← The Redefector
The Redefector
Goat Rodeo | Chapter 3
00:36:11
Vitaly Yurchenko is a fountain of intelligence and quickly becomes a celebrity in US intelligence circles. But the higher his profile, the greater the threat to his safety...
Loading summary
Transcript78 lines
- [00:00]
Colin Thompson
This is an ad for Roundup for Lawns. It kills weeds down to the root.
- [00:04]
Julie Cohn
Without harming your lawn.
- [00:06]
Colin Thompson
It works on crabgrass, dandelions, clover.
- [00:08]
Julie Cohn
It works on weeds with names you can't even pronounce.
- [00:11]
Colin Thompson
It's Roundup for Lawns. When used as directed, always read and follow pesticide label directions. If you have a locked AT&T phone, we're here with bolt cutters. T Mobile will help pay off your locked phone and give you a new 5G phone for free. All on America's largest 5G network. Visit t mobile.com carrierfreedom Be a virtual prepaid MasterCard in 15 days is free phone up to $830 via 24 monthly bill credits plus tax and a $10 device connection charge. Qualifying port in trade in service on Go5G next and credit required. Contact us before canceling entire account to continue bill credits or credit stop and balance on required finance agreement as do bill credits end if you pay off devices early this podcast is intended for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
- [01:07]
Julie Cohn
From the moment he arrived at his safe house in Oakton, Virginia, Vitaly Yurchenko was eager to share intelligence with his CIA and FBI handlers. Like, really eager.
- [01:18]
Colin Thompson
You think of things at night, you think of things during the day, and he wanted to be able to write them down while he thought of them so that he didn't forget them. And he did ask for a legal pad that he could put next to his bed so he he could take notes when he thought of something.
- [01:34]
Julie Cohn
That was dan Payne, the 25 year old who was one of Yurchenko's bodyguards for the first two weeks. The debriefers tell me Yurchenko basically didn't stop talking. Here is one of his CIA debriefers, Colin Thompson, the Vietnam War veteran I had sandwiches with outside of dc.
- [01:50]
Colin Thompson
He was talking yak yak yak yak yak wasn't necessarily valuable, but it's what he thought was valuable. And I've seen it. I've seen it. I've had enough experience with defectors and it's all basically the same that they want to establish their worth. They're dependent. Consider what if we said, you know, no, thanks very much, you can leave now. And he walks out the door and he's standing in a townhouse parking lot in Northern Virginia someplace. What the hell are you going to do.
- [02:29]
Julie Cohn
From Waveland? I'm Julie Cohn and this is the Redefector. This is Chapter three Goat Rodeo. From the moment Yurchenko arrived, he was a Fountain of intelligence. Here's Mike Rochford, one of his FBI debriefers.
- [02:51]
Colin Thompson
We started debriefing him like, I mean, ungodly hours, like 12 to 15 hours a day. And we were mostly joint CIA and FBI debriefings with four of us and just him. And I know we were wearing his ass out, but we were trying to find out a lot of important stuff. I mean, exigent circumstances. Are there any plans for war? Are there any plans for wet operations? Gorbachev is about to meet with Reagan and Reykjavik. And what can you tell us about that? We had to kind of walk through all this stuff, and you have to do it not once, but you have to ask it several different times, several different ways.
- [03:32]
Julie Cohn
Over time, the ungodly debriefing hours evened out to a few hours twice a day, which is still an exhausting amount of debriefing. The FBI and CIA had different styles, and it was often a culture clash. Reid Bros. Yurchenko's other FBI debriefer, took particular issue with the way the CIA's Phil would debrief him.
- [03:52]
Colin Thompson
That's best. They had an interviewer that then, boy, they were hurting. He would not give Yurchenko a chance to finish what he was going to say.
- [04:03]
Julie Cohn
Reid says Phil put words in Yurchenko's mouth or cut him off impatiently before he could really answer. Reid and Mike would then revisit those points later and let Yurchenko finish all those thoughts. They understood that it could sometimes take a while for Yurchenko to figure out how to say what he wanted in a foreign language.
- [04:20]
Colin Thompson
He always. He had, I thought, different compartments that were interesting. Once you kind of open a door, you trigger something, and all of a sudden you want to take it to the end before you move on, even though it might be a little off the beaten path of the topic that you're supposed to cover. You want to take it to the end because he had something to say. It was important to take the time, and we did. We spent a lot of time on going down rabbit holes. But it's true in anybody's mind of trying to recall things, you know, like, how do you know this? How do you know that? You know, do you know it from formal debriefing, or is it informal access?
- [04:59]
Julie Cohn
Now I'm about to tell you about some of the many secrets Yurchenko revealed. Many of them were bombshells. And at the time, and still today, none of his debriefers felt concerned that the intel smelled fishy. But I want to step you through some of the highlights, because later, once Yurchenko disappeared, doubt would begin to be cast on this information. It's not that the information wasn't true. All the revelations I'm about to describe to you were in fact verified. But the question was whether they might be what's called chicken feed. I'll let Stephen Engelberg, the former New York Times intelligence reporter you heard from earlier, explain it better.
- [05:43]
Colin Thompson
And it's not enough to say, but wait a minute, look, this guy's given us real classified information about the Soviet Union because that's what they call chicken feed. So you want to mix the big lies in a bunch of sort of chicken feed. That's small truths. That's how spying works. That's how a double agent works. So you have a big lie and then a bunch of small truths. And hopefully those small truths are things that you suspect the other side already knows, or if they knew them, they wouldn't change because you've already moved away from that. But they are nonetheless true. And I think this is something that's very worrisome to counterintelligence people. It's not enough to say, well, we verified this document really is a real internal Soviet military document. Yeah. So what could be chicken feet?
- [06:30]
Julie Cohn
Okay, so here are a few of the many secrets Yurchenko revealed. Let's start with the second mole. That's right, a second mole. And not just any mole, but one who had compromised hundreds of millions of dollars of US intelligence. Yurchenko told his debriefers how someone from the NSA had approached the Soviet embassy sometime in 1980 to divulge information about an exceedingly top secret mission, one the CIA had co named Ivy Bells.
- [07:01]
Colin Thompson
Ivy Bells turned out to be a very highly classified US Effort to tap the cables in the Sea of Odhusk. And those cables, they would send mini submarines down and put recording devices on them. It turned out that you could tap a cable without actually penetrating it if you were clever enough. And that's what they were doing. They had these mini submarines and they were listening to all the Soviet military communications for an entire region.
- [07:28]
Julie Cohn
It was a brilliant operation executed at freezing depths, requiring scientific and technological innovation just to make it possible. It started in 1970 when the US learned of the existence and location of the cables. By listening to the transmissions, the US could learn details about the Soviets intercontinental ballistic missile and nuclear first strike capabilities. Countless dollars were spent on this. An entire building was constructed just to process the intel Ivy Bells was generating. And for years Ivy Bells worked beautifully until 1981. US surveillance satellites showed a flotilla of Soviet ships sitting right above the site of the wiretap. And then, when a US Submarine was dispatched to recover the tap, it was gone. It was a devastating loss. Everyone was asking themselves, how the hell had things gone wrong? And in the first hours of arriving at his safe house, Vitaly Yurchenko told them exactly how in 1981, an NSA mole, one who might still be funneling secrets to the Soviets, had spilled the beans to the kgb. Not only that, but Yurchenko knew enough about that mole that they'd likely be able to catch him. For instance, Yurchenko knew he had blondish reddish hair, that he was 35 to 38 years old, that he drove a green car, and he knew the protocol the man would use if he wanted to get in touch with his handlers. He would go to a payphone at the Pizza castle Restaurant at Seven Corners at 8pm on the last Saturday of any month. When the phone rang, he was to answer it. Why did Yurchenko know all this? Because he was the officer at the embassy who received this NSA mole on the day he had walked in. And though he knew him only by pseudonym, if Yurchenko could see him or hear his voice, he would be able to identify him. As it happens, Reid brose from the FBI had been surveilling the Soviet embassy that day in 1981 when the red headed NSA mystery man had walked in.
- [09:30]
Colin Thompson
I can see him because I was there, because I know I was on the street when the guy walked in. He had gray trousers, had a brown hat on. It was Christmas.
- [09:44]
Julie Cohn
Wow. So you remember watching him walk in? Yeah. And so when Yurchenko was describing him, did you immediately know, like, wait a second, you piece it together right there. Wow, that's crazy. It's such a small world. These people. Everyone is like, oh, my God. The only problem was Reid never saw the man walk out.
- [10:12]
Colin Thompson
He never came out. And Yurchenko told us that what happened was they changed his clothes, shaved his beard, they carried out a carpet, they rolled up a rug and put him in the middle and then put the whole thing in a van and put him in the van.
- [10:34]
Julie Cohn
When I had reached out to Reid, all I knew was that he was Yurchenko's FBI debriefer. The fact that he also happened to be one of the guys who had watched what turned out to be this NSA mole walk into the Soviet embassy years earlier was a crazy surprise for me. For weeks, the NSA and CIA poured through the database of NSA employees searching for the person who matched Yurchenko's description, to no avail. But then Reid remembered that on the day the mole had walked in, he had called the embassy first to tell them he would be coming. He didn't want to loiter outside.
- [11:08]
Colin Thompson
So what I did. I knew when he called in. I knew the day and the time it was. So I had them to go back through the telephone call that was made.
- [11:20]
Julie Cohn
Eventually, the FBI did, in fact, find the tape of that call. And I'm happy to say I was also able to track it down In a CBS NewsHour report I found through the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. It's wild not only to hear the very moment that this man volunteered his services to the Soviets, but also to hear Vitaly Yurchenko's voice on the other end of that line answering the man's questions.
- [11:48]
Colin Thompson
I have some information to discuss with you and to give to you. What? What? What? I think it would be better not to discuss it.
- [11:56]
Julie Cohn
The phone.
- [11:59]
Colin Thompson
I can be there in two minutes. Okay. Is it okay to come now? Nobody is there. Okay. How do I just ring the. The bell and someone lets me in? How do I get in? No, no. You. You get through the gate direct. Okay. Let me in. Huh? They will let me in. No, of course. There in two minutes. Mm.
- [12:27]
Julie Cohn
They brought the tape to the NSA to play it for people until someone could ID the voice. And they were prepared to play it for 300 or so people, but the third person they interviewed told them to turn the tape off. He knew exactly whose voice that was. His name was Ronald Pelton. The reason they'd had trouble finding him in the NSA database was that he no longer worked there. He had resigned from his job the year prior. But with Yurchenko's help positively identifying him, Pelton was arrested and ultimately sentenced to life in prison. I've never heard any other context where the revelation of a mole could be considered chicken feed. Typically, chicken feed is small potatoes information, the kind of intel you think the other side probably already has or may be on the brink of knowing anyway. It's gotta be juicy enough to make your enemy believe that they aren't dealing with a double agent, that they're managing a real asset. But that normally does not mean selling out a mole who's done hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to your enemy. Nonetheless, Yurchenko's is not your typical spy story, and even this revelation has been questioned. So I wanted you to understand it for yourself. Okay. Let's talk about some of the other huge secrets that Yurchenko revealed that are also debated. One was spy dust. By the 1970s, a different Soviet spy had actually given his CIA handler some samples of a spray the Soviets had been developing, which the CIA sent to a lab for review. The American scientists found that it was composed of a very complicated organic compound that were not naturally occurring, but that's all we knew. Enter Yurchenko, who told his debriefers a lot more about this compound. He told them the codename was Raduga in Russian, which I think means rainbow. He explained that the compound was made from a similar material found in the iridescent fine dust on the wings of butterflies. The Americans called it spy dust.
- [14:30]
Colin Thompson
I was spy dusted, Bastard.
- [14:32]
Julie Cohn
You were spy dusted. This is John Cipher. You met him in the first episode. But as a quick refresher, he is a career CIA officer who served, among other things, as chief of station in Moscow in the early 90s, where spy dusting was rampant.
- [14:48]
Colin Thompson
Oh, yeah. So. And I don't want to go too far afield. So Sergey Ivanov was a career KGB officer. American targets officer. Beautiful English, but friends with Putin because they're both from Leningrad. He's the one that is. His name is behind the whole 2016 efforts to fuck with our election. Sergey Ivanov. But. So he was a buddy of mine. Buddy. I was trying to, you know, work on him in Helsinki, and we all go to his house and we would. We would drink and smoke cigars and stuff. Not cigars. Smoke those Stalin cigarettes. Like, do you ever see those cigarettes? So they had. They're about a half of them are the tobacco, and then the other half is the filter, but the filter is just round paper with air. Like, there's no.
- [15:30]
Julie Cohn
God, it's so strong.
- [15:32]
Colin Thompson
A little bit of air. And then Russian. Back then, if you open a bottle of vodka or cognac, it's just tear off top. So, you know, every time you'd open one, the two of you have to finish it and they bring out another bottle, like, fuck me. And at the time, we knew about spy dust and we were testing for it. So our technical services people would send us little wipes to use after somebody visited. And he was spydusting me the whole time. So Spydust was a counterintelligence tool that was, you know, this luminal or this stuff that you couldn't see. But they'd place it in places where they thought people who might be handling Russian sources would be. So they would have some sort of chemical tag in My house. He'd put it in my bathroom, in my. Whatever.
- [16:15]
Julie Cohn
Spydust was slightly different, had a different chemical tag for each foreigner they were watching. So a higher up in the kgb, in this case, for instance, Sergey Ivanovna would say, give John a bottle of vodka covered in John Cipher tagged spy dust. Then KGB counterintelligence would secretly go through their own headquarters at night and test people's offices there to see if John Cipher's tag showed up anywhere it shouldn't.
- [16:38]
Colin Thompson
And they would say, oh, look at this, Yevgeny. John Seifer's tag is in Yevgeny's office. He never reported meeting John Seifer. Let's. Let's go after him. And so, yeah, spy dust was a thing. It became an issue because we thought it might be carcinogenic, because, you know, that's why I have white hair. The fucking Russians, I'm convince, yeah, but that's all right. I didn't have white hair, and after I left Moscow, I had white.
- [17:01]
Julie Cohn
After Yurchenko's revelation, the agency publicly warned any Americans working or traveling in the Soviet Union about the suspected health risk of spy deaths. And it caused quite a kerfuffle.
- [17:14]
Colin Thompson
A most unusual new spy story broke today. The United States officially accused the Soviet Union of employing a chemical dust to track embassy employees in Moscow, a dust that may cause genetic mutations and could be cancer causing. The charge came from State Department spokesman Charles Redmond. The United States government has recently determined that Soviet authorities for a number of years have used chemical substances to monitor the activities of employees at the US Embassy in Moscow. The substances in question, which have been applied indirectly to embassy personnel, leave deposits on the person or possessions of people with whom they have had contact. We have protested the practice in the strongest terms and demanded that it be terminated immediately. The United States will take every possible measure to ensure the safety and well being of all American citizens in the Soviet Union and to determine the full implications of the risk to which they have been exposed.
- [18:18]
Julie Cohn
Now, the existence of spy dust was already known, and the Americans even had their own sample of it already. But Yurchenko certainly gave them more intel about what it was and critically, when and how it was used. Understanding the enemy's means and methods affects the CIA's operational behavior. In this case, it could help them be more careful about what they touch. Bottles of brandy, gifts of any kind, really. Doorknobs, car doors, how they touch it, and what they do to get clean before they meet a source. Yurchenko told us many other things about chemical warfare capability, about a unit of military sleeper agents trained to activate in times of war about the location of a secret lab that worked on deadly poisons. And he confirmed the suspected KGB assassination of a Bulgarian journalist using a deadly umbrella that shot tiny poison pellets from its stomach tip. But perhaps the most important secret Yurchenko revealed, other than the moles, was the accidental assassination of a man named Nicholas Chedrine. Shadrin had defected to the US from the Soviet Navy after many years here in America. The CIA and FBI together convinced him to return to Vienna to meet with the KGB and become a triple agent, pretending to go back to the Soviet Union but actually funneling info back to the U.S. chedrine agreed, but once he got to Vienna, he was never seen again for years. The Americans wanted to know what happened. Chedrine's widow put enormous pressure on both agencies to give her answers. And Vitaly Yurchenko finally revealed that the KGB had kidnapped and drugged Chedrine. Only they had given him too much sedative. And when they realized with horror that he wasn't breathing, they tried desperately to resuscitate him. Brandy down his throat, an injection of adrenaline, cpr, everything, with no success. They decided to keep the accidental murder a secret, because if it came out that Chedrine had been murdered, no one would believe it was by accident and it would cause an international incident. Yurchenko said that this was one of the darkest secrets of the kgb, because in order to cover up the murder of Brezhnev, the leader of the Soviet Union at the time had knowingly lied to not one, but two American presidents, Ford and Carter, who had pressed him for answers. Yurchenko said that if the KGB were to ever find out he had told them the truth about Shadrine, they would surely go after his family. He reiterated again how critical it was for his defection and this admission in particular, to remain a secret.
- [21:07]
Colin Thompson
The HBO original series the Last of Us is back for a new season, and so is the official the Last of Us podcast. Five years after the events of the first season, Joel and Ellie are drawn.
- [21:17]
Julie Cohn
Into conflict with each other and a.
- [21:20]
Colin Thompson
World even more dangerous than the one they left behind. Join host Troy Baker, who voiced Joel in the video game, and showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann as they unpack each episode after it airs. Listen to HBO's the Last of Us podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and stream HBO's the Last of Us on Max. This is an ad by BetterHelp. Let's talk numbers in person. Therapy can cost anywhere from 100 to $250 per session, which adds up. But with BetterHelp online therapy, you can save on average up to 50% per session. Therapy should feel accessible, not like a luxury. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp has served over 5 million people globally and helps you fit therapy into your busy life. Your well being is worth it. Visit betterhelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp. H E L p.com.
- [22:13]
Julie Cohn
Word of the high ranking mystery defector seemed to have spread like wildfire. The questions funneling into the offices at the FBI and the CIA started to balloon. It wasn't just from other offices or divisions within the agencies. It was from the military and even from outside. At the CIA, Colin Thompson had been saddled with more of the work debriefing Yurchenko than Phil by a certain point, because Phil had been promised an assignment in Rome. And after only a few weeks of debriefing, Yurchenko would need to leave for language training. Back at CIA headquarters, Paul Redmond had taken over as head of the SE Division's counterintelligence, meaning he would now be overseeing Yurchenko's case. To hear Paul talk about it, people were beginning to treat Yurchenko almost like a tourist attraction. It's not just questions they're being bombarded with, but requests to go and meet Yurchenko for no real reason other than it seems curiosity.
- [23:07]
Colin Thompson
And it was a goat rodeo or a goat fuck. Excuse me, requirements. People screaming all over the government and stuff. And then some people started getting really obnoxious. It all ended up with me because the managers were scared and there was a general in the Pentagon whose last name was Stillwell, who demanded from the Pentagon to meet Yurchenko. And they, you know, everybody's against it. So it fell to me to tell him to go fly a kite politely. And he would. He never let it go. And I mean, that was the kind of shit that was going on.
- [23:47]
Julie Cohn
The way Paul describes it, the demands to see Yurchenko were non stop. And that was a problem. Paul had to tell a very highly ranked general to fly a kite because though it may seem obvious, the more people who visit the safe house, the less safe it becomes. Here's Milt Bearden again. So at a certain point that that safe house, it got a little busy.
- [24:11]
Colin Thompson
Oh, God, yeah. I mean, it was to me, a little bit insane. Everybody wanted to have a piece of it from, you know, the bureau and too many cars around and I thought, what the hell is this? Don't we have a farmhouse somewhere, for Christ's sakes?
- [24:29]
Julie Cohn
The safe house in Oakton just wasn't safe. Here's Colin, one of Yurchenko's CIA debriefers.
- [24:36]
Colin Thompson
And we had to get him out of town. We didn't. We didn't feel comfortable with him there.
- [24:41]
Julie Cohn
It was time to move. And the goat rodeo was a big part of it. The safe house also had another fundamental problem. Okay, there was this thing called the free travel zone. It was a 25 mile radius inside which Soviet diplomats did not need to report their whereabouts to the FBI. And this safe house was within that zone, which was a problem.
- [25:06]
Colin Thompson
Well, probably within five miles of the Soviet embassy. Still within striking distance, easy striking distance of the main presence in the United States of the Soviet the KGB and GRU and whatever else they happened to have.
- [25:24]
Julie Cohn
Reid, one of Yurchenko's FBI debriefers, says the stress of that nearness is what had heightened Yurchenko's stomach pains and health issues. Now, Reid gave me something I never expected to see, ever. As I've told you, he was pretty hesitant to be interviewed for this podcast. But about a year into my research, when we finally met, he arrived carrying a folder under his arm. He set the folder aside, I assume, weighing whether or not to show me its contents. After about 45 minutes of chatting, Reed finally reached for was a manila folder, extra long, the sides discolored from age. Inside were 49 pages of handwritten notes by Reid and Mike, their edges brittled in the 40 years it's been since they were written. It turns out this was a roughed draft of Reid and Mike's official FBI debrief, written the day after Yurchenko had disappeared. I've interviewed over 15 people about their memories of this thing that happened 40 years ago. But these handwritten notes, they were composed right then. When the memories were fresh. Those pages were the closest I could come to real time information. Of course, I understand that it's written by the FBI and as such is skewed with their view, but I think it's worth reading a few of these passages to you. Following is in Reid's handwriting. During the early debriefings of Yurchenko, he expressed on several occasions that he did not want his whereabouts to be known to include the fact that he was cooperating with the United States Intelligence Service. He stated that the Soviets would not retaliate against his family if they could not prove that he defected. This was one of the conditions that he requested at the outset. He cited Bogaty as an example on how to treat his situation. Bogatti's whereabouts have not been made known and no retaliation has been taken against his family. Reid's referring to Anatole Bogatti, a Soviet diplomat who at the time of Yurchenko's defection, had officially just disappeared. There was still no proof he had defected, and without proof that the disappearance was defection, his family had been unharmed. And here's one extra piece from those notes. It was Yurchenko's expressed belief that because of his high position in the KGB, that he would be placed at the top of the list of defectors to be located and if possible, assassinated. Then in a mixture of Mike and Reed's handwriting. Although the CIA provided security guards, he stated on several occasions that as long as he was inside the travel zone, there was always all caps. The possibility of a chance meeting with a Soviet diplomat or Eastern bloc official. Every passing day that he was in the safe house, it became evident that Yurchenko's morale and attitude degenerated to the point where he had difficulty sleeping. Okay, I understood obviously that the Soviets would want Yurchenko dead. I had been told that there was an unwritten agreement, part of what are known as Moscow Rules, where the US Wouldn't kill artifactors on Soviet territory and the Soviets wouldn't kill theirs on US Territory. The people who ascribe to the view that Yurchenko was a plant would argue that his fears about being killed were theatrical, especially given this agreement that he couldn't be killed here. That the more we believed he was afraid of punishment, the more we would feel that he was real. On the other hand, those who believe he was a real defector argue that this supposed rule is flimsy at best and that he had every reason to be afraid. DQ Presents how to Hit Summer Sweet spot. The new DQ Summer Blizzard Treat menu is here. And as the official treat of mlb, we're swinging big with our fan favorite S'mores Blizzard Treat plus new mixing bowl mash up with brownie batter and chocolate chip cookie dough. And even more in our stacked summer lineup.
- [29:23]
Colin Thompson
Hurry in today because nothing says summer like baseball.
- [29:25]
Julie Cohn
And our new Summer Blizzard Treat menu. Right now, a DQ Happy tastes Good participation may vary. Major League Baseball trademarks used with permission.
- [29:35]
Colin Thompson
This is an ad by BetterHelp. Let's talk numbers in person. Therapy can cost anywhere from $100 to $250 per session, which adds up. But with BetterHelp online therapy, you can save on average up to 50% per session. Therapy should feel accessible, not like a luxury. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp has served over 5 million people globally and helps you fit therapy into your busy life. Your well being is worth it. Visit betterhelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp. H E L p.com.
- [30:09]
Julie Cohn
The question was, did Yurchenko really have reason to feel afraid for his life, or was he being dramatic to sell his pretend story of being a defector? To shed some light on this, I spoke with a former KGB general named Oleg Kalugin. Kalugin was a wonder kid in the KGB. In 1970, he became the youngest general ever at the age of 36. For a time, Kalugin had served as chief of the Foreign Counterintelligence Directorate, meaning one of his responsibilities had been to punish or kill KGB officers who stepped out of line. Remember the accidental assassination of Nicholas Shudrine? Oleg had been there that night, had seen him die, had poured brandy down his throat to revive him. Over time, though, Kalugin began to point out the corruption of the Soviet system and became an outspoken critic of the country's new leader, of whom Kalugin is still not a big fan.
- [31:04]
Colin Thompson
Putin is a scoundrel. What's the word? Kind of a son of a bitch.
- [31:13]
Julie Cohn
I would not proceed further and criticizing Vladimir Putin, a man he is still quick to point out, used to be his whiny subordinate, put a death warrant out for him.
- [31:26]
Colin Thompson
In fact, had I stayed in Russia longer, I would be dead now. I mean, he would find ways, either a car accident, you know, some. You know, some. Lots of ways to get rid of people. And by the way, Putin is that kind of a guy. I know him because he was my subordinate. I remember how he would come with papers. Madam, Mr. Kalugan, will you please sign that?
- [31:55]
Julie Cohn
As someone who had been in charge of punishing Soviet officers and as someone who had himself fled and come to the US With a death warrant out for him, I found it interesting when Kalugin told me that anywhere other than America, Fatali wouldn't have been safe.
- [32:10]
Colin Thompson
And I was told by the people from the CIA that had I stayed in, in Europe or elsewhere on the world, you know, I would not be alive in the United States. You will be safe. And in fact, I do know from my own experience and knowledge there was not a single political, I mean, assassination committed by the Soviets on the territory of the United States. Well, anywhere else, no problem. But America is a nuclear Power, you know, you never know what may happen.
- [32:44]
Julie Cohn
This I found really fascinating and it made sense to me, but it's not entirely true. Here's former CIA officer Joe Augustin.
- [32:57]
Colin Thompson
So I'm Joe Augustin. I am a 28 year veteran of the clandestine service at CIA. I get a lot of jobs in the agency, and then I wound up being asked to run the Defector resettlement program by George Tenet.
- [33:14]
Julie Cohn
As head of Defector Resettlement for a time, I wanted him to tell me, would Yurchenko be safe here in the US from political assassination in the past? Have you. Has the resettlement program. Not necessarily Russians, but just in general. Has there been anyone who was killed, who came over?
- [33:32]
Colin Thompson
There have been threats and there have been close calls. There was a case of a defector who found a car bomb that didn't go off in his driveway. Now, can anything be proven that it was, you know, the bad guys or doing it? We're not really sure. Right. The famous Polish defector, Kuklinski, Razad Kuklinski, who was probably one of the all stars spies of the 20th century, he never really managed to settle in because of his personality and, you know, but he had two sons who died mysteriously here in Florida. One was a sailor, you know, recreational sailor. Went out with a friend on a clear day, sunny skies, lost at sea, never found. Right. Another son that he had was hit. Was. Was killed in a hit and run crash. The car was burned to a crisp. The driver was never found. And, you know, speculation, or if you want to think in those terms, how did that happen?
- [35:00]
Julie Cohn
Oleg Kalugin, we spoke with him, said, you know, there has never been. There's never been a defector killed in American soil. The Russians would never do it because of the threat of nuclear war and Moscow rules. Would it be fair to say that used to be. That used to be the feeling.
- [35:16]
Colin Thompson
How many. How many Russian dissidents have fallen out of hotel room windows or balconies or where there's actually no proof?
- [35:26]
Julie Cohn
Yeah, they just. They just have really bad balance, Joe.
- [35:29]
Colin Thompson
I know it's not nuclear war, but. But because how do you prove it? You know, I mean, the Russians, for some reason, love poisons, right? I mean, you know, Litvinenko in 2006 was poisoned with polonium 210 on when he was drinking tea. Skripal was poisoned and, you know, somebody dying of a heart attack. There have been cases where Russian defectors have mysteriously, presumably healthy, died of a heart attack.
- [36:01]
Julie Cohn
Not here, though.
- [36:03]
Colin Thompson
Here. Here, yes, here. And how do you prove that, and that is not what causes a nuclear war. Because.
- [36:12]
Julie Cohn
Because you can't prove.
- [36:13]
Colin Thompson
But you can't prove it, essentially.
- [36:15]
Julie Cohn
Even if Oleg Kalugin was right, that in the 80s it was too dangerous politically for the Soviets to assassinate anyone on American soil. Zhou's point is that it could have been totally fair game though if, say, it was impossible to prove, or for example, if it wasn't technically the Soviets who assassinated him. Here's Mike Rochford again, Yurchenko's FBI debriefer.
- [36:39]
Colin Thompson
And some got some information that the Cubans might be looking, might have been tasked by the Russians to, you know, and then all of a sudden somebody sees Cuban cars in and around Notowee park and driving in the parking area where the safe house is.
- [37:00]
Julie Cohn
Cuban intelligence in the 60s, 70s and 80s were fierce. Not only were they almost immune to recruitment. Not once during that time did the US successfully recruit a single Cuban agent on Cuban soil. But they were also famous for being dauntless, seemingly unafraid of repercussions. Here's Dan Payne again from Yurchenko's security detail.
- [37:24]
Colin Thompson
Yes, well, Cubans are a proxy for the, at the time, for the Soviets. And the Cubans had no fear of the United States. And the Cubans, I mean, they were behind the Sharon Scronage case in Ghana. They were, they interrogated our POWs in Vietnam. The Cubans had no fear of the United States and the Cubans wouldn't hesitate to kill somebody in the US if they needed to.
- [37:57]
Julie Cohn
Yurchenko's fears, in fact, were potentially quite valid, given the situation then with the goat rodeo Paul described and especially with the Cubans on the prowl. One thing had become very clear. The time had come to move Vitaly Urchenko. More on that next time on the Redefector. The Redefector is a production of Waveland. I'm Julie Cohn and I wrote and created the series. Jason Hoke is the executive producer and he also produced and edited the series. Shane Freeman is our sound engineer. Additional production assistance provided by Leo Culp. Music by Robert Ellis. If you love the series, please make sure to leave a review and to tell a friend. Follow Waveland on Instagram at Waveland Media for more information on this series and more. Thanks for listening.