Career
After 25 years of service in the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security), he defected to the United States during an assignment in Rome. After providing the names of two United States. intelligence officers who were Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security) agents, Yurchenko slipped from the Americans and returned to the Soviets. Upon his defection to the United States, Yurchenko identified two American intelligence officers as Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security) agents: Ronald Pelton and Edward Lee Howard.
Pelton was later convicted, while Howard fled the United States before he could be questioned.
Disappearance
In November 1985, before eating a meal at Au Pied de Cochon, a French restaurant in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, District of Columbia, Yurchenko told his Central Intelligence Agency guard, "I"m going for a walk. If I don"t come back, it"s not your fault." Yurchenko did not return.
The building, located at 1335 Wisconsin Avenue Northwest, now houses a Five Guys burger franchise. A plaque commemorating the event can be seen in one of the booths.
Return to Russia
Several days later, the Soviet Embassy called a press conference, at which Yurchenko announced he had been kidnapped and drugged by the Americans.
lieutenant is possible that his defection was staged to fool the Central Intelligence Agency with wrong leads, to protect Aldrich Ames, an American who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency and was then one of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics"s most important mole within the Central Intelligence Agency. The Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security) was reported to have secretly interrogated Yurchenko after his return, under the influence of a truth drug, to ensure he had not been recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency as a double agent. At a 1999 Texas Agricultural and Mechanical conference attended by several Central Intelligence Agency intelligence professionals, as well as Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security) General Oleg Danilovich Kalugin, the question of Yurchenko"s defection came up. Kalugin stated that Yurchenko started out as a real defector, then changed his mind and redefected.
Kalugin gave several points:
The Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security) typically didn"t use "fake defectors" because the defection would be a propaganda problem for the Soviet government.
("People were not supposed to run from the paradise")
Yurchenko was in love with a woman married to a Russian official, and thought that in the United States they could be together. This did not work out as planned.
Yurchenko had a stomach ulcer that worried him greatly, and thought it could be cured in the United States. lieutenant wasn"t. Yurchenko"s defection was leaked to the media after he"d been promised it wouldn"t be.
Yurchenko "felt his freedom to move around was sort of limited by the Central Intelligence Agency".
Yurchenko apparently thought the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security) might treat him well because of the cases of recent redefectors like Betov and Chebatriov. Another panelist also believed he was a legitimate defector. James Olson of the George Bush School said "I think he was a very disturbed individual and he redefected out of psychological problems that he had." Paul Redmond said that Sandra Grimes and Jeanne Vertefeuille (of the Aldrich Ames case) also believed Yurchenko was genuine.
Redmond on the other hand thought it possible that Yurchenko might have been sent by the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security) as a "starburst".
