In the KGB flowchart, Yurchenko worked mainly in the Anglo-Saxon area and the CIA men knew perfectly well who he was. They even suspected him of being the executioner of Shadrin, a KGB double agent who also worked for the Americans. Shadrin had mysteriously disappeared in 1975 in Vienna and no one had seen him since. He was, in fact, kidnapped and executed by a team led by Yurchenko.
In late July 1985 Yurchenko was in Rome and was there to supervise the movement of a handful of Soviet scientists in Sicily. The scientists in question were to participate in an international conference on nuclear weapons. Yurchenko was there to control their appointments and visits and to ensure their safety. Naturally, a major priority of Yurchenko's team was to ensure that the scientists did not cross over to the West.There was no shortage of such happenings if one looks at history.
In early August, Yurchenko decided to visit the Vatican museums. He left the Soviet embassy, got into a taxi and drove off. Twenty-four hours later, he had still not reappeared and his compatriots in Rome began to panic. The Italians, who were very embarrassed, began to search for him while in the mean time the affair took on an international dimension. In Moscow, the Foreign Office demanded results and accused the CIA of having abducted Yurchenko.
In reality, Yurchenko had never been to the Vatican. Two hours after he had left the Soviet embassy, he sought refuge at the US diplomatic mission and immediately asked for political asylum. The CIA were quickly informed: Yurchenko, after all, was a very big fish and it was immediately decided to transfer him discreetly to the US as soon as possible.
It was two months later before people learned from official US sources that a high-ranking KGB officer had defected. Yurchenko was living in a country house, not far from the CIA'S Langley headquarters, where he could be questioned, relentlessly. Ever cautious, the secret service first made him sit a lie detector test. After all, Yurchenko could be a false defector, or a ‘Trojan Horse' as it is known in counterintelligence: an agent who pretends to have betrayed his country, only to better intoxicate those with whom he has found refuge.
But Yurchenko passed the test and as the sophisticated device developed by intelligence experts was considered infallible, the men of the CIA no longer had any reason to doubt him. He spoke a great deal and soon gave up valuable information. He began by acknowledging his responsibility in the disappearance of Shadrin, before elucidating on another story that had been significantly bothering the staff at Langley.
In 1984, the head of the CIA station in Moscow sent out a warning: his men were falling one after another, being denounced, arrested by the KGB and then deported. What was worse, a Soviet aviation expert called Tolkachev, who was an important CIA informant, had just been shot.There must have been a mole, but until then, the Americans had been unable to identify who it was.
When asked about this, Yurchenko said that he knew at least one agent who had infiltrated the American secret services, a former CIA officer whose code name was ‘Robert'. After giving more details, ‘Robert' was identified. His real name was Edward Lee Howard and although he was no longer a fed, the role he had played had been particularly devastating. Yurchenko then proceeded to tell the story in front of his stunned interrogators.
Howard, a small, clever young man with plenty of qualifications, had been recruited by the CIA in the early 1980s. He was assigned to the Soviet division and the aim was to send him to Moscow where he would be responsible for processing agents. This was an important and sensitive post and Howard underwent rigorous training before embarking on his mission. At Langley, he was shown all the files of the agents who had infiltrated the USSR that he would have to monitor. However, before his departure, Howard was also subjected to a lie detector test.The Americans, having absolute confidence in this device, were thus guilty of both using and abusing it.
In this instance, the results proved disastrous: Howard was not only dishonest and a liar, but was also a drinker and an occasional drug taker. There was now absolutely no question about sending him to Moscow. The CIA specialists, by waiting until the last moment for him to take the test, had committed an unforgivable mistake that was to cost them dearly. Failed by the CIA, Howard was left to himself, but as he now possessed confidential information, he needed to be strictly monitored.
However, this was not the case and now the CIA committed their second major error: Howard easily escaped his watchmen and it was not long before he contacted the Russians. He sold them his information and in order to finally escape the CIA, decided to escape behind the Iron Curtain, whereby he proceeded to denounce, one after another, all the American agents in Moscow, causing considerable damage and destroying years of work.
Yurchenko had put the CIA on Howard's trail, but it was too late: the damage had already been done and Howard could not even answer for his betrayal as he was now safe in the East. Nevertheless, the defector had satisfied the Americans' curiosity, who now finally understood why such an epidemic or arrests had hit their Moscow post.
However, by revealing the source of their woes, and thus betrayal of Howard, Yurchenko had only shed light on some ancient history and his information could hardly help any new developments. Denouncing a now un-active Soviet agent would hardly worry the KGB, but it did allow the defector to have some form of credibility.
Le Matin111
Spies are like dominoes, standing upright in a game the Japanese love to play: all it takes is a flick and the line of hundreds of dominoes falls down in one great wave. This theory of ‘domino rockers’ can shed light on the information revealed by the Los Angeles Times regarding the case of the Soviet diplomat, Vitaly Yurchenko, who disappeared in Rome in the middle of August. The domino theory of ‘one falls, they all fall’, is true, and could be seen in the great commotion that seized the secret services such as the West German intelligence agency, during that month of August. On 8 August, the Italian authorities announced the disappearance in Rome of Vitaly Yurchenko from the Soviet embassy.
On 19 August, Hans-Joachim Tiedge, head of the West German counterintelligence unit, crossed over to the East. The Corriere Della Sera announced that Tiedge’s flight was directly related to Yurchenko’s disappearance and the USSR recalled many of its spies who were operating in the West lest they fall as the result of Yurchenko’s revelations. Several secretaries who worked for the West German authorities also disappeared: the moles were running around in their underground corridors. The dominoes had been tumbled. Another network was also savaged, that of the Soviet spies in Britain, who were expelled after the man in charge of KGB operation in Britain, Oleg Gordievsky, was handed over to the British.
Debriefing a defector is like dealing with a ball of yarn that has unravelled. You need to be patient and act like a psychologist. It is an art, so in the first few weeks you need to leave a bit of slack. The method was clearly effective and Yurchenko provided accurate, consistent information, and also delivered more names, even if they were for spies who were no longer operational. But once passed those first few weeks, Yurchenko got bored. He was living alone in a big house in the woods. He wanted to see the world and speak Russian. The head of the CIA himself, Bill Casey, even came and had dinner with him: a flattering recognition of a man who had held such high office in the KGB.
Casey promised that as soon as his questioning was finished,Yurchenko would receive a minister's salary, would have a house bought for him and receive free health care. The good life! However, this was not enough and Yurchenko longed to flee his gilded cage. This would have been dangerous for an ordinary defector, unless he already knew that he would not be at any risk.
On 2 November, four months after his defection in Rome and two weeks before an important meeting in Geneva between Reagan and Gorbachev, Yurchenko was allowed to dine in Washington - a decision that had nothing to do with chance.
Yurchenko was obviously accompanied by a CIA agent whose role it was to keep an eye on him and keep him safe. The Russian chose a chic restaurant in Washington that was renowned for its exce
llent cuisine, Le Pied de Cochon. Yurchenko was enjoying his meal with his guardian when he suddenly got up from the table. Smiling, he looked at the CIA man and said, ‘If I get up and leave, what would you do? Would you shoot me?'. Dumbfounded, the other man said no. Yurchenko laughed and said he was going out for about twenty minutes. He left the restaurant and quickly disappeared. A few minutes later, he calmly walked into the Soviet embassy. If it was Yurchenko who chose Le Pied de Cochon, it was because of its location close to the embassy!
There was worse still to come for the Americans. Indeed, the next day Yurchenko gave a press conference in the embassy, where he explained about his alleged defection and did nothing less than accuse the CIA of having kidnapped him in Rome. After being drugged, he was transported back to the USA where he was put in a CIA house and interrogated and even tortured.Yurchenko added that he did not know what he had said during these interrogations, claiming that if people wanted to find out then they should ask the CIA.
This was unquestionably a big blow for the US authorities as only a few weeks ago, the CIA had presented Yurchenko's defection as a major success story. The Americans were thus ridiculed and President Reagan himself was weakened. There was no doubt that he would be in trouble the next time he had an arm wrestle with Gorbachev.
The CIA still tried to save face and explained that this second defection was really a love story: Yurchenko was madly in love and this was why he had thrown himself into the arms of the Americans in Rome. His sweetheart's name was Valentina and was the wife of a Soviet diplomat. Yurchenko had apparently met her when he was stationed in Washington in 1970 and ever since his return to Moscow he had pined for her. In 1985, her husband was a diplomat posted to Canada, and with America's help, Yurchenko reached out to her. He had asked the CIA to help him see his beloved and on two occasions, was escorted by CIA agents to Montreal. However, she no longer wanted to see him and so the Soviet was plunged into a deep depression that would eventually see him deciding to return to the motherland.
This was hardly a credible explanation and this sentimental love story did not convince many people. However, it was possible that Yurchenko, who had the reputation of being a womanizer, did have an affair with Valentina. The question was whether he would have defected just to find a woman whom he had not seen for five years and who he did not know if she still loved him? It seems very strange. It is more likely that Yurchenko's roundtrip was planned from the start and he was part of an operation that had been devised with great subtlety.
BenoTt Rayski112
What kind of comedy do you prefer? Funny or surreal? The Marx Brothers, Hellazpoppin or Airplane!? For the Yurchenko affair, which smeared the United States, and above all, the White House, you have an embarrassment of riches, unless you prefer a more topical titles, such as How Ronnie was conned by Vitaly? It was Ronald Reagan who, in this tragedy, was masterfully outplayed by Mikhail Gorbachev and appeared as nothing more than a lone, lamentable victim.This is a man who some extol, with an enthusiasm worthy of a better cause, as a talented communicator who denounces human rights violations in the USSR, calling it an ‘Evil Empire’. Here is a man who multiplies media initiatives, speeches and interviews, in the hope of sitting in front of Gorbachev on 19 November in Geneva, and making him out to be a loser. Well, today this man finds himself humiliated by a spy, Vitaly Yurchenko, whose defection the Americans triumphed at and who has now announced from the USSR embassy in Washington, that he had been kidnapped by the CIA, tortured and forced to declare who knows what. When Ronald Reagan is in Geneva on 19 November, he knows he will have to accept the knowing smiles of Gorbachev without flinching, with the latter of the two being by far the best player at the game.
The war waged by the secret services is often psychological. It is important to make a point to your opponent, but the main principle is to leave him wanting more and the Yurchenko affair is actually an example of a destabilising operation. To help understand it better, it is useful to leave this case behind for a moment and instead refer to the Ivy Bells Operation: a truly sensational case! Here the US had devised a very sophisticated system of spying on Soviet operations in the Sea of Othotsk, in the east of the USSR and off Sakhalin Island. This was a very popular area for Soviet nuclear submarines and a place where ballistic missile tests were regularly conducted, thus making it a very sensitive military zone as well.
The Americans had wanted to know more about these tests for a long time and the technicians at the NSA, America's largest intelligence agency, had finally found the solution: tap the underwater cables used by the Russians and intercept the information sent through them. The information itself was not even encrypted, as the Russians believed completely in the invulnerability of their technology.
The procedure was as follows: a submarine first marks one of the cables at the bottom of the sea. Then divers attach a kind of box to the cable, which is full of sound recorders and voila! Now all communications that pass along the cable will be electronically recorded, without actually damaging the cable itself: a truly remarkable technological feat. It was even programmed so that if, for one reason or another, there was a failure and the Russians retracted the cable, the box would detach itself at the slightest movement. The only catch was that the information gathered was collected only twice a year, due to the fact that the area was full of anti-submarine patrols. This meant that the information was not very fresh, but thanks to this terminal, the NSA were able to collect very specific information on the missile launches.
The system operated until 1981, when a US satellite that regularly took images of the Sea of Okhotsk captured a group of vessels just above the site where the terminal was attached to the Soviet cable. This did not necessarily mean that the Russians had discovered the device, but in all likelihood, they knew exactly where they should look. The NSA was in no doubt: they had been betrayed. In short, human intelligence had beaten electronic espionage. Sometime later, the Americans sent a submarine to the site, only to discover that then device itself had disappeared.
After this failure they did not use this method again, but the NSA electronics did offer a significant improvement to the system. The main drawback of the Ivy Bells operation was the delay between the recording of the information and collecting of it, and so the NSA advocated the simultaneous laying of several listening devices on Soviet underwater installations, this time off the northern coast of the USSR. However, instead of collecting the device itself, it would directly transmit the information via a submarine cable that had been laid solely for this purpose and was connected to various outposts. The system would send the information collected as far as Greenland, but must then pass under an ice sheet with a total length of over 1,200 miles. Quite the expensive operation! However, in military matters, even the most astronomical figures were not scary: under Reagan, nothing was too expensive when fighting the USSR.
In was in this context that Yurchenko defected to the United States. Just after he arrived, he gave up the name of some ex-spy and casually told the officers questioning him that there was a mole in the NSA. Immediately, the minds of the CIA went to the failed Ivy Bells operation. Yurchenko stated that the NSA man had contacted him by telephone six years previously, while he himself had been stationed in Washington. He pretended not to know his name, but in reality,Yurchenko was just playing a game of cat and mouse with his interrogators. He knew that all telephone communications from the Soviet embassy were recorded by the Americans, which meant that they would have to search through six years of tape recordings.
The CIA agents immediately began their research and the voice of Yurchenko's mysterious correspondent was identified by their colleagues working in the NSA's Soviet division as being that of Ronald Pelton. He had recently resigned from the NSA and was therefore no longer useful to Russians: exactly like Howard and the other moles that Yurchenko had denounced.
Pelton was easily located and subsequently confessed. Although he had held a rather junior role with the NSA, he nevertheles
s had had access to highly confidential information. He knew, for example, about the Soviet communications that were being spied on by the US, including the submarine cable in the Sea of Okhotsk. What is more, Pelton had the gift of a good memory: he remembered everything and through his betrayal had provided the Russians with a wealth of information.
So why did Yurchenko put the Americans onto Pelton's trail? The goal must have been to show them that Moscow was fully aware of their electronic submarine spy project, as well as many other relating to President Reagan's famous ‘Star Wars'. For America's CIA and NSA it was a complete disaster and they were now forced to question a number of other projects and even ones already in operation.
Yurchenko had therefore briefly come to the US just for this purpose: to humble the intelligence agencies and put them in a beautiful mess. The rest, especially the humiliation of Reagan in front of Gorbachev, was, so to speak, just the icing on the cake.
Genovefa Etienne and Claude Moniquet113
Returning to Moscow on 6 November 1985, accompanied by another KGB officer called Valeri Martinov, Yurchenko left behind a humiliated CIA who, on the eve of the American-Soviet summit, were trying to analyse its mistakes and work out what had happened. Shortly after Yurchenko arrived back in the USSR, rumours began to circulate that he had been executed and according to tradition, his family even received the bill for the bullets that had been used to kill him.The western press enjoyed this story, right up until the point where the dead man reappeared and began giving interviews. From time to time in the years that followed, the KGB would bring him out of the prison where he was supposed to be wasting away.Yet no one ever gave the final true story about his incredible round trip. It is more likely that ifYurchenko was a genuine defector, then he would have known the fate that the KGB reserved for all traitors, no matter what.
Great Spies of the 20th Century Page 26
