← The Redefector
The Redefector
Whiplash | Chapter 7
00:51:41
Yurchenko... reappears, sowing chaos. A debate begins to rage in the press, at the CIA, and even in the White House: Was Vitaly Yurchenko a plant from the very beginning?
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- [00:00]
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Stephen Engelberg
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- [01:30]
Julie Cohn
This is Stephen Engelberg, the intelligence reporter in 1985 for the New York Times.
- [01:36]
Stephen Engelberg
I do remember thinking, oh my God, if this is real, this is unbelievable. If this is real, you gotta be kidding.
- [01:45]
Julie Cohn
Oh my God.
- [01:46]
Stephen Engelberg
The feeling is just utter shock. I mean, I always say that, you know, journalists are sort of, you know, divided between frustrated novelists and frustrated detectives. I am not a novelist. If you asked me to write up a plot that was as crazy as the things I've covered, I couldn't do it. And of the crazy things I've covered in my life as a reporter, I would say the redefection of Yurchenko to the Soviet Union, a country known for executing people who, you know, a country known for the gulags, struck me as about as crazy as you could possibly imagine. A plot turn that, if it were in a movie, I would turn it off and say, that's ridiculous. That never happened.
- [02:27]
Julie Cohn
From Waveland, I'm Julie Cohn, and this is the Redefector. This is chapter seven whiplash. Around 3pm on the chilly, drizzly afternoon of Monday, November 4th, with the hunt still ongoing for Vitaly Yurchenko, Dan Payne, one of his CIA bodyguards, was at the FBI command post in Washington, D.C. where things weren't exactly rosy.
- [03:06]
David Major
Of course the FBI was a little pissed off, a little pissed off at the CIA because again, he just walked away from his bodyguard. So needless to say, I took a little bit of flak in that room. But by and large, everybody was just trying to find them. Everybody was just looking for them. And then of course, you know, we started picking up the telephone calls. And the first indication that we got is when we picked up that the Russian embassy was starting to call reporters for a press conference at the Soviet embassy. When we heard that, that was our first inkling, like maybe, maybe he's gone back.
- [03:53]
Julie Cohn
The rest of the Yurchenko team found out in various other places around the city. Rick, Yurchenko's original lead debriefer back in August was studying Italian at that point in preparation for a new posting to Rome. Burton Gerber was the one to call and give him the news. Someone interrupted the Italian class and escorted Rick to the phone. Rick was shocked. I felt a true sense of panic, he recalled in an interview. Colin, his other CIA Debriefer, and Paul Redmond, their boss, were back at CIA headquarters at Langley. Once they became aware that the Soviets were calling an emergency press conference. The agency officers waited, dreading. They had a sense that all hell was about to break loose. Then at 5pm some 50 reporters made their way, shocked and excited, into a crowded room on the second floor of the Soviet Embassy in Washington, where they had just been mysteriously summoned when a.
- [04:53]
Stephen Engelberg
High ranking Soviet defector redefected to the Soviet Union. He is Vitaly Yurchenko, a former KGB officer who came over to the American side in August.
- [05:04]
Julie Cohn
Victor F. Isakov, the Soviet embassy counselor, introduced Yurchenko, calling him a high Soviet diplomatic representative. I don't know what. Sorry, that's just funny to me because he's so clearly KGB at this point. Like why the charade? But whatever, okay. They both sat behind a long table and a translator sat to Yurchenko's right. Isikoff opened the conversation as everybody knew Yurchenko had allegedly come to the US for political asylum. Vitaly said he was worn out by being forced to speak English for so long and would be proceeding in Russian. His translator kicked in, so you'll hear Vitaly in the background.
- [05:42]
Advertiser
While on a business trip in Italy, I was forcibly abducted in Rome by some unknown persons, unconscious. I was brought from Italy to the usa. Here I was kept in isolation, forced to take some drugs and denied the possibility of to get in touch with official Soviet representatives. Only on November 2nd due to the momentary lapse of attention on the part of the persons watching me, I was able to break out to freedom and.
- [06:14]
Stephen Engelberg
Come to the Soviet embassy.
- [06:17]
Julie Cohn
Though he looked unharmed and actually was a little sun kissed from his trip to the southwest, he complained about the terrible conditions of his imprisonment. According to the author David Weiss, Yurchenko appeared highly agitated, nervous and hyperactive, and he seemed to want to keep talking. As Yurchenko continued to disparage the CIA, he called Colin Thompson out by name, saying he was a psychologically sick person who was a veteran in Vietnam. He was wounded. It seemed to me he was a killer too, adding, Thompson hated all humanity at the CIA. Colin and other members of the SE Division watched the CNN broadcast in stunned silence.
- [07:01]
Stephen Engelberg
I was still exhausted and I have to be honest, I wasn't all that unhappy that he went back because I needed help and I wasn't getting. I was tired and I went in and they had it close. They had a television set up in one of the conference rooms to televise the press conference.
- [07:24]
Advertiser
And.
- [07:30]
Stephen Engelberg
Everybody was very sympathetic.
- [07:31]
Advertiser
But, you know, I just sort of.
- [07:32]
Stephen Engelberg
Watched it and said.
- [07:35]
Julie Cohn
And then almost instantly, those who had been read in on Yurchenko's case had an icy realization. Yurchenko was using the Bitov defense as a reminder. Oleg Bitov was a Soviet journalist who had defected to London, grown disillusioned, and then redefected to the Soviet Union, claiming he had been drugged and tortured by the British. Now, remember, Yurchenko had been on the jury at Bitov's trial after his redefection when he got back to the Soviet Union, and Yurchenko had just been explaining to his handlers that the reason Bitov wasn't murdered, among other things, was because of the propaganda coup he had represented, what with all the trash talking he was doing of the British. If Yurchenko was a real defector, he was playing the one card he thought might work. Though you could also argue if he was a plant, he was doing just what he had hinted would be his only option. Colin remembers listening as Yurchenko quoted Bitov almost verbatim, and then immediately had a flashback to Yurchenko babbling about Bitov's case just a few days earlier.
- [08:49]
Stephen Engelberg
The key thing that we didn't pick up on, I didn't do it. Mike and Reed didn't do it. Nobody did. Now I can say Yurchenko is rehearsing his story.
- [09:03]
Julie Cohn
Here's Paul Redmond.
- [09:05]
Stephen Engelberg
Beat off came into our brain that morning after he had buggered off. And Burton and I, and probably everybody immediately said they'll use the beat off defense.
- [09:18]
Julie Cohn
He used it all right, and he milked it for all it was worth. He told the story from Scottsdale where the guards made him sleep with his door open, calling the guard, John, a fat, quiet, stupid, excuse me, unemotional person, only following the orders. He said the guard would yank out telephones. What was it like watching that?
- [09:44]
David Major
It was an embarrassment, to be honest with you. At first, you know, there was a little bit of anger because, you know, nothing he said in that press conference was true. You know, he didn't get kidnapped. We weren't giving him psychotropic drugs. We weren't doing anything like that. I remember telling one of my colleagues, for entertainment, we had built like a three hole golf course on our compound at the safe house. And it was funny because Yurchenko could be very competitive. And so we had all these crazy rules, like, you know, it was only a three hole golf course and we had one club, we had an iron, and everybody had to use their weak arm with the golf club. And so there were. And I thought to myself, if making him play golf was torture, then yes, we're guilty. But it was, you know, little things like that. It was a little. We were pissed off. I was pissed off, but at the same time I was a little bit embarrassed by one of the bodyguards being largely the cause and that caused at fault for what was taking place.
- [11:07]
Stephen Engelberg
I watched that press conference on tv.
- [11:10]
Advertiser
And we all watched it.
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Julie Cohn
That was David Major, advisor to the President on matters of intelligence for the National Security Council at the time.
- [11:19]
Stephen Engelberg
Where were you?
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Julie Cohn
At the White House.
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Stephen Engelberg
The White House. That's what I'm talking about. My boss, he says, ah, he's, he's a false defector. And I said, he's not a false defector, he's a legitimate defector. He just got depressed because we always have to deal with that fact that he get depressed. And he got depressed. He decided he's going to beat the system.
- [11:37]
Julie Cohn
Yurchenko claimed he didn't know a thing about anyone named Edward Lee Howard until he read the man's name in the newspaper while he was at his safe house. I guess even as a prisoner he was allowed to read the news. I don't know. When a reporter asked where the safe house was, Yurchenko cheekily gave him step by step directions on how to get there and added that the place was guarded by six guards and a laser beam device more advanced than any prison. Almost immediately there was a mad rush to finish clearing the safe house entirely and get everyone out of there before the press descended on the location.
- [12:09]
David Major
I do remember that we had to make a very hasty retreat out of that safe house because after the press conference we had news helicopters circling the safe house and unfortunately, the night before we had had a storm and you know, it was a heavily treed area surrounded by trees, and this huge tree had fallen over the road to get out. So we luckily we found a chainsaw inside the garage and we used the chainsaw to cut up the tree and move it out. But we were scrambling to get everything out of the safe house and go.
- [12:52]
Julie Cohn
As the press conference went on, Yurchenko slipped up a few times, though. He said he was tortured and treated like a prisoner. He also said the CIA offered him a million dollars plus a salary, but that he never signed the contract. As he watched the broadcast at Langley, Burton Gerber darkly mused that at least Yurchenko gave the CIA free advertising, a million dollar reward poster for anyone who wanted to defect. By the time Yurchenko began rambling about how his guards would put their feet up on polished cocktail tables, Isikov announced the press conference was over. The State Department agreed to let Yurchenko leave the country so long as he would have one last meeting with them so that they could be sure he wasn't doing any of this under duress. To their great credit, after that meeting at 6pm on Tuesday, state Department confirmed this was definitely his own free will and he would be allowed to leave the country. Yurchenko left the meeting clutching his hands over his head. In a victory sign caught on camera. A couple officers in the SE Division really wanted to burn Yurchenko. Rick Yurchenko's first CIA handler, had later recalled by releasing the tape recordings that we had made during his debriefings, they would have shown that he hadn't been drugged and that he was having a good time telling us KGB secrets. But Gerber, much to his credit, said, no, let him go. The agency had gotten everything it wanted out of Yurchenko, and we weren't going to pull a trick and betray him with the tapes. Just because he was heartbroken and wanted to go home was a decent thing to do.
- [14:20]
Stephen Engelberg
Questions? What do we do if he decides to go back? Gotta let him go back. You don't want to. You can talk to him, you can persuade them, but you can't do anything physically to them.
- [14:30]
Julie Cohn
Now, the only people who Yurchenko never mentioned in his press conference were Reid and Mike. He had nothing bad to say about the FEI, actually. And for his part, Reid Brose was understanding of Yurchenko's re defection.
- [14:43]
Stephen Engelberg
His going back to me was to protect his family. I thought he was very shrewd.
- [14:50]
Julie Cohn
Shrewd?
- [14:50]
Stephen Engelberg
He said, yeah, in a lot of ways, I was happy that he did it.
- [14:56]
Julie Cohn
Really?
- [14:57]
Stephen Engelberg
Yeah. Because had he not, his family would have suffered. And that's why he went back to protect them. And he was a true deal. He came back. He wasn't in anybody's plan. He came on his own. I'm definite about that.
- [15:16]
Julie Cohn
That evening, a Soviet diplomat in D.C. went for a long jog. His name was Valerie Martynov. He was Young, in his mid-30s, was in a committed and loving marriage, and had a son and a daughter on whom he doted. He was often seen playing with his children at the Soviet embassy's Trespique Bay complex. But Martinov had a couple of secrets. The first was that he wasn't just a diplomat. He was a KGB officer. And the second was that Valerie Martinov was also working for both the FBI and the CIA as an informant. His code name was Pimenta. That day, Pimenta had just been appointed a special honor. His boss wanted him to accompany Vitaly Yurchenko back to Moscow as part of an honor guard. As soon as it was safe that evening, from a phone booth along his jog, he contacted his handlers. Was he in trouble? Paul Redmond was there when the call came in to Pimenta's CIA handler, Rod Carlson.
- [16:22]
Stephen Engelberg
I was in Rod's house. He handled Pimento with Bureau. And he was on the phone to Pimenta when Pimenta called him at home from some payphone, I guess, in D.C. and said, you know, I've been put on this group. You know, should I go?
- [16:39]
Julie Cohn
What did he say?
- [16:40]
Stephen Engelberg
I guess. I guess we said. I guess said, yeah, why not?
- [16:45]
Julie Cohn
Wow.
- [16:46]
Stephen Engelberg
I was there. We weren't thinking too clearly. What we should have automatically said is, don't, but Because. But the problem was how no way Howard by that time, would have known about him.
- [17:00]
Julie Cohn
Edward Lee Howard, the American mole Yurchenko had first revealed to his debriefers, the one who'd been responsible for blowing the covers of so many victims so far of the year of the Spy. He hadn't had access to Pimenta's file, though there was no guarantee that Howard hadn't heard about Pimenta. Somehow, in passing, there was reason enough to believe that wasn't the case. See, Ed Howard had been fired in 1983. He had begun providing intel to the Russians in 1984. Pimenta had just gone back to Moscow at the beginning of 1985 on home leave. So if Howard had ratted on Pimenta, the KGB would have known about his betrayal by the time he had been on home leave. And they would have arrested Pimenta back in Moscow. At least that's what the CIA thought. On November 6th, at 4:15pm Vitaly Yurchenko climbed up the stairs of an Aeroflot flight at Dulles International Airport. The FBI had asked Mike and Reed Yurchenko's FBI debriefers, to park their car on the tarmac within view in case Yurchenko had a change of heart. Yurchenko strode defiantly toward the plane, then climb the stairs. When he saw Mike and Reid, he smiled and he waved at them. Cameras clicked and that shot of that wave graced the COVID of Newsweek. The magazine had cropped the image to a close up of Yurchenko's face. But in that same photo, in the wider shot, which Reid gave to me, you can see several men trailing behind him on the steps up to the aircraft. His honor guard. One of those men is Pimenta. He looks unworried. Most people assumed that as soon as that plane landed, Yurchenko would be whisked away and quietly executed. They thought that the KGB would have accepted his ridiculous Bitov defense for the cameras here in America, but that once they had him squarely on Soviet soil, he'd meet a different fate. Instead, it was Pimenta who was escorted away. When they landed, he dropped out of contact immediately upon return to Moscow, it was as if he had disappeared into an unsettling mist. Vitaly Yurchenko, on the other hand, Vitaly came home to a hero's welcome and a medal. Mr. Yurchenko, said the deputy chairman of the KGB, your bravery, your courage and your determination earned you this decoration. Even those who firmly believed Yurchenko was the real deal had to look at all that pomp and circumstance and wonder. Wonder, had the US been duped somehow?
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- [20:13]
Julie Cohn
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- [21:38]
Stephen Engelberg
I mean, now, you know, we do quickly get to the question of what is really going on here because, you know, the two main spies that were identified and that we chased as a result of Yurchenko's revelations, it was a man named Edward Lee Howard, who had trained to go to Moscow and was then fired by the CIA. So he is what would be called in CIA terminology, a spent agent. Right. The Soviets have recruited him. He has provided information, he has told them everything he knows. Helton is also a spent age, another guy who. They've gotten what they can out of him. They paid him the money, services rendered, contract complete.
- [22:27]
Julie Cohn
Paul Redmond dug in further. Yurchenko had been the deputy head of the department that ran Spies Against America. Were those two moles the best he could do?
- [22:39]
Stephen Engelberg
I do know at some point, probably early on after he left, that I said, you know, he didn't give a shit. Excuse my expression, but he didn't give us anything.
- [22:52]
Julie Cohn
Explain why you think, why you say that.
- [22:55]
Stephen Engelberg
Okay, what did he give us? He gave us Ed Howard, who was no longer active and had no more asset. He gave us Pelton. Lead to Pelton. Pelton long gone, no more access. And my recollection was I don't think he ever gave us anything else than a monitor. Goddamn. And I don't remember what else he gave us, but we didn't catch any real spies because. And he was in director at K in the Washington residency or in the line KR in the residency. That's the branch in the residency and in Directorate K in the kgb in the American stuff. So unbalanced. If I had to bet now, I would say he was set.
- [23:38]
Julie Cohn
And here's Joe Augustin, a CIA officer who for several years was the head of CIA defectory settlement. Though he didn't work on the Yurchenko case or ever meet Yurchenko, he reflected on the story.
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Advertiser
You know, when I look at Yurchenko, he spent 25 years in the KGB. 25 years. And what did he do in the KGB? He was deputy in the first chief directorate, which was responsible for activities in the United States. And he did disinformation and he handled dangles. A dangle is when you put somebody out to dangle in front of a foreign intelligence service, even though they're working for you, you want to. And he handled dangles. And then all of a sudden he comes to the United. You know, he walks into Rome and volunteers his services and gives up two insiders. Ronald Pelton from the NSA and Edward Lee Howard, who in my mind, were already compromised. You know, Edward Lee Howard was already kicked out of the agency at that time. So in my mind, you know, what did he give up? He really didn't give up very much. And, you know, so the argument is, and the theory that I subscribe to, is that he was a plant.
- [25:04]
Julie Cohn
Senator William Cohen, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said Yurchenko's defection to the CIA seemed too convenient. Senator Malcolm Wallop, another member of the committee, said Yurchenko was a plant. He said, quote, I would be stunned if there were any other explanation. He's been in the KGB all his professional life. He knows what they do to traders. Meanwhile, though, Yurchenko's debriefers were still adamant to me that the intel he gave was too big to be chicken feed. And Reid Bros. His FBI debriefer, argues that the public and most of Congress at that time was basing its opinion on incomplete information, since most of the real details are still classified. Compared to other defectors that you had worked with or other people in the counter espionage division, how much information did he give compared to others?
- [25:58]
Stephen Engelberg
I think he had the most information. I think what he gave was very, very helpful. He gave us some good stuff.
- [26:12]
Julie Cohn
Is there anything that he told you that sticks out to you as like. Because a lot of the arguments on the CIA side is that some of the information was confirmation of stuff, but it wasn't new. Do you remember anything he told you that was really new?
- [26:30]
Stephen Engelberg
I think that's their prejudice. Because they got skunked is what I call it. Because he was able to, they've tried to play him down.
- [26:47]
Julie Cohn
Reid believes that the CIA's treatment of Yurchenko is what drove his redefection. So downplaying the intel Yurchenko provided while he was here curating it to seem less impressive, that was just the CIA covering its ass.
- [27:02]
Stephen Engelberg
The CIA blew this case apart. I mean, they're the ones that messed up.
- [27:08]
Julie Cohn
Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, then the vice chairman of the committee, described the train wreck of the Yurchenko story at that point pretty well. He said, you either have got a defector who was allowed to just walk away under circumstances that I still can't accept and cause a significant embarrassment to the United States, or you have a double agent who was planted in the United States, and then you have a far more significant embarrassment. You have an out and out calamity. No matter what, something is wrong. Meanwhile, the press is having a field day. Remember Dave Richardson, the clerk back at Powell's Furniture Store near the safe house at Coventry? Well, Dave and Mr. Powell, the owner of the store, both recognized the image of Yurchenko at the press conference when they saw him on tv. He was the supposed lawyer they had sold so much furniture to. Mr. Powell called the local paper to tell them this guy was not the mistreated prisoner he claimed. They had watched that Russian willingly pick out furniture for his home and knew the CIA had spared no expense.
- [28:12]
Advertiser
Mr. Powell was watching the news and.
- [28:15]
Stephen Engelberg
They showed a picture of him. That was it.
- [28:18]
Advertiser
Mr. Powell recognized it.
- [28:20]
Stephen Engelberg
He called the news media locally and.
- [28:22]
Advertiser
Let them know he knew who that was.
- [28:24]
Stephen Engelberg
He told them who it was.
- [28:25]
Advertiser
They'd been in the store.
- [28:27]
Stephen Engelberg
And that's when the story broke in the Fredericksburg paper. And then I think it went off from there. I was getting phone calls from news media sites, and I remember getting calls.
- [28:39]
Advertiser
And they were interrupting business.
- [28:42]
Julie Cohn
The press also found out about Valentyna. The Soviet consulate denounced the story as dirty lies aiming at spoiling Soviet Canadian relations. It said the LA Times article that broke the news was an insult, quote, to all Soviet women who stay abroad with their diplomat husbands. Opieri Kushon. The restaurant where Yurchenko ate his last meal got besieged by reporters and TV news fans. Soon the restaurant began serving the Yurchenko shooter, made of vodka and Grand Marnier. Naturally, it comes with a twist. The press, of course, much like many in the intelligence community and Even in the Oval Office were reeling to figure out what the actual hell was going on. Depending on which article you read what day, a new tiny piece of information seemed to be held up as proof that Yurchenko either was or wasn't a double agent. My favorite article from that time period came from Dale Russakoff at the Washington Post, who basically just thought, screw it, let's just write both versions of this thing and let the public decide. The title was, in Yurchenko Case, Truth Remains a Covert Factor. Here was how her article began. On August 1, Vitaly Yurchenko slipped into the US embassy in Rome with one goal. He wanted a new life. Frustrated by a stagnant spy career in Moscow, despairing over failed relationships with his wife and son, lovesick for a Russian mistress in Canada, he would disappear and secretly defect to the country most eager to buy what he had to sell. Or on August 1st, Vitaly Yurchenko slipped into the US embassy in Rome to set off the most dazzling sting operation in modern espionage history. Reeling from the recent defections of key Soviet agents to the west, infuriated by American gloating, desperate for an intelligence coup of its own, the Soviet government would plant Yurchenko as bait in a trap timed to snap shut before a worldwide audience, turning US Exhilaration to embarrassment. Which version is true? I loved this opening so much that I just had to get a hold of Dale.
- [31:07]
Stephen Engelberg
Hello?
- [31:08]
Julie Cohn
Hi, this is Julie Cohn. Is Dale Russakoff there? H. I really wanted to talk to her. I had some chips and contemplated if it would be rude to call back. Let's try that again. To be fair, I called the Russov's landline, and who calls landlines except phone bankers reminding you to vote? Or like telemarketers. A second call really paid off.
- [31:41]
Dale Russakoff
My name is Dale Rosakoff. I was a national staff writer for the Washington Post.
- [31:46]
Julie Cohn
Dale was great, and she enjoyed remembering the chaos of that time.
- [31:50]
Dale Russakoff
I just remember that everybody was watching that press conference and riveted to the television. And he was so confident. He was like a showman almost is the way I remember it. And you just had to believe that he really was. He really had defected and redefected, and he was just so good at this. He was such a great spy that he was pulling this off and he was convincing everyone. And then the more I reported, the more it was impossible to know which narrative was true. And I remember. I just remember talking to David Boren, who I think was the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. And I remember him saying he had no idea what had happened, which. Which story was true. He said, you could argue it round or you could argue it flat.
- [32:47]
Julie Cohn
I asked her how she decided to structure the article the way she did.
- [32:51]
Dale Russakoff
I remember I talked to my editor about this, and his name is Bob Kaiser. He was at the time, the national editor of the Washington Post, and he had been, you know, a major Moscow correspondent for the Post years and years earlier. We had a long talk about, you know, how to write the story. And he suggested. He said, you know, the only way to try to understand this is to call spy novelists and ask them what they make of it, you know, and, like, what would be the motivation of somebody to defect and then read effect? And what would be going through the mind of someone who was actually drugged and taken into U.S. custody? You know, and so that was. You know, we went through, like, I don't even remember which spy novelists I called, but that's. That was a lot of, you know, of how I thought through the story, because it just felt like, how do you know this is a mystery, you know, wow.
- [33:49]
Julie Cohn
Wow. And so to get a sense of it, you talk to the people who sort of live in this world and they're in there, like, build these stories for a living.
- [33:57]
Dale Russakoff
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, because they were, you know, I mean, they could. They could, like, look at these facts and come up with two different storylines based on different human motivations that might have been in play. And knowing, you know, the world of spies. And it was just really. It was such a fun way to think about a news story.
- [34:19]
Julie Cohn
Guys. The Yurchenko story was so out of this world that the best way for journalists to wrap their head around it was to turn to fiction writers. The President of the United States kept up to date with the debate. Secretary of State George Shultz thought Yurchenko was a legitimate defector who had changed his mind. And David Major, Director of Intelligence at the National Security Council, agreed. He was and still is sure Yurchenko was the real deal.
- [34:47]
Stephen Engelberg
I think he's legitimate.
- [34:49]
Julie Cohn
For one thing, there had never been a fake defector to the United States. Nor, by the way, has there been since anyone's knowledge. The reason is that it's far too risky to send a plant deep into enemy territory where anything can happen, especially if they have such a high rank as Vitaly Orchenko. First, what if they get truth serumed? Second, it's hard to live a lie under close inspection. For hours and hours of debriefing. Most plants, they pretend to be double Agents, they're still working for the KGB and only meeting their American handlers for a quick brush pass or short meeting. It's much easier to lie in a letter or in abbreviated encounters. But for a defector to be a plant means to live inside the US, inside a safe house 247 with CIA personnel watching your every move. To David Major, it just. It didn't make sense. Still, when David debriefed President Reagan on the news, like Dale, he faithfully told both sides, including his own opinion.
- [35:50]
Stephen Engelberg
I told him everything I knew about the case, like I told you, where he came from, what we know about him, what it could have been, what the implications are if it's true.
- [36:00]
Julie Cohn
If what's true?
- [36:01]
Stephen Engelberg
If he is bona fide or not bona fide. The implications of.
- [36:05]
David Major
So you.
- [36:05]
Julie Cohn
You gave him both. Both versions?
- [36:07]
Stephen Engelberg
Yeah.
- [36:08]
Julie Cohn
And you said you don't think.
- [36:10]
Stephen Engelberg
I think he's legitimate.
- [36:11]
Julie Cohn
But the President was a bit coy. During an interview on November 6 with representatives of the wire services. Reagan basically describes Yurchenko's intel as chicken feed.
- [36:23]
Stephen Engelberg
Well, actually, the information that he provided was not anything new or sensational. It was. That was pretty much information already known to the CIA. Oh, really? So. So that would tend to support your thought that perhaps this whole thing was cooked.
- [36:50]
Julie Cohn
If you want to take it that way.
- [36:52]
Stephen Engelberg
I'm not going to comment on that one way or the other.
- [36:54]
Advertiser
Would you say you're perplexed by it?
- [36:56]
Stephen Engelberg
Yes, I think anyone is perplexed by this. I think it's awfully easy for any American to be perplexed by anyone that could live in the United States and would prefer to live in Russia.
- [37:06]
Julie Cohn
But to all the hundreds of people who were claiming, or in the President's case, kind of hinting that Yurchenko might be a plant. Why? To what end? Here's Paul.
- [37:18]
Stephen Engelberg
Why did they do it in the Value? Very simple. To distract us, confuse us, as we were trying to find who the spy was.
- [37:30]
Julie Cohn
By this, he means to distract the CIA while it was trying to find the real reason, potentially a mole for the dead bodies of the CIA's Soviet assets that kept piling up that year. And if that was the case, did it work?
- [37:47]
Stephen Engelberg
Well, it did, in a way, because it kept us busy as hell. And then we were under attack from everybody except the Red Cross for six months afterwards. How we screwed it up. I mean, sure it did.
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Julie Cohn
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Julie Cohn
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Julie Cohn
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- [39:09]
Julie Cohn
The press, White House and Congress were trying to get to the bottom of things. What the hell had gone wrong? There was a large White House investigation led by Reagan's newly appointed Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. And there were Senate hearings after Senate hearings after Senate hearings. It was actually Paul Redmond's first time ever testifying at a Senate hearing. And he remembers it because it's the day his family finally learned what he did for a living.
- [39:36]
Stephen Engelberg
And there must have been 75 reporters there with cameras, right, okay, I was undercover.
- [39:44]
Julie Cohn
Paul had told his parents and his sister that he worked at the State Department.
- [39:48]
Stephen Engelberg
It didn't want her or my parents to worry about it. And she thought I told her the State Department. So I'm all over friggin national television. Her friends are calling up saying you're brothers from the CIA. He said, no, it couldn't be. He says he's working the state. She's never forgiven me. We talked about it two months ago on her birthday. She's never forgiven me.
- [40:09]
Julie Cohn
He had also told his wife Catherine that he would be on the news. They spoke about it afterward.
- [40:15]
Stephen Engelberg
Somewhere along the line in that conversation of maybe it was the next day, I don't remember. Catherine said, you were on television. And I said, well, how'd I look? Said fat. I'm sorry. I'm telling you what I remember, right.
- [40:30]
Julie Cohn
Ball remembers that in addition to the scrutiny from Capitol Hill, from the press, from within the agency, and even from his wife, apparently there was also significant pressure from the CIA's allies internationally.
- [40:44]
Stephen Engelberg
Every Christmas time, the. The heads of the European services, the French, the Italians, the Brits sometimes come to America to see CIA. I suppose they see the Bureau and I was always trotted out to say, tell about how bad the commies were. You know, we got to work together, you know that crap. The Italians were fun. Well, the French, the general comes. I can't Remember his name, but. And he was being squired around by somebody from the French branch of the DDL named Dick Kahane. Fabulous guy who the French knew. I mean, he had native French and he'd served in Paris. Anyway, so the general comes in and he didn't want to talk about recruiting commies. He said. He sat down. This is a disaster. She's a catastrophe for the Western rule. You stupid Americans. How did. In effect, how did you. You went on and on. How did you let Yurchenko get away? It was a huge flap. Stupid American disaster. And Kohane, who I love, almost hugged himself, said we were doing just fine till we took him to a French restaurant.
- [41:53]
Julie Cohn
In fact, the shitstorm Yurchenko left in his wake left Paul Redmond with a very clear opinion on the matter.
- [42:00]
Stephen Engelberg
If you want my bottom line on Yurchenko, you can use it. He was much more of a bigger pain in the ass ultimately than he was worth. You can quote.
- [42:10]
Julie Cohn
The plus side of that pain in the ass, though, was that he had caused an in depth look at the way the CIA handled defectors, which was flawed and triggered reform of the process. Here's Joe Augustin again, who for a time ran something called the National Resettlement Operations Team center, or nroc.
- [42:30]
Advertiser
In fact, just an interesting tidbit that probably very few people in the world know. The reason ENROC was created as a center for resettle the resettled defectors is because of Yurchenko. We didn't have a center before 1985 that dealt with defectors.
- [42:52]
Julie Cohn
Enrock is so secret that for decades, the existence of the organization wasn't even known until Rachel Maddow broke the story in 2019. Enrock was set up because after Yurchenko, it became clear that the type of people needed to help acclimate someone to a new life in a brand new world are not the same kind of people that want to be case officers. Remember, Colin Thompson wasn't a defectory settlement guy. He worked in counterintelligence at the SE Division, and he got assigned to the Yurchenko case.
- [43:20]
Advertiser
We didn't have people who wanted to handle defectors, because if you're a hotshot case officer, the glory is in the chase, right? You want to go and you identify somebody, you spot and assess and develop somebody, and you want to recruit that person. That's really the fun part of being a case officer. The adrenaline's flowing. You want to get that recruitment after that, and the person defects. And now you're handling some, you know, CNN called them washed out washed up spies. You know, how much fun is that? You know, and so my point is, we didn't have the kind of trained, well prepared, you know, skilled case officers. And it's no offense to the case officers because they did their job incredibly well with what they did. But handling defectors is a whole different ballgame. You know, how do you keep them happy? How do you, you know, how do you keep them satisfied? How do you talk to them about what their life is going to be like?
- [44:29]
Julie Cohn
Defector resettlement officers must have empathy and patience. On staff at NROC now are psychologists, psychiatrists, language teachers, and lawyers. As a result of Yurchenko, every resettlement team must have an officer that is fluent in the defector's native tongue. The CIA was getting grilled from every angle. And even within the agency's walls. There was also a rapid fire game of finger pointing. And most fingers pointed to Colin Thompson. Here's Ronald Kessler, author of escape from the CIA, a book published in 1991 about Yurchenko's time in the U.S. though he called Colin honorable and though he enjoyed his time interviewing Colin, he believes Colin deserves the blame.
- [45:15]
Stephen Engelberg
Well, he was in charge. He was the number one guy. So what?
- [45:19]
Julie Cohn
I mean, he reported to a lot of people who, it's not like he was operating in a vacuum. I mean, what I'm saying is like his boss is their boss. Everyone knew what was going on.
- [45:28]
Stephen Engelberg
That was part of the, you know, the whole stick with the CIA, but handling of defectors. But, you know, through his own words, you can see, you can see in the book that he considered Yachenko to be a pain in the ass. He would say that.
- [45:46]
Julie Cohn
Yeah. So I don't think he would argue with that. That's true.
- [45:48]
Stephen Engelberg
So I don't think, you know, there's any way for him to escape, to wheedle out of this.
- [45:54]
Julie Cohn
I was curious if Mike Rochford had any opinions about what might have been done differently. And I mentioned my conversation with Kessler.
- [46:01]
Advertiser
I know he didn't like Colin. So Brady, I mean, he's still on Colin.
- [46:06]
Julie Cohn
He's still.
- [46:07]
Advertiser
Come on, that's, that's been what, 39 years? Colin had a tough time. I don't know. I don't blame him. I, I used to blame him it. When it first happened, and then I realized that's kind of stupid. It's not, you know, and when you're young and egotistical, you look for people to blame.
- [46:28]
Julie Cohn
Mike remembers speaking to Chuck Yurchenko, psychologist.
- [46:32]
Advertiser
Because I remember talking about, you Know what? Why did he go back and he said, it's not your fault. He says it's not the debrief. His fault.
- [46:40]
Julie Cohn
Mike was interrogated by the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, who seemed to really have it out for the CIA.
- [46:47]
Advertiser
And we tried to say, look, yeah, there were mistakes made, there were people that weren't sensitive to him. And, you know, we're going to tell you that we were real sensitive to him as from the Bureau, but. But on the other hand, he was a. He was kind of a piss ant. You know, he's a tough guy to deal with, and so you're not going to roll over and give him everything he wants. That would be stupid.
- [47:10]
Julie Cohn
When things were going well, up until Vitaly Yurchenko's disappearance on November 4th, everyone wanted credit. The Yurchenko case had taken a village. But after his redefection, as soon as the swelling began on the CIA's black eye, it's amazing how suddenly Yurchenko became the responsibility of just one or two people.
- [47:31]
Advertiser
Yurchenko having gone back, my stock went down to the floor someplace.
- [47:37]
Julie Cohn
I'm not saying Colin couldn't have handled things better or had better rapport. He could have. Although, look, if Yurchenko was a plant, Khan could have been Mother Teresa and it wouldn't have mattered. But if Yurchenko was a real defector, it just wasn't one man's fault. Yurchenko's spirit was first broken when his name was leaked to the press, which was Bill Casey's doing. Next, when Valentina rejected him, then when the FBI asked him to testify in court against Ronald Pelton. And lastly, when he thought he'd need to also testify in the Chadron case. None of that was the work of Colin Thompson. Reid thinks these were all traumatic moments that had Yurchenko felt welcomed and appreciated in America, he might have been able to overcome. It's hard to know that for certain. What is clear is that his undoing had taken a village. And yet, right after Yurchenko's redefection, I wasn't welcome.
- [48:41]
Stephen Engelberg
Gerber's in Gerber's house anymore.
- [48:44]
Julie Cohn
Say that again.
- [48:45]
Stephen Engelberg
I wasn't welcome in Gerber's house anymore.
- [48:48]
Julie Cohn
Burton Gerber was the head of the SE Division at the time and a legend in the clandestine services. He passed away just a few months ago. Gerber was angry at the mistakes made in Yurchenko's handling at the redefection. And to be fair, I'm not sure Colin telling him to go screw himself that night had Helped too much either. He had been given the Yurchenko case as a gold star, told it would help him with a promotion. And now Yurchenko's redefection had effectively ended Colin's career in clandestine services. So I was surprised to learn that Colin spent his last few years at the CIA in the Office of Defector Resettlement. Did you. What was the thinking like when you. When you went into that line of work? Was there something that you were trying to.
- [49:38]
Stephen Engelberg
Yeah, I needed. I needed a job. It wasn't quite. Hadn't figured out that I was.
- [49:43]
Advertiser
I had.
- [49:44]
Stephen Engelberg
I wasn't totally convinced that my career was finished. I certainly wasn't welcome working for Gerber. He didn't like me, and I didn't like him. So I went there and I was. I was welcomed there.
- [49:57]
Julie Cohn
Were there a sense of, like, put. Proving something or kind of. I don't know, was there a sense of sort of paying back that or showing people who had misjudged you?
- [50:07]
Stephen Engelberg
Yeah, there was something to that. Yeah, absolutely. More to myself saying, you know, I don't really care what they think.
- [50:13]
Advertiser
Which I didn't really. But I said, I can do it.
- [50:17]
Stephen Engelberg
And I'm going to prove to you I can do it. I did.
- [50:22]
Julie Cohn
As chaotic and painful as the political and personal fallout had been from Vitaly Yurchenko's redefection, if you can believe it, there was in the weeks after his departure something far more horrifying that began happening deep inside the Soviet Eastern European division. Though it had seemed that Yurchenko had solved the big question mark of the year of the spy deaths when he had named Ed Howard as the molecular and to some extent also Ronald Pelton. After Yurchenko redefected the bodies kept falling, Pimenta's wife, Natalia Martynova, had received a message. It said her husband had injured his leg, that he would need emergency surgery, and that the family would need to come back to Moscow immediately, Paul Redmond felt a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. They had let Pimenta go home, and now it looked more than ever like he was never coming back. They were right. Yurchenko's redefection had helped create an excuse for the KGB to arrest a man they had somehow recently learned was an informant, a man Howard hadn't known about. Once home, Pimenta had been arrested, interrogated, tortured, and executed by firing squad. His wife had no idea about his work for the Americans. But learning he was being charged with high treason when she returned to Moscow didn't change her feelings for him. She still looks at their time in America together with their children as the happiest of her life. Then a lieutenant colonel codenamed Fitness got called to a last minute conference in East Germany. He too was never to be heard from again. In December, the CIA lost touch with a GRU colonel codenamed Accord, then a KGB colonel codenamed Million. In all, five CIA Soviet assets disappeared before January of that year. The only thing more grisly than inexplicably watching one and after another prized agent being kidnapped and executed was that neither mole that Yurchenko revealed could have known about many of them. Fitness, for instance, had volunteered his services to the CIA in April of 85 after Howard had already been fired. Fitness worked in West Germany and he told his handlers that the KGB was developing a mini bomb campaign. They were targeting places most frequented by Americans, restaurants, malls, etc. With the plan to set off small bombs there, kill some innocent Americans and blame the bombs on German terrorists, Baader Meinhof or the Red Army Faction to sour US German relations. It wasn't clear yet whether his intel was real, but a few days after Yurchenko defected, Fitness's wife was told her husband had slipped on ice and she and their children would need to return to Moscow. Fitness had been compromised, arrested, and then shot in the head, which meant that whether he had intended to be or not, Yurchenko was in fact a huge distraction while elsewhere and no one knew where. There was definitely still a leak, one that was dripping blood. More on that next time. 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 @wavelandmedia for more information on this series and more. Thanks for listening. Do you know how long the average professional spends making slide decks every week? Five hours. That's almost an entire workday resizing text boxes and moving around bullet points. Well, Gamma is here to rescue you from presentation purgatory. Just drop in your notes and Gamma magically turns them into polished presentations, websites, social posts, you name it. No design or coding skills required. Start for free at Gamma App and get a month of Gamma Pro for free with promo code. Podcast at Ameca Insurance we know it's more than just a car. It's the two door coupe that was there for your first drive, the hatchback that took you cross country and back, and the minivan that tackles the weekly carpool for the cars you couldn't live without. Trust Ameca Auto Insurance Amica. Empathy is our best policy.