Background
Iurchenko, Vitalii was born in 1935.
Iurchenko, Vitalii was born in 1935.
Served with the Committee for State Security for 25 years. Former 1st Secretary in the Soviet Embassy in Washington, 1975-1980. Recalled to Moscow. Rose to head one of the 8 minor departments in the Committee for State Security (probably the 7th Directorate, in charge of surveillance, or the 8 th, in command of communications intelligence) with the rank of general.
In July 1985, disappeared in Rome where he had been sent on a business trip (in fact high-ranking personnel are banned from leaving the Soviet Union). Defected to the USA. Brought to Washington and, according to the press, faced months of aggressive interrogation. His defection came to light only in October 1985.
Disappeared from his secure flat the following month, and surfaced in the Soviet Embassy claiming he had been kidnapped, tortured and offered by the CIA $lm plus $180,000 a year if he became a consultant to the CIA. Normally such press-conferences of re-defectors take place in Moscow. This time it was presented to American and other Western journalists on American territory, and only days before the summit meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev in Geneva. President Reagan remarked that he was surprised that 3 Soviet citizens, Iurchenko, Miroslav Medvid and Aleksandr Sukhanov, had asked for political asylum in the USA and had then decided to return to the Soviet Union.
Both Medvid and Sukhanov, a soldier in Afghanistan who had tried to desert from the Soviet Army there, were reassured that they would not be punished if they returned. In fact dissident sources indicate that both are now in labour camps. The Iurchenko ‘defection’ was probably a successful Committee for State Security operation, though its real purpose remains unclear.
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