THE YURCHENKO DEBACLE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000100230033-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 27, 2011
• Sequence Number: 33
• Publication Date: November 10, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2011/09/27: CIA-RDP91-00587R000100230033-2
MIAMI HERALD
10 November 1985
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The Yurchenko debacle
By GEORGE A. CARVER Jr.
Italy Yurchenko is a once and
V perhaps future KGB officer on
whom much Americ
tt
ti
an a
en
on
has recently been fixed. Until last
Monday. he was touted as the most
important. valuable defector the CIA
has ever snared. On that fateful
Monday. he suddenly surfaced at a
late-afternoon press conference in the
Soviet Embassy claiming that he had
been forcibly abducted in Rome,
drugged and spirited against his will to
the United States. He further claimed
that he was held under hostile duress
until Nov. 2, when he was able to
escape his captors and reach his
Embassy's Interim sanctuary, from
which he wanted to return to Moscow.
This he did on Wednesday, leaving a
welter of questions and recriminations,
not to mention embarrassment, in his
wake.
Yurchenko's claim that he was
forcibly abducted, in Italy, then held
under duress in the United States, is
palpably specious. As I know from
having run defection operations, any
CIA officer senior enough to approve
one would recognize the folly of trying
to fudge or evade the ironclad re-
quirements for documented certification
,attesting that a putative defector's
actions are entirely voluntary and
uncoerced. Particularly in the wake of
the Church and Pike Committees and
everything symbolized by "Watergate,"
such provoking would
outragedy wrath
swiftly, of. among others. various Inspectors
General. the Intelligence Oversight
Board in the White House. and the
House and Senate Oversight Commit.
tees, not to mention that of the U.S.
press and media - which would
resemble sharks in a feeding frenzy.
Also, from the other side. Yurchenko's
George Carver retired from the CU
in 1979 after a 26-year career, during
which he was special assistant to three
directors of Central Intelligence, deputy
for national intelligence to two directors
o Central Intelligence, and a: - ' ;or
me years (1976-79) as chairman of the
U.S. Intelligence Coordinating Commit-
tee in Germany. He is now a senior
fellow at Georgetown University's Cen-
ter for Strategic and International
Studies. He wrote this article for The
Herald.
In my opinion, those
who would understand
the Yurchenko case
should throw away
their spy novels and
look carefully at their
friends and associates
- or in their own
mirrors.
claims on this score almost exactly
parrot the similarly specious claims of
Oleg Bitov - a Soviet journalist (cultural
editor of the Literary Gazette) who
defected to the British in September
1983 - supposedly to protest Soviet
treatment of intellectuals and the shoot-
down of KAL 007 - then resurfaced in
Moscow in August 1984, claiming that
he had been abducted, drugged and
tortured by British Intelligence. This is
standard Soviet fare, since the Soviet
Union will never publicly admit - or
allow any Soviet to do so - that any
Soviet official could voluntarily leave
the rodina, the socialist "Motherland."
Furthermore, if Yurchenko had been
anything like the prisoner he claimed to
have been, he would never have made it
to the Soviet Embassy in Washington.
More interesting is the unanswered
question of whether Yurchenko was a
Soviet "plant" from the outset -
always under KGB control, following
KGB orders - or was an initially
genuine defector who had a change of
heart and mind three months after he
came to the United States. This question
may not now, or ever, be definitively
answerable - outside the KGB's Mos-
cow headquarters.
Though the "plant" theory is intrigu-
ing and cannot be disproved, I find it
much less persuasive than its rival.
Operations of this multiple-cushion,
bank-shot complexity are far easier to
write about in novels than to essay in
real life. especially given the pervasive
validity of Murphy's Law. In Yurchen.
ko's case, furthermore. the inevitable
risks of any such operation would seem
to far outweigh any likely gain. While
the Politburo and the KGB might relish
embarrassing President Reagan and the
CIA. especially during pre-summit ma-
neuvering, I find it hard to imagine
anyone in the KGB being willing to
concur, officially, in taking the enor-
mous risk of allowing an officer as
senior as Yurchenko, the deputy head of
the KGB's North American section, to
spend three months in American custo-
dy under total U.S. control.
The "initially genuine defector who
reconsidered" hypothesis. conversely. is
eminently plausible. Indeed, the more
one considers it, the more plausible it
becomes. In my opinion. those who
would understand the Yurchenko case
should throw away their spy novels and
look carefully at their friends and
associates - or in their own mirrors.
Defection, in many respects. is very
similar to separation and divorce in
private life, or to walking out on a
previously close emotional relationship.
At the time of departure, political or
personal, adrenaline is usually pumping.
The prospect of anew life and situation
expected to be far happier, and new
associates expected to be far more
congenial, often produces a crest of
euphoria - plus an exhilarating sense
of newfound freedom. often almost
compulsively reveled in and exercised.
In defectors as well as former spouses
or lovers, however, such highs are
often followed by equivalent lows.
Doubts and second thoughts replace
euphoria with depression, and a Slavic
depression can be very black indeed.
This. I believe, is what happened
with Vitaly Yurchenko. Any defector.
especially a Russian one, is prone to
violent mood swings and needs very
adept, careful handling - especially in
the initial months of that defector's
adjustment to his, or her, new life.
Professionally adept and careful han-
dling, however, is precisely what
Vitaly Yurchenko did not get. Instead.
he was handled in ways that seem to
have been scripted by the Marx
brothers, then implemented by the cast
of The Gone Show.
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For openers, it was hardly wise w
debrief a defector this important and
sensitive in a safehouse near Washing.
ton, and the Soviet Embassy. This may
have been administratively convenient,
but it was operationally idiotic. It was
even less operationally astute to take
him to dinner in a Georgetown
restaurant within walking distance of
the Soviet Embassy, accompanied by
only one or two U.S. companions.
Among the many unfortunate conse-
quences of our mesmerized fascination
with technological collection, which
developed over the past decade, and
one of the most unhappy legacies of
Adm. Stansfield Turner's disastrous
tenure as director of Central Intelli-
gence during Jimmy Carter's presiden-
cy, has been a greatly diminished
ability to handle delicate human opera-
tions with requisite. successful profes-
sionalism. The kind of experienced
officers who could and would have
anticipated Yurchenko's inevitable
mood swings, recognized the warning
signs, known precisely what to do, and
then effectively done it - in Russian
- were considered expendables of
minimal value by Turner. I can think of
two in particular who would have been
brilliant with Yurchenko, but both
were forced into retirement during
Turner's 1977 purges.
Quite apart from any despondency
engendered by his general handling
and the apparent rejection of a desired
lady, who seems to have been one
stimulus to his defection, Yurchenko's
mood was clearly - and understand-
ably - further blackened by the
reckless and negligent abandon with
which the information he provided was
handled and leaked. He would have
instantly known, for example, that the
newspaper and television stories about
his having confirmed Nicholas Shad-
nn's murder by the K(,b cuuua casaty
prove to be nails in the coffin of his
own wife and son. I doubt if it is a
coincidence that the Shadrin story hit
America's front pages and television
screens on Oct. 28 and Yurchenko
appeared in the Soviet Embassy, for his
press conference, exactly one week
later.
One of the most delicate aspects of
handling any defector is deciding how
much latitude to allow him during his
or her initial period of adjustment and
debriefing. You want the defector to
feel a part of the team, a valued and
trusted new colleague, not a prisoner
always under suspicion; but it is not in
your interest, or the defector's, for you
to be foolish. Striking the right balance
requires experience-honed judgment,
and it was apparently not struck with
Yurchenko.
In, his mood of normal depression,
he probably made telephone contact
with one of his many friends in the
Soviet Embassy to ask about his wife
and son. After that, the scenario is easy
to write. The Soviets doubtless remind-
ed him, forcibly, that his wife, son,
family and associates would all have to
pay for his transgressions if he did not
come to the Embassy and follow orders
from that point onward, returning to
Russia soon thereafter. This he there-
upon did, not surprisingly.
For the next few weeks, even
months, the Soviets will endeavor to
wring all the propaganda mileage they
can out of Vitaly Yurchenko - using
him, specifically, as an object lesson to
any in the KGB, or elsewhere, who
might be thinking of working with or
defecting to the Americans. After that.
to drive the lesson internally home.
Yurchenko will probably take a one-
way trip to Lubyanka's cellars and get
a bullet in the base of his skull. If he is
lucky, his death will be quick, but he
may well not be so lucky.
For the CIA and for many others in
the U.S. government, at all levels, the
Yurchenko debacle is, or should be, an
object lesson in how not to conduct
human intelligence operations. If we
prove unwilling to learn those lessons,
our store of valuable human sources
may further dwindle and our supply of
future defectors could easily vanish.
We will never be able to prove or
measure what we have lost, but
potentially valuable human assets in
the Soviet Union - and elsewhere -
could hardly be expected to want to
put their reputations, careers, fortunes
and very lives hostage to the quixotic
amateurish ineptitude that marked the
whole U.S. government's handling of
Vitaly Yurchenko.
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