
"At the embassy you get the best of
the two worlds," she says. "You live
with diplomatic immunity, a free
apartment, medical care and an en-
vironment of familiar Russian people.
The majority of the intellectual elite in
Moscow paled by comparison with the
top rank of diplomats in Washington.
"We had access to so many more
books, to magazines and journals and
the television news. I remember some
friends and I played a game by com-
paring an issue of Pravda and The
Washington Post, and we discovered
that in Russia certain events just do
not exist. And the TV! I remember
'The Six Million Dollar Man' was very
big, We would race back from Pioneer
Point [the Soviet "dacha" in Maryland]
on Sunday nights to watch it. I guess
we didn't know about reruns yet."
There were a few restrictions. Em-
bassy personnel were not allowed to
have credit cards or checkbooks. "We
always carried cash," Yelena says.
"That made us the best mugging tar-
gets in the city."
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The Mitrokhinas lived in Chevy
Chase and worked together at the
copyright office, but their marriage
was coming apart slowly. Lev was
drinking heavily. Yelena "felt like just
another utility in the house." When
she asked her husband to accompany
her to the hospital for the birth of her
second child [in January 19771 he re-
fused to go. "I couldn't believe it," she
says. "He said, 'Come on, what do you
need me there for?' Well, that did it. I
never got over that. I was an absolute
doormat."
If she were to confide in her Rus-
sian friends, she thought, Yurchenko
and the other embassy officials might
find out and send the family back to
Moscow.
"I was trapped," she says. But soon
Yelena found an American friend. "I
went to fix my car at a local Oldsmo
bile dealership and.I met a nice older
man in April 1977. He looked like
Gregory Peck. His name was Ed."
Careful not to attract attention
from the embassy, Yelena began
meeting Ed for coffee, for long rides
and walks. "It wasn't a love affair," she
says, "he was a father figure, 30 years
older than me," but Yelena would tell
Ed about her problems, her husband,
her isolation in the embassy.
But when Yurchenko held his
"warning" meeting at the embassy in
October 1977, Yelena became fright-
ened. "I figured by then they had
probably a couple of pictures of my
friend and I. So I saw him one night
and told him I couldn't see him for a
while. I said, 'There are leaks and you
Americans can't keep a secret.' He
didn't reassure me, but he did say,
'Look, I understand, but if you ever
decide you want to stay, tell me.'
That's when I started to think."
After two months Yelena met once
more with Ed. She told him she was
ready to defect.
"I want to take you up on your of-
fer." she told him.
"Okay," she recalls him saying. "But
I have to tell you something. I'm co-
operating with the FBI." He was not a
career agent, he said, but the bureau
had asked him to provide information
on Yelena because of his friendship
with her.
They arranged a meeting at a Hol-
iday Inn in Rosslyn.
"We met at the Olds dealership and
we drove to the hotel. He took me up
to a room, introduced me to the FBI
man, a guy named John," says Yelena.
"I knew what John was thinking. He
was thinking I might be a double
agent, that I might have been out to
set them up. I had no access to sen-
sitive information at the embassy, so
what was in it for them? I was afraid
they might call the embassy and say,
'We don't want her.' "
"Why would you want me?" she
asked the agent.
"First of all," he said, "this country
was built on the principle that people
should live where they want. And sec-
ond, we want to set a precedent.
There have been defectors in New
York, but none from the embassy in
Washington. We want to show it can
be done."
Yelena thought she could trust the
agent. But she told him she could not
act immediately. She wanted to visit
her parents in Leningrad. Her mother
had never seen her infant grandson.
"That will be dangerous," the agent
said. "It's crazy. You shouldn't go. -We
can provide protection here, but in
Russia you're on your own."
"Maybe," Yelena said, "but that's
what I'm going to do."
She flew to Moscow in March
1978.
"I had to accomplish a lot in three
weeks. I wanted to fix up our flat in
Moscow as much as possible. I knew
that my husband would probably not
want to defect with me. And even
though our marriage was bad, I was
worried about him. I wanted him to be
comfortable if he went back to Mos-
cow."
She and the children met with .her
mother. Yelena also sold off as many
things as possible-clothing, jazz and
rock records, a fake fur-that could
be converted into cash. She gave the
cash to her mother.
At the airport Yelena said goodbye
to her mother for the last time.
"I never told her what was going to
happen," she says. "But from the look
in her eyes, I knew that she knew."
Within two weeks of returning to
Washington, Yelena received the
news that Arkady Shevchenko, a high-
ranking diplomat in the Soviet mission
in New York, had defected. It was a
tremendous blow to the Soviets. In-
deed, they were to learn later that
Shevchenko had been a CIA informer
for three years before defecting.
In Washington, Yurchenko in-
creased security. Another blow came
when Lev Mitrokhina's request for an
extension to stay in Washington was
rejected. He and Yelena were ordered
to return to Moscow in early Septem-
ber.
"From then on I knew I had to act
fast," she says.
One day Yelena was asked to ride
with Soviet press attache Valentin
Kamenev to Dulles Airport for the
weekly Aeroflot flight to Moscow and
then drive the car back to the embas-
sy. Kamenev was a friend and the fa-
vor seemed simple enough.
But within minutes Yelena got a
phone message "from a buyer for her
car." She was not selling her car. She
knew it was a coded message and Ye-
lena called her contact at the FBI.
"Don't go to the airport," the agent
said. The agent warned her that the
FBI had reason to believe that the
KGB would force her onto the Aero-
flot flight.
"I can't refuse," said Yelena. "He's
one of our closest friends and he
needs this favor. What should I do?'
"Look, don't go anywhere close to
the tarmac or the lounge," the agent
said. "At the first sign of trouble, take
off your glasses and wipe them with a
handkerchief."
At Dulles, Yelena stayed away from
the lounge or the entrance to the
plane. The airport was crowded with
FBI agents. One even had a letter
signed by President Carter ordering
Aeroflot to hold the plane.
As it turned out, the agents did not
have to act. Yelena never had to wipe
her glasses.
"You read about these things in
books all the time," she says. "All of a
sudden it was happening to me."
By then the Mitrokhinas were no
longer living in Chevy Chase. They
had a ground floor apartment with a
back porch in The Chatham, a high-
rise building in Arlington just off Rte.
50.
Lev had cut down on his drinking
and had learned to drive. Each morn-
ing he would call home when he had
arrived at work.
On a day in early August, Yelena
waited for his call.
"I aught be out later," she told him.
"The neighbors asked me over for tea,
but I'll be here when you come home
for lunch."
As soon as Lev had left for work,
Yelena packed two suitcases. She put
two letters on the dining room table.
One was addressed to the embassy,
saying she was defecting but that she
still loved her country. The second
was addressed to Lev, asking him to
consider defecting' with'#ter and the
children.
Then, with her children in tow, Ye-
lena took the elevator up to the sec-
ond floor where the FBI had rented an
apartment. Yelena was pale. Her year
of perpetual nervousness had reached
e2 .
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? ' a terrible peak. "I was a wreck," she as U.S. officials were allowed to in- The next day she received a phone
says. She took a mild tranquilizer. terview Yurch.nko before he flew to call.
After a brief planning session, Ye- Moscow, two Soviet embassy officials "They said, 'Cheer up, girl. You're
lena, the children and the four agents interviewed Yelena at the State De- going to Wharton.' "
went out to the street where they partment. Standard procedure.
were met by a taxi driven by another "They were very clever," she re-
agent. They drove to a motel on Rte. calls. "They had one guy who was the Yelena and her two children moved
50 in Arlington. An official from the fatherly type. And he would say, to Devon, a Philadelphia suburb, in
Immigration and Naturalization Ser- 'Think of what this will do to your January 1979. The government pro-
vice met them there and handed Ye- mother' and 'You know it's not too vided the tuition at the University of
lena a green card and papers saying late to change your mind.' That sort Pennsylvania, day-care costs for Ye-
that she had defected freely. She of thing, playing on my sympathies. lena's children, plus $13,000 a year, a
signed them "without hesitation." She And the translator from the State De- small stipend compared with the
then left the children in the motel partment was translating for every- $60,000 "salary" given Arkady Shev-
room'with a female agent. body in the room. Meanwhile the oth- chenko and the alleged $1 million CIA
Yelena and three agents drove back er guy, KGB I'm sure, leaned across chief William Casey offered Yur-
to The Chatham in the taxi. It was a the table and mumbled, so the trans- chenko.
hot day, and they waited in back of the lator wouldn't hear, 'We'll get you. In the meantime, Yelena learned
building, watching the driveway and We know where your mother lives, that in Moscow her husband had de
the porch for nearly a half hour. Fi- too., 'r ents had divorced. In the divorce suit,
pally Lev arrived. Other agents After the interview Yelena and the pounced her publicly and that her par-
watched Lev enter the apartment, children moved to a "safe house" in her father charged her mother with
walk to the dining room table, open McLean and there began a long series not bringing up Yelena properly.
and read the two letters. When he of debriefing sessions with the FBI
de Things
was finished reading the letters Lev : and the CIA. For more than a month, Twere little better in Phila-
hin
walked outside to the back yard from 9 to 5 every day, Yelena ren- twas incred-
was
agents. he met Yelena and three dered her biography over and over. "The loneliness
ible," "The
agents. She answered questions about the have no past. I says. there h"As couldn't a tell
The FBI was worried that Lev embassy, about her husband, about defector you
people the
would get violent, that he would panic. Russia in general, All the while she truth about myself. All you can do is
But he was composed. knew the agents were aware that she lie, and when you He you get tripped
"This is crazy," he told his wife. could be a double agent. UP, You contradict yourself. Being a
.,You will ruin your life." Yelena was often upset by the de- defector, you must be an amnesiac.
"I've made my decision." briefing process but she felt better "Sometimes I would drive to D.C.
The FBI badly wanted Lev to de- when one CIA agent offered to take just to be with my FBI friends. The
fect, too, but Lev told the FBI and his her and her children trick-or-treating. CIA doesn't like it when you do that.
wife that he needed time to think. All The Mitrokhinas had never heard of They want you to forget the past and
the while Yelena was of two minds Halloween. stand on your own two feet. But I had
about her husband. She knew that "They never told me their real to be myself once in a while."
they would eventually divorce. "I don't names,". she says of the agents. "But Yelena finished the two-year MBA
know if I wanted him to stay or come they had a tendency to slip. One wo- Program in 18 months and moved
with me," she says now. "I was 50- man took me to her optometrist to get back to the Washington area. Her
50." some contact lenses, and the recep- children are in school now. They don't
The FBI moved Yelena and the tionist said, 'Oh, Miss So-and-So, your know .a word of Russian. They know
children to a hotel in Fredericksburg, next appointment is next week.' She their mother is divorced. "I told them
Va. Late into the night Yelena and used her real name. The agent tried that sometimes two people just don't
Lev talked by phone. At last Lev said to tell me they were talking about her get along," says Yelena. "They handle
no, he could not defect. sister. They are not always as careful it pretty well. Half their friends have
"In my heart I knew he could not do as they should be." divorced parents."
it," says Yelena. "He's 14 years older Yelena had made only two requests Yelena's social life is still difficult.
than me, and to start a new life at 48 before her defection. She wanted ab- She said she was in two relationships
was difficult. He had an incredibly solutely no publicity, and she wanted "that were headed to marriage until I
comfortable life in Moscow. He really the government to put her through told them my story.
loved it there. You have to understand business school. Her Soviet degrees "Honesty cost me. The first guy
the Russian's love for his country. His would not do her much good in the worked for the World Bank and he
father was a general in the MVD [the Washington work place. couldn't continue. His ex-wife threat-
internal militia] but he was arrested "When can I begin business school?' ened to complain to the bank and ruin
on a trumped up charge in 1948. He she asked an agent one night. his career. The other guy worked for
died in a concentration camp. But still "We are going to send you to sec- a company and he was going through
my husband was faithful to the moth- retarial school," her CIA handler told a security clearance for one of his
erland. It's a strange turn of the Rus- her. business affairs. As soon as I told him,
sian mind." Yelena was shocked and depressed. he disappeared from my life. I never
At the end of their last phone call, "I was hysterical," she says. "I saw him again. Where I hear that
Lev told Yelena, "I must be buried on thought, 'Jesus Christ, I've risked my Washington men are career-oriented,
Russian soil." life to learn typing!' " The next morn- I know it's true."
ing she called one of her original FBI
handlers, one of her "white knights."
Five days after defecting, Yelena "Look guys," she said. "What are
vent through perhaps the most trying they trying to do to me?'
obstacle in the defection process, a
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The children, who are 11 and. 9
now, are. thoroughly Americanized.
"They can smell a Big Mac for miles,"
says Yelena. From Russia Yelena re-
ceives occasional (and censored) let-
ters from her mother. Nothing from
her father. She legally divorced her
husband and has not heard from him.
Yelena tells most acquaintances she
is an emigre "who got here by swim-
ming across the ocean." She doesn't
see many Russian friends and keeps
only a few Russian books in her house.
"I keep Bulgakov's books around.
Some things I can't do without."
She is self-employed businesswom-
an, but she is reluctant to share her
specific area of interest with every-
one. She tells her visitor her profes-
sion, and it seems harmless enough,
but says, 'Td rather my clients didn't
know my- story. People are people.
Just say I make my $60,000 a year,
like my work and live my life." Yelena
says she will stop working if she can
earn enough money from writing a
book about her defection.
Every year she renews a notarized
document that says that if she ever
she has decided to go back to the So-
viet Union, Americans should consid-
er it KGB coercion. Yelena says she
will renew the statement "for. as long
as I live."
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