VITALY YURCHENKO

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000100230036-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 26, 2011
• Sequence Number: 36
• Publication Date: November 5, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
PROGRAM All Things Considered STATION WAMU-FM
NPR Network
DATE November 5 1985 6:30 PM CITY Washington, DC
SUBJECT Vitaly Yurchenko
LAURIE WACHENSMIDT: Vitaly Yurchenko, the former KGB agent who,
after defecting to the U.S., now wants to return to the Soviet Union is
being interviewed today by U.S. officials.
The State Department wants to make sure Yurchenko isn't being
coerced into returning to his homeland after three months in the hands of
the U.S. intelligence agents.
NPR's Catherine Ferguson reports from the State Department.
CATHERINE FERGUSON: The Acting Secretary of State for European
Affairs will head the team of U.S. officials who will interview Yurchenko.
A medical doctor will be present to help insure that Yurchenko is making a
decision to leave this country of his own free will.
The State Department has vehemently denied Yurchenko's allegations
that he was drugged and brought to the U.S. against his will. Now,
officials here want to satisfy themselves that Yurchenko has decided to
return to the Soviet Union, quote, "free of Soviet coercion."
The State Department's Charles Redman.
CHARLES REDMAN: It appears it was a personal decision, and we
will attempt to confirm that at a meeting with him.
FERGUSON: According to the State Department, Yurchenko is here
under the Parole Authority of the Attorney General and does not hold a
diplomatic passport. But, the State Department's Redman said th4t had the
former Soviet agent told U.S. officials he wanted to go home, he certainly
would have been allowed to do so.
OFFICES IN: WASHINGTON D.C. ? NEW YORK ? LOS ANGELES ? CHICAGO ? DETROIT ? AND OTHER PRINCIPAL CITES
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I'm Catherine Ferguson, at the State Department.
SUSAN STAMBERG: Washington, D.C. was simply buzzing today over
the case of Vitaly Yurchenko. The high ranking official of the Soviet
intelligence service told a news conference last night that he was not the
defector U.S. authorities claimed him to be, but instead had been kid-
napped, drugged and held by the CIA.
U.S. officials flatly denied Yurchenko, but they said he would be
allowed to leave this country if he satisfies them that he really wants to
go.
Yurchenko was scheduled for a visit to the State Department late
today for just such a .talk.
When Yurchenko decided to redefect, he simply got up from a dinner
table and walked away from his CIA case officer.
We have two reports on the Yurchenko defection, first from NPR's
Jim Engel who returned today to the restaurant where Yurchenko began his
trip home.
JIM ENGEL: Last Saturday night, Vitaly Yurchenko came here to a
small restaurant in the Georgetown section of Washington, an inexpensive
French bistro called Au Pied DeCochon. It was busy then, and the streets
were packed with those who were enjoying the revelry of a Halloween weekend
in the city's busiest restaurant and nightclub district, a perfect place
away from his guard and lose himself in the crowd.
An Administration source tells NPR today that Yurchenko was here
with only one other person that night, a CIA companion. He was usually
guarded by two men, sources said, but in the last two week Yurchenko had
been complaining about always being accompanied by security people and the
lack of privacy. He needed more time to himself, he told the CIA. As a
result, Yurchenko had two opportunities Saturday to make phone calls
unobserved. During one of those opportunities, Administrative sources
believe he contacted Soviet officials and made arrangements to go back over
to the Soviet side.
The restaurant is only a half-mile from the Soviet Embassy
compound where Yurchenko held his news conference yesterday. Sources said
he made his way there after slipping away from his CIA companion.
Yurchenko admits he left CIA custody on Saturday, but he claims he
made an escape from a CIA safe house in Virginia. He spoke yesterday
through an interpreter.
VITALY YURCHENKO: Only on November the 2nd, due to alnomentary
lapse of attention on the part of the persons watching me, I was able to
break out to freedom and come to the Soviet Embassy.
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ENGEL: There are still a lot of questions, but the one that
really bothers Administration officials is whether Yurchenko was a legiti-
mate defector who got homesick or a setup to embarrass the United States on
the eve of the Reagan-Gorbachev summit.
There are two schools of thought on that. The group that believes
he was a legitimate defector say the information Yurchenko provided to
Amercian intelligence officials was verified and corroborated, that he'd
passed lie detector tests, and that what he told the U.S. did a great deal
of damage to the Soviet intelligence network. Those who believed he was a
legitimate defector also explained his sudden turn-around in personal
terms.
Sources have told NPR that one of Yurchenko's motivations for
defecting was a love interest. While assigned to Washington in the late
1970s, Yurchenko started an affair with the wife of another Soviet dip-
lomat. Yurchenko was transferred back to Moscow in 1980, and the other
Soviet diplomat and his wife were eventually transferred to Canada.
Nevertheless, the affair between Yurchenko and the woman continued
in Moscow where she came two or three times a year for extensive home
leave. As an Administration source put it, the flame has been kept alive.
In August, shortly after Yurchenko's arrival in the U.S., the CIA
allowed him to contact the woman and a meeting was arranged. The CIA then
accompanied him to Canada to see her, but during an evening together the
woman told Yurchenko that the romance wasn't going to work out and that it
was over. That was the beginning of what one Administration source called
today "a mental deterioration for Yurchenko." He left his family in the
Soviet Union to start a new life and a new marriage, said the source. When
she rejected him, the new future he had anticipated started to collapse.
That along with the usual trauma of defecting and inevitable homesickness
began to wear on Yurchenko, sources say. He started suffering from what
one source described as the post-pardon blues.
He became more depressed and started drinking more and apparently
made the decision to try to go back to the Soviet Union.
This was the interpretation of Yurchenko's action that the
Administration appeared to embrace. In its on-the-record remarks today,
State Department spokesman Charles Redman....
CHARLES REDMAN: I have no comments concerning Mr. Yurchenko's
motivations other than to say that it appears that it was a personal
decision by Yurchenko and that we will attempt to confirm this at a meeting
with him.
ENGEL: The other school of thought, however, is equally convinced
that Yurchenko was a setup from the very beginning. This group also cites
the intelligence information he shared with the U.S. officials. They say
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the information he gave was good, but that most of it was historical. That
is that it affected what are called intelligence assets, such as intelli-
gence agents, who have already outlived their usefulness.
Sources said Yurchenko also gave the U.S. some new details about
the Soviet use of chemical warfare in Cambodia and Afghanistan, but the
U.S. already suspected what he confirmed.
Sources said he also identified other people who were collabora-
ting with the Soviet Union, but none were now in sensitive positions.
Although there are two points of view on Yurchenko's original
motivations for defecting, both groups agree on two things: one, that the
information Yurchenko gave them was legitimate and helpful; second,
officials agree the Soviets used the Yurchenko turn-around for the maximum
propaganda advantage.'
The United States has dismissed Yurchenko's claims that he was
kidnapped and drugged as unfounded. One Administration source said he
understood that Yurchenko had to say things to rehabilitate himself because
he's going back to the Soviet Union, but they made the story much bigger
than they had to, said the official, and that shows they're not concerned
about poisoning the atmosphere before the summit.
But, government spokesmen asked about that today refused to issue
any public criticism of the Soviet actions in the matter.
I'm Jim Engel, in Washington.
Senator Patrick Leahy, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelli-
gence Committee says the Yurchenko case has the potential to seriously
embarrass the Unite States and to undermine U.S. intelligence capabilities.
Leahy believes Yurchenko not, as the State Department says, a real
SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY: Anybody who's as knowledgeable about the
KGB as he is wouldn't be going back at all unless he was here as a double
agent or as a plant in the first place. What if it turns out that the KGB
was able to put a double agent in our midst, have the CIA vouch for him,
take significant actions based on what he said and then say to him, ok,
come on back home now. You've done a great job. That's one heck of an
embarrassment to the United States, and it's also going to make those
intelligence agents who have to work around the world say, "Ooops!"
BURLOW: Leahy was briefed by U.S. intelligence officials this
afternoon. He says he expects the briefings to continue for some time,
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because he and many other Senators are angry about the Yurchenko rede-
fection. Leahy said that many Senators raised questions about the legiti-
macy of Yurchenko's defection but received repeated assurances that the top
Soviet spy was legitimate, that agency screening methods, which includes
the use of lie detector tests, were adequate.
Leahy said the screening system broke down.
SENATOR LEAHY: It's a proven failure, at least in some point.
How great was that failure? Was the failure great enough to allow a double
agent to get through? If it was, then was more than a serious
embarrassment. This is a very, very critical matter because it brings into
question what kind of screening methods have been used in all other
defectors, and do we have some defectors that we use who really are double
agents?
BURLOW: Leahy said the failure here comes on the heels of the
loss of Edward Lee Howard, a former CIA agent fired by the agency and
reportedly identified by Yurchenko as a Soviet spy. Howard escaped from
the United States in September while under FBI surveillance.
Leahy said these incidents have shaken the confidence of a lot of
Senators of both parties.
SENATOR LEAHY: You assume that the CIA in this business, trained
professionals, know what they're doing. That assumption is now being
questioned.
BURLOW: George Carver, a former Deputy Director of Central
Intelligence, thinks Yurchenko was a genuine defector who began having
grave doubts about what he'd done. Carver described what he called "a kind
of post-defection depression" as to similar to that in the break up of a
marriage. He said he believe Yurchenko defected in one of those periods.
GEORGE CARVER: You wonder, literally, metaphorically, my God, why
am I sleeping in this bed? What have I done? What have I given up? And
you begin to want to do something that is very human to want to do but is
impossible to do. You want to unring bells that you have rung and recross
bridges that you have burned.
BURLOW: At this point, Carver speculates Yurchenko probably got
into contact with or was contacted by Soviet agents who brought home to him
the gravity of what he'd done and appealed to his patriotism but, more
importantly, his commitment to his family and friends.
CARVER: The Soviets are quite capable of taking the line, look,
your Uncle Danya was shot last week. Your Aunt Tatiana was shot early this
week. Next week will be your cousin Sergei. After that will be your wife,
and after that will be your son. If any Soviet threats of that kind were
used they would have been highly creditable to a former KGB officer who
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would have known perfectly well that the Soviets meant what they said and
were quite capable of carrying out precisely such threats.
BURLOW: Carver said when Yurchenko returns to Moscow he will
probably be put on the Soviet equivalent of Phil Donahue and other talk
shows where he'll repeat what he told reporters here in Washington
yesterday, that he was drugged and kidnapped to the U.S. by the CIA.
CARVER: And then, after they have gotten all the mileage they can
get -- it might take a week or two, or even a month or so, he will drop off
the scene. I think he due course he will be tried or told that he has been
tried in absentia. He'll be taken to a base. If he's lucky, he'll get a
bullet in the base of his skull. And if he's less lucky, as for example
was Benkovsky 20 years ago, his end will be considerably less swift and
pleasant than that. Benkovsky was tossed alive into a crematorium as a
warning to others who would think of betraying the Motherland, and
Yurchenko may well wind up with a similar fate.
BURLOW: George Carver. I'm Alan Burlow, in Washington.
NOWA ADAMS: All of this, of course, sounds as if it could be the
stuff of spy novels. Today, we thought we'd ask an expert about that.
David Wise is with us. He has written a spy novel called The
Childrens' Game. He is a co-author of The Invisible Government, a boor
about the CIA, and also is intelligence analyst for Cable News Network.
Mr. Wise, there's quite a cliche involved here today. Stranger
than fiction perhaps?
DAVID WISE: The Yurchenko case could have come out of a novel, of
course, because a lot of novels are written about defectors, double agents,
and what we're really talking about here what is truth? And, specifically,
what is truth about a man who comes to you and says I want to come to your
side, I want to turn my back on my family, my friends, my society?
ADAMS: What was your reaction when you heard this news? Did you
say to yourself, perhaps, that this person was sent by the KGB to come to
the country, to defect, to learn how we debriefed people, for example, and
then to go back to Moscow? Did you think that?
WISE: My guess would be that he defected of his own free will,
that he was not drugged and kidnapped, although he may well have been
drugged subsequently. In the course of his questioning, for one reason or
another, he changed his mind and perhaps there was some element of CIA
bungling or excessive pressure applied to him. He was certainly isolated
in a safe house as we know, and he may have felt terribly alone and decided
that this had all looked awfully good in Rome on the 1st of August., but on
the 2nd of November in Washington it didn't look so good.
ADAMS: Well, in that case, going back to Moscow, what sort of
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credibility is he going to have there? Does he have any sort of career
left in the Soviet Union?
WISE: Well, my guess is he's chopped liver once he gets back
there. And the next question you have to ask yourself is, well, he knows
that, doesn't he? He must know it. He can't be deluding himself unless
he's really unstable. Therefore, why do it?
Well, it's difficult here in Washington or in the United States to
understand that the Russians, while many of them feel terribly oppressed by
the political system, have a deep love of their country just as Americans
do.
I was in the Soviet Union in May and I saw that once again among
the people I talked to., and they're actually capable of separating out the
political system from the Motherland, or the concept of Russia, and he may
have, if he was not a plant, he may have felt -- it may have dawned on him
as time went by that he would never eat black bread again and see the birch
trees and see his family, and that may have been enough of a pull even
knowing that he was taking a terrible risk.
ADAMS: Have we gone far enough afield into the world of fantasy
here or is there something else we ought to be speculating about, some
other sort of scenario?
WISE: Well, one other point that might be made is that a number
of number of succession of high level CIA officials in the last day have
told us that the CIA would never drug a defector. Well, I can't speak to
their present practice, but it's a matter of record and there's sworn
testimony before a House committee and Stansfield Turner has written in his
recent memoirs that a very prominent defector in the 1960s was drugged on
17 separate occasions while being held in confinement for a period of
three-and-a-half years by the CIA in an eight-foot square concrete cell.
He was administered one or more of four drugs on these 17 occasions in
order to presumably elicit facts from him that he might be unwilling to
share with the CIA.
I think it's important to realize that when CIA officials say "we
would never do a thing like this" that is perhaps they wish the world might
be, but it's not so.
ADAMS: David Wise, of Cable News Network.
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