Vanished | Chapter 6

Summary

The Redefector: Vanished | Chapter 6 – Detailed Summary

Host: Julie Cohn
Release Date: April 16, 2025

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Introduction

In Chapter 6 of The Redefector titled "Vanished," host Julie Cohn delves deeper into the enigmatic disappearance of Vitaly Yurchenko, a high-ranking KGB colonel who defected to the United States in 1985. This episode explores the tumultuous journey Yurchenko undertook shortly after his defection, the strained relationships within his protective team, and the mysterious circumstances leading to his sudden vanishing. Through interviews with former CIA officers, FBI agents, and others involved, Julie unravels the complex web surrounding Yurchenko’s fate.

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Yurchenko's Emotional Turmoil and Initial Attempts to Find Solace

Timestamp: [00:21 – 01:08]

Colin Thompson opens the chapter by describing Yurchenko's emotional state upon returning home from Canada. Yurchenko faced rejection from the woman he intended to spend the rest of his life with, leading to severe depression. His psychologist even cautioned that Yurchenko might be a suicide risk. To uplift his spirits, Colin proposed a road trip through the American Southwest, hoping that the change of scenery and camaraderie would help.

Key Quote:

"Yurchenko was despondent, so much so that his psychologist warned he might be a suicide risk."
— Julie Cohn [00:53]

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The Road Trip: Struggles and Growing Tensions

Timestamp: [01:08 – 07:26]

The road trip, intended as a therapeutic escape, quickly became fraught with tension. The CIA initially refused Colin’s request to travel without bodyguards, fearing Soviet retaliation. The lack of professional guarding led to misunderstandings; Yurchenko felt constantly surveilled, reminiscent of his KGB experiences. This atmosphere of distrust mirrored past interactions, such as the incident in Coventry, where Yurchenko misinterpreted the guards' intentions.

Notable Quotes:

"I want to have a talk. I don't like the way this is going."
— Yurchenko [02:46]

"He took this as more of the onerous surveillance of him."
— John Fitzpatrick [03:32]

Despite these challenges, moments of camaraderie emerged. Yurchenko gifted his team with red rocks from Sedona, symbolizing his appreciation for their support and hinting at a desire to build a future beyond his troubled past.

Key Quote:

"He was thinking toward the future."
— Tom Hanna [07:12]

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First Signs of Cracks: The Ronald Pelton Case

Timestamp: [07:26 – 18:52]

The team’s initial rapport began to fracture when Yurchenko identified Ronald Pelton as a mole. While this seemed like progress, the requirement for Yurchenko to testify in court introduced significant complications. Yurchenko feared that testifying would expose him and endanger his family back in the Soviet Union. Additionally, revelations about Nicholas Shudrine's death further strained his trust in the CIA and FBI.

Key Quotes:

"The CIA had let their guard down and Chedrine had been kidnapped under their noses."
— Colin Thompson [05:23]

"I can’t trust you. So the leaks were huge."
— Tom Hanna [23:06]

These mounting pressures led Yurchenko to begin recanting his earlier statements, casting doubt on the veracity of his defection and the information he provided. His hesitation to testify and the subsequent revelations about Soviet betrayals deepened the crisis.

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The Tipping Point: Halloween Incident and Disappearance

Timestamp: [18:52 – 35:03]

As Yurchenko's depression worsened, the team attempted to uplift his spirits by attending a Halloween costume parade at Georgetown, allowing him a rare moment of joy. However, underlying tensions persisted, particularly between Yurchenko and his bodyguards, Tom Hanna and John Fitzpatrick. Tom’s lax approach to security conflicted with Yurchenko’s need for autonomy, culminating in a strategic plot to facilitate Yurchenko’s disappearance.

Yurchenko manipulated Tom Hanna into granting him unsupervised time by posing selective questions about loyalty and consequence, ultimately convincing him to let Yurchenko leave momentarily. This deceptive maneuver led to Yurchenko walking away from a restaurant in Georgetown, effectively vanishing without a trace.

Notable Quotes:

"If I don't come back, it's not your fault."
— Yurchenko [32:16]

"He didn’t follow him?"
— Mike Rochford [32:27]

Tom Hanna’s hesitant compliance and delayed reporting further illustrate the breakdown in protocol that allowed Yurchenko to escape.

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The Aftermath: Hunt for Yurchenko and Internal Fallout

Timestamp: [35:03 – 43:19]

Following Yurchenko’s disappearance, an intense manhunt ensued involving both CIA and FBI personnel. The search spanned various locations, including Georgetown, Arlington, and even Chicago, with coordinated efforts to locate him. Despite exhaustive efforts, Yurchenko remained elusive, prompting frustration and tension within the agencies involved.

Simultaneously, internal dynamics within the CIA faced strain. Burton Gerber, the head of the SE Division, expressed profound distress over Yurchenko’s vanishing, highlighting the mutual frustrations between the CIA and FBI. Milton Bearden and Paul Redmond recounted the chaotic and emotionally charged environment as leadership grappled with the crisis.

Key Quote:

"Defection is a very, very traumatic experience for somebody because what you're doing is you're leaving behind all your roots."
— David Major [26:00]

This sentiment underscores the psychological toll of defection, not just on Yurchenko but also on those tasked with managing his case.

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Speculations and Theories: What Happened to Yurchenko?

Timestamp: [43:19 – 51:03]

With Yurchenko’s sudden disappearance, numerous theories emerged regarding his fate. One speculation involves the possibility of Tom Hanna being bribed or manipulated by Yurchenko. Although Tom’s polygraph results remained clean, questions lingered about his true motivations and the extent of his complicity.

Efforts to trace Yurchenko’s movements and recover his doled-out cash were unsuccessful, leaving his ultimate whereabouts and intentions shrouded in mystery. The episode explores the complexities of inter-agency cooperation and the profound uncertainties that plagued the search for the re-defector.

Notable Quotes:

"I can’t trust you. So the leaks were huge."
— Tom Hanna [23:06]

"I think he was just successfully manipulated Tom."
— Colin Thompson [38:57]

The episode concludes with the team’s realization that Yurchenko's disappearance might not solely be a result of internal conflict but could involve deeper, more clandestine forces at play.

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Conclusion

Chapter 6 of The Redefector paints a vivid picture of Vitaly Yurchenko's fragile existence post-defection, the intricate and often strained relationships within his protective team, and the labyrinthine challenges faced by intelligence agencies in managing defectors. Yurchenko's vanishing act not only highlights the precarious nature of espionage but also underscores the human vulnerabilities that underpin high-stakes intelligence operations. As the series progresses, Julie Cohn continues to unravel the layers of this decades-old mystery, offering listeners an engrossing exploration of one of the Cold War’s most perplexing espionage cases.

Key Quote:

"Vitaly Yurchenko was gone."
— Colin Thompson [51:03]

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Behind the Scenes

The Redefector is produced by Waveland, with Julie Cohn serving as both host and creator. Jason Hoak is the executive producer, Shane Freeman handles sound engineering, and Leo Culp assists with production. The series features interviews with CIA officers, FBI agents, journalists, and a former KGB general, providing a multifaceted perspective on Yurchenko's story. Original music by Robert Ellis enhances the narrative's emotional depth.

Final Thought: If you found this summary engaging, consider listening to the full episode for an immersive experience into one of the CIA's most enigmatic cases.

Transcript

[Julie Cohn]

This podcast is intended for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

[Colin Thompson]

Yurchenko had returned home from Canada with his spirit battered. The woman he was hoping to spend.

[Julie Cohn]

The rest of his life with had.

[Colin Thompson]

Turned him down cold, saying he was dead to her. On the same day, he saw the story of his defection splashed across newspaper front pages in Canada and the U.S. now, his wife and children would almost certainly be paying the price for his defection back home. Once he got back to the safe house, Vitaly Yurchenko was despondent, so much so that his psychologist warned he might.

[Julie Cohn]

Be a suicide risk.

[Colin Thompson]

To cheer him up a little, Colin Thompson had the idea of road tripping through the American Southwest. Here's the thing. A lot happened on that trip, and we're going to get into it, because.

[Julie Cohn]

Just a few days after that trip.

[Colin Thompson]

Is when Yurchenko very strategically disappeared. For starters, Colin didn't want the guards to come with them. He wanted Yurchenko to feel a little more free.

[Julie Cohn]

But the CIA refused.

[Mike Rochford]

They would not permit the trip without honey guards. They were afraid the Soviets would come and catch them, you know, and assassinate him.

[Julie Cohn]

The trip would consist of Colin Yurchenko's CIA debriefer, Mike Rochford, who was one of his FBI debriefers, and two security guards, Tom Hanna and John Fitzpatrick, whom you heard from a bit already. And from the very beginning, this trip was a bumpy ride.

[Mike Rochford]

So we get out, fly out to Phoenix, check into a hotel there. The security guards, they weren't professional bodyguards. They were just young guys working for the Office of Security, and they didn't know anything about body real bodyguarding. Not only did they have adjoining rooms, but that first night that we were there, they kept peering into Yurchenko's room, and he didn't like that. The next morning, we come out and he comes over to me and says, I want to have a talk. I don't like the way this is going. And I want to say, I'm the boss, that I'm the boss, and I dictate how closely they guard me and so forth. Go through it. So he lines him up and gives him a dressing gown. About interfering with his life and making, you know, interfering with his privacy.

[Julie Cohn]

Now, I spoke to John Fitzpatrick, who explained that this was a misrepresentation.

[John Fitzpatrick]

He and I had adjoining rooms. And again with my instructions to keep him inside at all times. So I opened my door and knocked on his. This is the interior door. And I told him, so, Alex, I'm going to leave my door open in the Interior door to my room. You can close your door, but if you need me, don't go outside and knock on the outside door. Just open this door and I'll be here. I thought it was a matter of, you know, discretion and courtesy, but he took this as more of the onerous surveillance of him.

[Julie Cohn]

He thinks that Yurchenko, coming from a KGB background, assumed that that was a veiled way of reminding him they would be listening to him through the door at all times. When that wasn't the case, it reminded me about Yurchenko's reaction at Coventry, back when Dan had burned his grilled cheese and then John had played darts. Yurchenko's assumption had been that this was a strategic effort to keep him awake. Mike had to assure him that that wasn't the case, that the guards were just being 20 year old idiots, basically. The CIA psychologist had already warned the team that Yurchenko might be a suicide risk, so helping him feel better was the whole reason for the trip. So everyone was careful not to argue with him. Instead, they apologized completely and heeded Yurchenko's requests. From that point on, the guards, you know, always dined at a separate table. They never rode in the same car with Yurchenko. They followed behind in their own vehicle. When they flew, the guards would fly coach and Yurchenko and his debriefers would fly first class. Shortly after that first incident, though, there was another snag. Now, remember, Edward Lee Howard was the first mole that Yurchenko had revealed. He's the guy that used the jack in the box to escape his FBI tale.

[John Fitzpatrick]

We were met on the road by someone from the local FBI office, and they brought us the flyer, the wanted flyer, on Edward Lee Howard.

[Colin Thompson]

The newspapers had already claimed that Yurchenko had given up Howard's name to the FBI. But now a photo of the man's face was on wanted posters all over the country for his brazen escape from the law.

[Julie Cohn]

Law.

[Colin Thompson]

The man Yurchenko had outed had just fled back into the arms of his Soviet handlers. If he was a real defector, none of this was good for Yurchenko or his family.

[John Fitzpatrick]

I could remember us on the side of the road. We had a two car little two car caravan. Tom and I were in one car. Colin and Mike and Alex were in the other. And this was not welcome news. It was just another bit of these Americans can't keep anything a secret and everything's going wrong and this is not a good operation. And it was not good for him that these things should be known.

[Julie Cohn]

Luckily, though, things began to improve after that.

[Mike Rochford]

We drove from Phoenix up to Sedona, which is a lovely place, and he thought that was pretty impressive. I still got a piece of red rock that he gave to me. I've got it upstairs.

[Julie Cohn]

What did he say when he gave it to you?

[Mike Rochford]

Oh, a memory, memoir, memento, you know, be it of our trip or something along those lines. So it still sits there. And just to pickpicked it off the ground. But that's where he commented, in the Soviet Union, if I was in a park, all the stones like this would be covered with graffiti. And here, he said, you've got these beautiful rocks.

[Julie Cohn]

This is.

[Tom Hanna]

Mike went to the Red Canyon and Red Rock Canyon. You ever know where that is? And he had these red rocks he picked up. I didn't see him pick them up because that'd be against the federal law. He had like 12 of them or something. And he came back and he gave one to each of the team. He called us his commando. He tried to make us his team. And so he says here, you're part of the command. I still had that red rock. But yeah, it's kind of funny that even out there, he was thinking of the team that supported him, that tried to keep him together. So I think in some way he was thinking toward the future.

[Colin Thompson]

I was surprised that both of these men, despite the damage Yurchenko's disappearance caused later, that this meant so much to them, that they have both carefully kept.

[Julie Cohn]

Those rocks all these 40 years later.

[Colin Thompson]

Things were going well, and Yurchenko was excited for their next stop. Sin City from Waveland. I'm Julie Cohn and this is the redefector. This is Chapter six. Vanished.

[Julie Cohn]

In their cabin in the Grand Canyon the night before the Soviet Colonel's first trip to Las Vegas. Yurchenko's bodyguards and debriefers had some fun teaching him how to gamble.

[John Fitzpatrick]

Alex wanted to play roulette, which I just always thought was funny. Right. He was a Russian, wants to play roulette, had cards, and we taught him how blackjack worked, baccarat, and how the betting would work.

[Julie Cohn]

There was a hope that Vegas might loosen Yurchenko up, that he might actually.

[Colin Thompson]

Have fun for once.

[Julie Cohn]

Maybe, you know, being around so many other women would help him forget the pain of Valentina's rejection.

[Mike Rochford]

Milt Bearden had suggested maybe what Yurchenko needed was a woman. Well, what better place than Las Vegas in many ways? So approach the FBI on this, because they're the guys on the ground. Well, they didn't want any part of.

[Julie Cohn]

Was technically not legal, I guess.

[Mike Rochford]

Well, yeah. I mean, how are we going to explain this? They don't have the flexibility of the CIA. We would find a way to expense it without any questions. But he wasn't interested. He wasn't interested. Yeah, he wasn't interested.

[Julie Cohn]

Mike Rochford remembers it well, too.

[Tom Hanna]

Like, Cullen was convinced one of the things we need to do is take him to a cat house out there. Right. Doesn't hurt. Right. So we tried to engineer something like that on the trip, and he wasn't having anything of it. You know, you go to the streets of Vegas, you pick up some of those flyers. They're all over the place. Right. So you don't. Unsolicited. Right. What do you think I am? I go, hey, Colin gave me the. I didn't. You know.

[Julie Cohn]

So Yurchenko wasn't just not interested in the idea. He rejected it flat out, jokingly. People chalked this up to him being very Russian, meaning his heartbreak over Valentina was intense and dramatic. Not something that could be cured by an escort, basically. But I just recently learned there may have been another reason. Back when he was posted in D.C. in the 70s, Vitaly Yurchenko had run something called the Nightcrawlers. The Nightcrawlers were specially trained KGB officers undercover in Washington, D.C. when the sun went down, they would prowl the nightclubs, strip clubs, and often gay bars in Washington, on the lookout for clerks, congressional aides, judges, anyone with a connection to official Washington. Once they found a target, they would lead that person to a honey pot. That would be another Russian operative, an attractive woman or man whose job was to seduce their targets with the aim of blackmailing them. Hidden cameras would capture the illicit hookups, and in the morning, the victim would have a. Provide secrets or have your career or marriage ruined. Why would Yurchenko be interested in any of the Vegas options these guys were hinting at after spending years leveraging prostitution to manipulate countless American johns? At any rate, they moved past the escort idea and headed to the slot machines.

[Mike Rochford]

And the first thing is, he wins about 50 bucks. And everybody was happy for him. And he just sat there and he said, no, I. I can't take this. I can't accept this. So why you want. It's fair and square, you know? No. And he proceeded. Then he said, I'm gonna give it all back, lose it all back. And so he. He played it on until he lost it all back. Every last 50 cent piece or whatever it was.

[Julie Cohn]

What? Yeah.

[Mike Rochford]

Yeah, he was he was not gonna. Not going to take any winnings. You thought that was immoral, I guess.

[Julie Cohn]

John remembers it too. GS8, by the way, refers to the government salary, GS level he was on at the time.

[John Fitzpatrick]

Here he is, we get to Las Vegas and recall, I'm sort of a year into my career. I'm like a GS8, you know, making $18,000 a year. And I remember going in to the casino with Alex and he puts some silver dollars into a slot machine, and he wins a hundred bucks. One dollar coins come flying out of this machine. And I say to him, great, Alex, you can take the casino's money over to the roulette table and you can bet their money. And he says, no, no, no. He starts pumping the coins back in. First we will get rid of this and then we'll go there. So the idea of this is, you know, this is a guy from, you know, Soviet communism who, who didn't. Who wasn't there to. To get rich, right? He wasn't there. Like so many people go to Las Vegas and gamble to win. It was not. Not that for him. And I'm this poor kid, just watching him throw away 100 bucks. Obviously that stuck with me.

[Julie Cohn]

John remembered a rare moment right after that. Yurchenko didn't usually confide in him. So it struck John that day when Yurchenko spoke with him quietly about the hollow look in people's eyes and how uncomfortable it was making him. I'm an American who's grown up with capitalism my whole life, but I've been to Vegas, and even I know what he's talking about. There is something almost haunting about that look. Whether it's addiction or desperation or just greed, I can only imagine what it would feel like for a communist to see that for the first time. Although he'd been excited to play card games back in the cabin, the group quickly saw that the reality of Vegas's materialism was just too overwhelming for Vitaly. They cut the trip short there and headed back out to the great outdoors. Soon, cabin fever began to grow between Colin and Vitale.

[Colin Thompson]

Remember that ever since Phil had left for language training, Colin had had to take over the role of CIA debriefer alone. He was working seven days a week, sometimes 12 hours a day, and was clearly getting burnt out. Here's Dan Payne remembering the tension as it was told to him later.

[Dan Payne]

Him and Colin were constantly at each other. They'd be walking down the street and him and Colin would be arguing about something. And it was something petty or it was about his health. Kurchenko would say, oh, my stomach, I don't feel so good. And Colin would say, alex, there's nothing wrong with your goddamn stomach. We took you to 150 doctors, you're fine. And. And. No, really, my stomach. And then, you know, then the two are arguing. And finally the bodyguards on that detail said to the two of them, hey, would you guys just shut the up. You're causing a scene. Just shut up, both of you. It was a very tense relationship between the two of them.

[Julie Cohn]

And here's Colin.

[Mike Rochford]

So he was getting a little bit sick and bouncing around the car. Mikey May had some car sick problems. So we were driving. I know. I remember driving along a two lane road in New Mexico, Arizona, 90 miles an hour, going over the bumps. You know, I don't think he really appreciated that too much. There's no traffic, you can go as fast as you want without. He was a little bit, I don't know, a nerve, perhaps, but I was maybe rubbing it in. I don't.

[Julie Cohn]

You were maybe rubbing it in?

[Mike Rochford]

Well, you know, I was a little annoyed he was complaining about something or other, and I was unsympathetic to him.

[Dan Payne]

So.

[Julie Cohn]

By this point, the trips had its downs, then its ups, then its downs. Talking about Collins driving alone, it was literally quite bumpy. Eventually, their travels took them to Page, Arizona, A tiny remote town where, if you ask Colin, anyway, everything changed.

[Mike Rochford]

Anyway, we drove down there and this is where I think the idea that he had to leave really started to work on it. All of a sudden we get word that somebody from FBI headquarters is coming out to talk to Yurchenko on a Sunday morning, and they want to talk about Ronald Pelton.

[Julie Cohn]

They were hours away from any kind of airport, which meant these agents had been traveling through the night on the weekend to get there. While Yurchenko and the guys had been traveling. The Bureau and the NSA had been hard at work trying to pinpoint the red headed mole Yurchenko had warned them about. In the nsa, agents had finally matched the mole's voice recording to a Ronald Pelton. But only Yurchenko had seen Pelton commit this act of treason. Only Yurchenko could confirm they'd found the right guy. So they had rushed to the desert to have Yurchenko identify Pelton from a photo lineup. They spread six photos out so as not to create bias, and asked Yurchenko if any of those men was the traitor. Yurchenko pointed right at Pelton. The FBI were thrilled. And Yurchenko lit up for a second, proud of having been so helpful. But there was a catch.

[Mike Rochford]

Essentially said to Yurchenko, we want you to testify. Or he raised the question, am I going to have to testify? And they said maybe or yes or something. And that's what clicked it. I think. I think that was the point than reading because he'd gotten through the Being exposed and depressed. Things had kind of quieted down. He was. He was nervous and not. He didn't. Didn't really have a great time on the trip, but he was having. He was okay and his stomach wasn't too upset. Even though I was. I was kind of on his back about that. He was getting impatient. And then the FBI comes out and says you're going to have to appear in court in a sense. And that's the last thing he wanted to do was to be in a courtroom testifying against jury. Well and that's what got it rolling. And I think eventually out of control. He didn't. He didn't have any assurances that he would have any kind of a life here.

[Julie Cohn]

In other words, the FBI had enough to arrest Pelton, but it would be a challenge to get him convicted in a court of law. Yurchenko's testimony could make all the difference about putting the man behind bars. Here's the thing. Back in the Soviet Union, his family might argue that all the press about his defection was the Americans trying to spread nasty rumors. If he testified, though publicly against one of their own, Yurchenko's betrayal and his family's potential punishment would be inescapable. Paul Redmond, Colin's boss, remembers his shock.

[Paul Redmond]

I had my first exposure to what I would politely call the mutual disaffinities between CIA and FBI. I was down at the bureau and I can't remember his name. Lane Crocker. He's dead now too. Really good guy. And they have the problem. They have to make a case legally, which is not always easy.

[Tom Hanna]

That's all they care about.

[Paul Redmond]

And Lane said, we'll subpoena him. I can remember vivid if we have to. And that was my first that I remember exposure to. They're different.

[Julie Cohn]

If he was. If they subpoenaed a guy that was here secretly or was supposed to not be here. How does that work? I mean, doesn't that totally blow his.

[Paul Redmond]

As Burton would say, tochno, which in.

[Julie Cohn]

Russian means precisely that stop in Page Arizona was at the end of the road trip and the beginning of the end of Vitaly Yurchenko's stay in America. Back at the safe house again, Yurchenko was inconsolable. He slept more than before. He ate even less. And he began to recant.

[Dan Payne]

And I wasn't involved in the debriefings, but the individuals who were involved said and told me subsequently that it was at that point that he started going back on everything that he had told us. They'd start to go over one of the leads and he'd go, no, no, no, no, I didn't say that. I said this. And it would soften, would not look as bad, if you will, that he had just identified somebody that was cooperating, wittingly cooperating with the kgb. He would correct it to mean n they didn't know what was going on or, you know, something like that, to soften it. And he started doing that with a bunch of different things.

[Colin Thompson]

It seemed Dirchenko's nerves were fraying, according to Reid and Mike's debriefing notes, despite the fact that Yurchenko had identified Ronald Pelton back in Page Arizona, with absolute certainty. Now, he said that he only gave a 90% sure on the photo and he would not testify on that case. Then a few days later, on October 30th, his nerves seemed to unravel altogether. That day, an article came out about Nicholas Shudrine, the Soviet defector whom Yurchenko revealed had been accidentally assassinated by the KGB in Vienna. Remember, it had been a botched kidnapping. Well, the FBI had told Chedrine's widow the truth Yurchenko had revealed about her husband's demise.

[Julie Cohn]

She was right.

[Colin Thompson]

The CIA had let their guard down and Chedrine had been kidnapped under their noses, confirming her worst fears about his death. But as soon as she found out, she had gone straight to the American press wanting even more answers. Despite everyone assuring him this was not the case, Yurchenko feared it meant he would also have to testify about Chedrine. In court, too. Yurchenko had been explicit that the Chedrine revelation was the worst secret he had revealed since it confirmed that Brezhnev, the leader of the Soviet Union, had knowingly lied to two US Presidents about Shudrine's death. To Yurchenko, this was even worse than testifying about Pelton. Mike Rochford believes this was the nail in the coffin.

[Tom Hanna]

The thing that Reedy got that Reedy got him was when that story came out about chloroform, that one Polish Shadron. Yeah, the Shadron story. And he died of a heart attack in the trunk. That was just from Yurchenko. Nobody else told us that. He says, you know, I can be sued by Shadron's wife for this, even though it's hearsay, and the Russians can now have a trial in absentia, and they can use information from the press to try me. He says, you're killing me. I can't trust you. So the leaks were huge. Huge.

[Julie Cohn]

I mean, according to Reid and Mike's debriefing notes, despite the fact that Yurchenko had identified Ronald Pelton back in Page Arizona with absolute certainty now, quote, he said he only gave a 90% sure on the photo and he would not testify on that case. Yurchenko also started dropping some unsettling hints.

[Tom Hanna]

And he goes, well, you know, I can go back. And he had been hinting at that when he's trying to coerce us to bring senior guys there, that I could always go back. And he brought out the Beatov thing. He says, I know exactly how they all looked at the Beatov thing.

[Julie Cohn]

What does Mike mean by the Bitov thing? Oleg Bitov was a Soviet journalist who had defected to London in 1983. A year later, he had a change of heart. He claimed he had been kidnapped, drugged and tortured by the British and wanted to go home. The Soviets had taken him in and never executed him. It turns out that Yurchenko had been on the panel that had voted not to kill Bitov. Yurchenko told Mike Rochford that was partly because Bitov didn't have any good classified info to give anyway. But it was also, and maybe more importantly, because his redefection was such a massive propaganda coup for the Soviet Union, and he knew.

[Tom Hanna]

He knew all this stuff. So, you know, he'd been involved in the beat off examination and case when he came back and stuff.

[Julie Cohn]

So did you tell people that he had kind of threatened it?

[Tom Hanna]

Yeah. Somebody actually said in a senior bureau moment, it was one of our seniors said, well, he already burned his bridges. He can't go back.

[Julie Cohn]

It wasn't entirely out of the ordinary for a defector to threaten to leave or to seriously doubt their decision and then to remain. And since the headlines were full of his confessions, the threats of him wanting to defect seemed toothless to that senior FBI guy. Here's David Major, the security advisor at the time to President Reagan, explaining how common it was for defectors to question their decisions.

[David Major]

Defection is a very, very traumatic experience for somebody because what you're doing is you're leaving behind all your roots, all your family, all your grandparents, all those leaving me that behind to come here. And people who talk about defection don't realize what the drama is. And almost everyone who's a defectorate sometimes thinks about going back. Usually, according to the psychiatrists who've worked this case, it's anywhere between 60 and 90 days. 60, 90 days. The reality of I'm defected. I left everything behind. What am I going to do?

[Colin Thompson]

Yurchenko's slump this deep depression was occurring in October, just about 90 days after the exhilaration of his initial defection back in August. The day after the Chadrin news was Halloween, and Yurchenko's CIA psychiatrist thought the costume parade at Georgetown might lighten the mood. It would be worth an exception, he thought, to the rule of never bringing Yurchenko to D.C. inside the perimeter, where Soviet diplomats were allowed to travel and could kidnap him, they disguised Yurchenko pretty easy at a costume event and drove him in for the festivities. The gamble seemed to pay off. It was the first time they had seen Yurchenko's smile in a while. Now, for some time, Yurchenko had been noticing that one of his guards, Tom Hannah, didn't play well with the others. Dan Payne and I have corresponded quite a bit about this, and here's an excerpt from our emails. Yurchenko was a skilled intelligence officer. He picked out and cultivated the one individual on the team who violated the rules and drew the ire of his colleagues. I'm sure that was evident to Yurchenko. He praised Tom in front of us, and Tom was an excellent cook. Yurchenko would rave about Tom's cooking again. He constantly fed Tom's ego and made him feel important while the rest of us wanted to push Tom down a flight of steps. Just joking, kinda. Tom had held a position for a brief time as a low level clerk in the Clandestine Services arm of the CIA, which is also known as the Directorate of Operations or do. His career there was going nowhere fast, so he moved over to the Office of Security.

[Julie Cohn]

Because his father worked there, he felt that DO work was superior to Office of Security work.

[Colin Thompson]

The Clandestine Services was where the real intelligence work happened, and he acted as though his brief time there had set him a step above all his peers in security. Here's John Fitzpatrick, Most unlike the rest.

[John Fitzpatrick]

Of us in this sense, he did not appreciate the job he had, or he thought he looked down on the work that we did because it was not essentially operational, but it was operational support. And so all of us understood that that was Tom's perspective on the work that we did. So he had that attitude already and he felt that he understood Alex's Objection to. Of the closeness of security support and that it was, you know, overkill. He was sympathetic to Alex's perspective on that, and he would. He would have more slack than I did in terms of, you know, I would walk out on the property with Alex. You know, Tom would, you know, cover him from the porch or the deck. And, you know, this is. This is quite observable. He's the only one doing less. And certainly Alex knew it.

[Julie Cohn]

Dan Payne and I have corresponded quite a bit about this, and here's an excerpt from our emails. He writes, tom Hannah was very lackadaisical. When his colleagues would call him on it, his most frequent response would be, we're not the Secret Service. It was almost as if Tom thought we were there for the show, that the likelihood of anything happening was very small, and that if you believed otherwise, you were naive.

[Colin Thompson]

Two days later, on November 2nd, John Fitzpatrick and Tom Hanna were the guards on duty. Yurchenko asked Tom to take him to the mall for an errand. He strategically got himself alone with Tom, and then, it seems, successfully manipulated Tom into letting him walk away into thin.

[Dan Payne]

He had gone with his bodyguard. I think they went to Manassas bowling Alley. Again, the bodyguard, who was more interested in being Yurchenko's friend than in doing his job, let him go into the bowling alley alone, number one. Why you would do that, I have no idea. But he did. And my understanding is Yurchenko made a phone call from that bowling alley, and then he had convinced Tom to take him to his favorite restaurant, which was Aupied Couchon in Georgetown. Again, that was part of our rules. We don't go to D.C. we stay away from D.C. and Tom took them there. My understanding as to what had taken place is they sat down, they ordered food, and Yurchenko said to Tom, tom, if I got up and walked out the door right now, would you shoot me? And Tom said, no, that's not how we treat people. And Yurchenko said, then if I'm not back in an hour, it's not your fault. And he walked out the door, and Tom did not call anybody for an hour.

[Colin Thompson]

If I don't come back, it's not your fault. And then he up and disappeared into Georgetown traffic.

[Dan Payne]

And I know what was running through Tom's mind. Tom was probably going, I hope he comes back. Then I don't have to tell anybody that this happened. And that's my opinion. And he waited for an hour. And when the. When the hour lapsed, that's when he made his first Phone call that.

[Julie Cohn]

So he didn't follow him out?

[Mike Rochford]

No.

[Julie Cohn]

Does that seem weird to you? Is that weird?

[Dan Payne]

It was weird that it was. The whole. That whole night was weird. He shouldn't have taken him to the bowling alley. He shouldn't have let him go into the bowling alley alone. He should not have taken him to D.C. he shouldn't have done any of that.

[Julie Cohn]

Now, I've heard this story told so many times, and it's very similar with slight variations every time that he asked Tom to wait 10, 15, 15, 30 minutes. But two things remained constant. One, Yurchenko was gone. And two, the story that Tom told about how it happened seemed almost inconceivable. This is David Major.

[David Major]

If I don't come back, it's not your fault. Can you imagine me sitting in that dinner? The guy says this to you, if I don't come back, it's not your fault. Well, don't. Don't do that. Come back. And so, you know, when you talk to defectors, they kind of wander off. They have strange conversations like this. I mean, that's not unusual. Just that the fact he says that doesn't mean he's going to redefect. He's kind of mulling the idea in his mind. And your job is to say, well, that's not a good decision, and here's why. Here's all bad things that will happen if you choose to do that.

[Julie Cohn]

I went to Opiedukosan's address on the main drag in Georgetown, but it's changed hands since the 80s a few times, and it's now a fast, casual Greek food spot.

[Colin Thompson]

Do you want to order? Okay.

[Mike Rochford]

Yeah, go ahead.

[Julie Cohn]

I'll get a plate, please. I ordered some delicious gyros, and as I sat there staring out the window, I couldn't help but imagine Yurchenko just walking out and disappearing down the road. Okay.

[Colin Thompson]

But what is still shocking to me.

[Julie Cohn]

Is that Yurchenko asked Tom for the space to go for a walk, and Tom just gave it to him. After he left, Tom waited a significant amount of time before he called his boss, Colin.

[Mike Rochford]

It was a Saturday night, and. And I didn't know that he'd been brought up to Washington. I certainly hadn't given permission or I've been asked for permission, and I'm right behind the wall behind me here.

[Julie Cohn]

We were sitting in Colin's home outside of D.C. during this conversation. It's the same home he lived in back in 1985.

[Mike Rochford]

I have a date with Joan, or whatever her name was. Phone rings and I pick it up, and it's the security guard. And he says, yurchenko has walked away. And I said, what? What are you talking about? And he gives a brief statements where he said, you know, while we were at this place, and we were sitting there and we ate our meal, and I had my credit card out and I was going to pay, and Yurchenko got up and said, I'm leaving. And I said, so what happened? Well, he left, but I was sitting there, and I hadn't paid the bill, so I was waiting to pay the bill. And I said, you did what? He didn't follow him? No.

[Julie Cohn]

What?

[Paul Redmond]

Why?

[Mike Rochford]

Well, I only have supposition on that. My opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if I write that all that money that Yurchenko was carrying, he ended up with it. Here's this. I'm leaving. So he wasn't unhappy about that.

[Julie Cohn]

Colin said he later scoured the safe house looking for that cash, cash which Colin let me know was doled out to Yurchenko by the resettlement chief.

[Mike Rochford]

So I go down and I'm talking. Mike Rochford came over and a couple of other guys were there, and the guard was there. And I said, well, let's see if we can find the money. And it's probably. If he's still around, is probably still attached to him, you know, because it was gone from the safe house, and I can't remember, it was 40,000 or 20,000, but not a lot. A lot of cash in any case. But we never did find it.

[Julie Cohn]

I had trouble tracking Tom down and wanted to know what had become of him. So Dan Payne kindly asked some former colleagues for more information and got back to me. The reason I had been unable to find him is that Tom passed away years ago of alcoholism, evidently. After the Yurchenko disappearance, Tom was assigned to a liaison position in the Office of Security, picking up documents from other government agencies. Later, he was sent to a warehouse separate from CIA headquarters, where he examined pieces of the Moscow embassy construction that had been thoroughly bugged by the kgb. Dan had never heard the theory of Tom's bribery. He said it would explain quite a bit from that evening. But all the guards were polygraphed later about the events of that night, and Tom passed his poly. Or at least Dan knew he was polygraphed, didn't think Tom Hannah had the mental capacity to beat the polly and hadn't been fired. But if Tom had failed his polygraph, would the CIA really have made the same mistake they had just made with Howard and fire him? Wasn't it better to banish him to a non sensitive job, say, sifting through chunks of construction in a warehouse in the middle of nowhere, rather than booting him into the cold where he would be a liability? On the other hand, it could very well be that Yurchenko just successfully manipulated Tom. And by the time he told Tom he'd be leaving and might not come back, Tom just panicked. In other words, maybe Tom was banished to the warehouse gig as a punishment just for having screwed up so bad. We may never know exactly what happened at that very strange and faded meal at Au Piedu Cochon, but at that point in the evening, as soon as Colin found out, he initiated a cascade of phone calls. Soon, a huge group from the FBI and the CIA was fanning out across the city in a feverish manhunt.

[Colin Thompson]

Here's Mike Rochford.

[Tom Hanna]

I was home and I got a call from one of the guards I can remember, and he told me that they had this issue with Hannah. So we set up some kind of meeting with a bunch of the guards and a bunch of the bureau guys and a bunch of the agency guys someplace around the Iwo Jima. We meet there and we talk about what we're going to do, how we're going to dispatch and everything. So I said, okay, let's do this.

[Dan Payne]

I got a phone call that said, hey, Yurchenko's disappeared. And then it was kind of an all hands on deck kind of thing. We teamed up with the FBI and we, we were driving around everywhere trying to see if we could identify him on the street, thinking that maybe he just got pissed off at us about something and, you know, was going to be, I'll show you guys.

[Tom Hanna]

So I thought he was just being temperamental like he always was, and just playing out. You know, maybe he's at a hotel, maybe he's out walking. Who knows, Just out blown off steam. Because don't forget, we had. Basically, he was kind of almost a captive. I mean, every 24, seven around guards, you know, never had a moment to himself, didn't have cars, availability, didn't have a social life. It was hard. It was hard on him.

[Julie Cohn]

The hope that this might just have been a cry for attention, however, began to dwindle as the search intensified through the night.

[Dan Payne]

And so we were scouring the street, the streets, and it was usually one bureau agent, one CIA guy in a car, and we were all over the place.

[Julie Cohn]

Here's David Major.

[David Major]

We alerted everyone when that happened. I know that every single lookout was alerted that this Guy had happened. Everyone on the street was wandering the street, driving the crime, looking for him. We took the GS and we dispatched him around the crime looking for him when he didn't come back.

[Julie Cohn]

The G's is short for G men or government men, which slang for FBI agents.

[Tom Hanna]

We had all of HRT on surveillances at all the Soviet sites. Hostage rescue team. Hostage rescue team. Wow.

[Julie Cohn]

Wow.

[Tom Hanna]

Yeah.

[Julie Cohn]

In case he was kidnapped.

[Tom Hanna]

No, we wanted to have a visual site on the entrances to all the Soviet sites to see whether or not he walks in or is rushed in or pulled in or what. At least you have to have people there in place. And then we put people on the streets. We went into every bar in Georgetown, every restaurant, went to Arlington in case he crossed the bridge and went to the cemeteries and churches to see if he was there. Because, you know, he hinted at religious stuff and hinted at cemeteries and some kind of spiritual stuff. So like, he used to say that he used to go to cemeteries. So we checked out cemeteries.

[Julie Cohn]

He said he used to, like, hang out at cemeteries.

[Tom Hanna]

I remember that night looking for him and getting everybody together, all the CIA and FBI guys. And we walked through cemeteries. We walked every place.

[Dan Payne]

Mike Rochford and I are both from the Chicago area. And so Mike and I used to talk about Chicago in front of Yurchenko. And Yurchenko had talked about how he would like to visit Chicago sometime. And so Mike and I thought he might have gone to Chicago. So I mentioned that to Mike, and Mike said, you know, know, that's a good idea. And so Mike contacted the Chicago field office, and they had teams out scouring the streets in Chicago to see if maybe he had taken off. We were looking everywhere, trying to. Trying to find him.

[Colin Thompson]

Meanwhile, the CIA leadership was experiencing the drama as well. Paul Redmond remembers the night clearly. We'll talk a bit more about him in later episodes. But Burton Gerber, who actually just passed away a few months ago, was at that time the head of the SE Division, Paul's boss and a legend in the clandestine services.

[Julie Cohn]

Gerber held a high bar for his.

[Colin Thompson]

Team with an exacting attention to detail, and was known for his temper. If that bar was not met, and to really paint a picture here, he had a passion for wolves, like wolf posters all over the walls of his office. Big member of the pack, loyalty, first intensity about him. And on this particular evening, Burton Gerber was quite intensely not happy.

[Paul Redmond]

My recollection, it's fairly vivid. Burton calls me at home, distraught. He said, I don't know what he Said Yurchenko's disappeared or something like that, and he was really, really upset. So I lived in Capitol Hill, which is the other side of town, so I. And I knew where he lived. So I went over to his apartment. Now I can't remember whether Rosalie had died by then, but he had a lovely wife who'd been sick with cancer forever, but I think she had died by then. So he's all alone in this big apartment up in Connecticut Avenue. So I go over there and nobody knew where he was. Burton's really upset. So I sat there and he had three bottles of beer in his fridge and drank them all, which he reminded me the next day who drank all my beer and basically held his hand. I don't remember anything except lots of phone calls back and forth about looking for him. And he was really upset.

[Julie Cohn]

Milton Bearden, who was Gerber's deputy, remembered being home when he got the call.

[Milton Bearden]

So I got. The first thing I heard was I got a call from Bernie Gerber. And he said, when did you see your chick? I said, not God, maybe I haven't seen him this week. And he said, I think somehow that bothered him. But he said, he's disappeared. And I said, oh. I said, what happened? And then I learned that he was in Georgetown, for Christ's sakes. You know, like a four minute run from the Soviet embassy.

[Julie Cohn]

Did you. Was there a hope at first that.

[Colin Thompson]

Maybe he was just letting off steam.

[Mike Rochford]

Or I don't know, but maybe he's.

[Milton Bearden]

Off letting off steam. Maybe he fell in love with Ruby Tuesdays or some freaking thing. No, I think that it was always the redefection thing.

[Julie Cohn]

Yeah.

[Colin Thompson]

So you kind of had that feeling from the beginning?

[Milton Bearden]

Oh, sure. Oh, everybody did, by the way. Nobody. I mean, there was a hope. Maybe somebody said, well, maybe he's just blowing off steam somewhere. Yeah, right, he wants to go to Georgetown to blow off steam. That wasn't his character. And B, guess where Georgetown is.

[Julie Cohn]

And you know who else gets a call? 23 year old John Fitzpatrick, who happened to be the only guy back at the safe house in Coventry at the time. The last thing John knew, remember, was that that morning Tom had left with Yurchenko just to run some errands.

[John Fitzpatrick]

They left in the morning, 10:00, something like that. They were gone all day and I did not hear a thing until I get a call late in the afternoon from someone at the security field office asking me if I'd heard from anybody, had I seen them, did they return? And I'm like, what are you talking about? And that's when I learned that Alex had left Tom in the lurch. It was then explained to me that they had sort of scrambled the whole team and the FBI had activated and people were searching around D.C. trying to find where he was and where he had gone. I was told at that time, you need to collect everything in the safe house. We're going to pull it all out tomorrow. And so I spent the night collecting all the sight sensitive materials, loading them into the foyer of the house and getting ready to move out and sort of sanitize the safe. The safe house.

[Julie Cohn]

Sweet. So how, like, how much stuff are we taught? What exactly did you have to move out? Did you have boxes to do that with or how, how did that.

[John Fitzpatrick]

Yeah, I mean, it was, you know, there's the log of who comes to the place. There's the, you know, for the security detail. We had things to clean our firearms. We had a couple of boxes of ammunition. I'm laughing because I'm remembering a story. I'm doing all this in the dark. We had an instruction to keep things really low profile because, hey, Alex, maybe he knew where the house was. Maybe they'd send people out to, to the house. So, you know, I kept everything, did all this stuff in low light, in the dark. And so I'm moving all this stuff into the foyer so that it can be loaded out the next day. And I drop a box of 50 shells and they go scattering across the hardwood floor. And I find 49 of them and I am like, oh, my gosh, you know, the Washington Post is going to be here the next day and they're going to scour the house and they're going to find, you know, a CIA bullet with my fingerprints on it or whatever. All the things you think about are not supposed to have. You had one job, pack it all up. And so I searched all over and eventually found that bullet had. It's very cinematic. And bounced all the way downstairs and went across the basement floor. So I found number 50.

[Julie Cohn]

This was 1985. So the team had a Wang alliance computer in the basement. A big clunky thing the size of an entire desk, which had instructions, boot disks and floppy disks that John had to clear out as well. Plus there were all the clothes in Alex's dresser and closet. Fingerprints. Any indication that a team of people had been living there? If the press came, it was supposed to look like an empty rental. And all that was on John. Now by this point, it's dark, it's late in the night on November 2nd in D.C. the teams hunting for Yurchenko are exhausted and losing hope.

[Mike Rochford]

So it was at least 10 or 10:30 and I was wet, I was cold, I was hungry and thirsty. And I had to call up Burton Gerber, who was the division chief. So I talked to Milk Bearden first, and then Gerber got on the line and started giving me a hard time and I just told him to F off. Mike Rochard was standing, standing next to me. He practically fell over.

[Julie Cohn]

You actually used that?

[Mike Rochford]

Actually, I absolutely did. Absolutely. I was not happy.

[Tom Hanna]

I remember calling Thompson, getting on the phone at the right at the Cachon, and he said something like, well, and it was either Gerber or Bearden. One of the two of them, he said something like, well, we've already tried that. We don't know where the hell he is. Once you get your ass out here if you're so concerned about us, I thought, boy, Cullen's gonna get fired. But so there's Cullen, right? I mean, doing the right thing.

[Mike Rochford]

We spent the rest of the night and finally at like 3:00 in the morning, we went down to the FBI field office in Buzzers Point and we stayed there until about 4 in the morning talking. And then we finally all went home. And I got home about, I think it was Don was just breaking or would soon, you know, and he was gone.

[Julie Cohn]

Vitaly Yurchenko was gone. And then 36 hours later, they finally found him on national television. More on that next time. The Redefector is a production of Waveland.

[Colin Thompson]

I'm Julie Cohn and I wrote and created the series. Jason Hoak 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.

[Julie Cohn]

Music by Robert Ellis.

[Colin Thompson]

If you love the series, please make sure to leave a review and to tell a friend. Follow Waveland on Instagram @wavelandmedia for more.

[Julie Cohn]

Information on this series and more.

[Colin Thompson]

Thanks for listening.