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McMahon peremptorily
responded that no other hypothesis was necessary. He acknowledged
that Yurchenko had not yet provided the CIA with the KGB's
"wiring diagram", as the illegal network is termed, but
expected that would be elicited from him in the near future.
As for the information Yurchenko had provided, not only
had it checked out, but it was, as he put it, "dynamite".
Among other things, the deputy director explained that he
had provided a list of western journalists in Moscow whom
the KGB considered "trusted contacts"-- and he had identified
two traitors' in U.S. intelligence. As far as John McMahon
was concerned, this was absolute proof that Yurchenko was
who he claimed to be-- a high-ranking KGB executive, who
had changed over to the American side. He then dramatically
concluded his presentation by saying, "I would stake my
career on Yurchenko's bona fides". It was a statement that
he would have cause to regret in 48 hours.
The Million Dollar Spy
While the CIA's deputy director sung
his praises, Yurchenko actually was silently biding his time
in an isolated two story house, surrounded by woods and a
lake, some 22 miles outside of Washington . He had become,
after delivering his initial messages, progressively less
forthcoming. Instead of revealing the much sought after KGB
"wiring diagram" of illegal spies, as McMahon had suggested,
Yurchenko was stonewalling questions about it. Moreover, his
repeatedly claim that the KGB had made no other recruits in
the United States or Canada during the five years that he
was in charge of the KGB's counterintelligence unit was becoming
increasingly less credible. His CIA case officer, who was
a veteran of the Soviet Bloc division, determined that the
Soviet Union had accepted recruits during this period both
in Canada and the United States. The CIA, after all, had sent
its own "dangles" to the KGB during this period : both to
pass disinformation and test its procedures. These included
American diplomats, military attaches and intelligence officers
who feigned disloyalty to the United States. Since these double-agents
would all be known to and vetted by Yurchenko, if he indeed
held the position he claimed, his failure to name them-- even
when led in their direction by his case officer-- raised very
serious questions about his authenticity as a defector.
Moreover, aside from these American
dangles, he claimed total ignorance about the existence of
dozens of elaborate hiding places for messages that Soviet
illegals had prepared for spies. This was all part of the
"wiring diagram" that Yurchenko, as the KGB's section deputy
chief for North America, should have known like the back of
his hand. The more he was pressed, the more recalcitrant he
became. Even the offer of a million dollar contract, in which
he would collect generous bounties for each Soviet mole he
identified, failed to move him to reveal KGB operations. For
the most part during these debriefings, he merely repeated
what the CIA already new from other sources. It was even questionable
whether his disclosures about Pelton and Howard had done little
more than identified Soviet sources that had long ago been
spotted by FBI surveillance-- but not arrested because it
was judged that the damage of such a move would outweigh the
benefits. (Indeed, Howard, who admitted attempting to contact
a KGB officer, was never arrested, and Pelton was not arrested
until November 25,1985, when disclosures made it impossible
to suppress it any longer.) This indeed was indicated by President
Reagan himself, who stated, in regard to Yurchenko, "The information
he provided was not anything new or sensational".
There were also evident parallels
with an earlier defector that had nearly wrecked the CIA's
Soviet Bloc Division. He was Yuri Nosenko, a KGB officer,
who, after playing games with the CIA for two years, defected
in Switzerland in 1964. Like Yurchenko, Nosenko claimed to
work in KGB headquarters in Moscow-- a position, in both cases,
which the CIA no independent way of verifying. These two defectors
were in fact the only ones ever to come from this inner sanctum.
And like Yurchenko, Nosenko came with a message that implied
that there was no mole, or other serious leak, in the CIA.
Instead, he also cited chemical "spy dusts" to explain how
the KGB had uncovered an important CIA agent in Russia. As
far as human sources went, Nosenko, like Yurchenko, identified
only retired and burned-out American agents, who, in any case,
no longer had access to secrets.
Despite these similarities, there
was a crucial difference in the way the two defectors were
treated. Soon after Nosenko arrived in the United States,
the head of the Soviet Bloc Division, concerned that the KGB
officer might "redefect" to facilitate, as he put in a 1964
memorandum, " a massive propaganda assault on the CIA", ordered
him imprisoned in escape-proof quarters.« This was not a mistake
that the Soviet Bloc Division was about to repeat in the case
of Yurchenko.
In September, Yurchenko asked to be
see a Soviet acquaintance in Canada-- the wife of high-ranking
Soviet diplomat in Montreal, with whom he represented he was
having a romantic liaison. The CIA accommodated this request,
and even took him to Canada for a meeting with her. (Ordinarily,
according to former counterintelligence officers, KGB defectors
on parole are prohibited from contacting Soviet citizens--
both for their own safety and to prevent them from giving
any signals to former comrades.« Afterwards, there were few,
if any more, interrogation sessions for Yurchenko.
The game finally drew to an end on
November 2nd-- exactly three months to the day after his arrival
in America-- a cold rainy Saturday afternoon. If the CIA did
not actually return its parolee to the Soviet Embassy, his
case officers certainly facilitated it. First, they took him
to a clothing store in the nearby town of Manassas, and bought
him a coat, hat and umbrella. They also gave him the opportunity
to make two long-distance call to the Soviet Embassy, and
in one he advised the officer on duty he was returning. Then,
he was handed over to a lone CIA officer who drove him to
a convenient restaurant a few blocks from the Soviet Embassy
compound. At this point, he indicating to him that he was
free to go, and watched as Yurchenko walked out the door,
and put on his new coat and hat. After he was gone, his CIA
companion called neither the FBI or Washington police, who
could have intercepted him at the gates of the embassy compound.
Yurchenko later telephoned a CIA phone number he had been
given to advise that he had safely arrived at his destination.
Whatever else it was, it could hardly be called an escape.
The affair might have ended then and
there if Yurchenko had quietly returned to Moscow on his diplomatic
passport. Even if anyone asked about him, the CIA was under
no obligation to respond to queries about double-agents.
The KGB, however, had yet another
surprise in store for the CIA, and its deputy director, who
had already bet his reputation on Yurchenko. That Monday,
November 4th, reporters received an invitation to an televised
news conference that afternoon. The star was none other than
Yurchenko (who, as far as was publicly known, was still the
CIA's prize defector.)
Mocking the CIA at every opportunity,
Yurchenko egregiously claimed that he had been kidnapped from
Rome, drugged and held a prisoner for three months by the
CIA. It was not a story that was true or even meant to be
believed.
Earlier that week, the State Department
had lodged a protest with the Soviet Foreign Ministry charging
that in 1977 an American intelligence agent, named Nicholas
Shadrin, had been paralyzed with drugs by the KGB in Vienna,
and transported across international borders to Hungary, where
he died. The source for this assertion, as released to the
press, supposedly was Yurchenko. Now, the Soviet Embassy filed
an almost identical protest with the State Department, charging
one of its officials, Yurchenko, had been paralyzed with drugs
by the CIA, and taken across international borders. The source
for this story was also Yurchenko. A single KGB officer thus
had the distinction, in a five day period, of being the source
for both American and Soviet protests; both of which were
also denied.
The next day he went to the State
Department to demonstrate that he was acting without Soviet
coercion. He met there with a half dozen CIA and State Department
officials-- as well as a psychologist-- who agreed, after
nearly a half hour session with him, that he was returning
voluntarily to the Soviet Union.« As he left, he jauntily
clasped his hands over his head as a victory sign. By Wednesday,
the Soviet dangle man was on an Aeroflot plane heading home--
his mission completed.
As this amazing case unraveled before
his eyes, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the vice chairman of the
intelligence committee, concluded that Yurchenko was a double
agent who the KGB "foisted" on the CIA "This whole thing was
very good theater", the President's National Security Advisor
told the New York Times, "And, to me, theater is something
that is staged." There were indeed two prudent reasons for
such a conclusion. Yurchenko trusted the KGB sufficiently
to return to its fold; and the KGB trusted Yurchenko enough
to permit him to return two days later to the State Department.
The Soviet Union has no history of
granting amnesty to, or otherwise forgiving, intelligence
officers who betray state secrets. Pointedly, the acronym
for its counterespionage arm, SMERSH, stood for its slogan,
"Death To All Traitors". As a 25 year old veteran of KGB counterespionage,
Yurchenko certainly knew the fate that would have awaited
a traitor-- or any KGB officer that had, without proper authority,
divulging secret data to the CIA . While there are many cases
of ordinary Soviet citizens, and even ballet dancers, intellectuals,
journalists and soldiers-- who did not have access to state
secrets-- returning to the Soviet Union without facing punishment,
KGB officers, who commit treason, fall into a different category.
For that reason, any Soviet intelligence officers who returned
to Russia, without punishment for his putative treason, was
presumed by the CIA to have been acting under KGB orders in
feigning disloyalty. In fact, there had never been a previous
case-- in least in the public record-- of a KGB officer who,
after defecting to the United States, re-defecting.)
Yurchenko's voluntary return could
be explained in two ways. Either he had not been a traitor
but a KGB officer sent on a mission; or he had been a traitor
and he was acting completely irrationally in putting himself
in the hands of the KGB-- even though it meant facing death
or imprisonment.
The possibility that Yurchenko was
crazed, irrational or even unstable on November 4th does not
satisfactorily explain, however, the Soviet Embassy's next
move in the drama-- its decision to send Yurchenko back to
the State Department for an interview where he would be examined
by CIA representatives, psychologists and state Department
officials. At any point during this interview, he could again
offer to defect. If he had been upset at the handling of his
case by the CIA, or disturbed by the threat of unanticipated
Soviet reprisals against himself or his family, the CIA could
conceivably find some way of reassuring him. If he had indeed
been a traitor who had changed his mind, he could, at least
from the Soviet perspective, change it again under American
persuasion. The Soviet embassy could have kept Yurchenko in
its confines indefinitely. It was under no obligation to place
him back into American hands on November 6th, and give him
another opportunity to save his life by defecting again. Such
a risk would be inconceivable if Yurchenko had actually been
a traitor, and divulged secrets from KGB headquarters for
three months because Soviet intelligence would need to exhaustively
determine from him in precise detail every iota of information
he revealed -- or even knew. This kind of damage assessment
would require intense interrogation of Yurchenko, by experts
familiar with the cases in which he had been involved for
a quarter of a century. This meant that the KGB would now
have to keep tight control over him-- until he was squeezed
of every drop of information.
Under these circumstance, Yurchenko
would not have been returned to America officials if he was
unstable, deranged or untrustworthy. The KGB could hardly
trust a traitor, especially one who changed sides irrationally.
Indeed, it could only be fully confident that he would return
from the State Department if it knew Yurchenko was a well-disciplined
KGB officer who had already proven himself loyal by carrying
out his provocative assignment. The fact that he was allowed
to go to the State Department, and to give a press conferences
in Washington D.C., showed that the Soviets had full confidence
in his rationality.
After Yurchenko returned to the KGB
in Moscow-- where he added insult to injury by holding yet
another press conference-- the CIA acted to submerge the spy
war from public sight. It simply declared that Yurchenko had
been a "bona fide" defector -- a term used by the CIA when
a defector demonstrates his good faith and loyalty to the
United States by his subsequent actions. In previous cases,
it took defectors years to earn them. In this case, Yurchenko
had betrayed U.S. intelligence by returning to Moscow and
divulging, publicly and presumably privately, secret details
of his CIA debriefing. Never before had a defector earned
his "bona fides" in such a perverse manner.
The end play
of this double sting had shattering implications for the
CIA. Not only had its deputy director tied his own credibility
to the validity of this temporary defector, but the Director
of the CIA, William Casey, also pronounced him to be "real"
prior to his embarrassing return. Far more important, his
re-defection threatened to rekindle the entire issue of
whether or not the KGB had been duping American intelligence.
The re-defection also left unresolved the mystery of the
betrayal of the American agent in Moscow. If Yurchenko was
nothing more than a double-agent, dangled by the KGB in
Rome and then reeled back again in Washington, it had then
to be assumed that the message he delivered also came from
the KGB and, even if factually accurate, it was a red herring,
designed to confuse its investigation of the betrayal. He
had pointed investigators in the direction of a new Soviet
surveillance device, the so-called spy dust, and a "spent"
ex-CIA employee. If this was the wrong trail, it meant that
the KGB had other means of learning the identity of western
agents, and it was going to great lengths to protect it.
The search foran active mole in the CIA, threatened to again
pry open a pandora's box of suspicions and troubles.
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