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The Shadow Dossier — The Defector Who Defected Back · The Shadow Dossier

• 0:00
  The Shadow Dossier. Act I. The Walk -In in Rome.
• 0:08
  In August 1985, a senior KGB officer named Vitaly
• 0:14
  Yurchenko, then serving in Soviet security assignments
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  abroad, approached American officials in Rome
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  and asked for asylum. He was at the time one
• 0:25
  of the highest -ranking KGB officers ever to
• 0:28
  defect to the United States, and CIA officers
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  who debriefed him afterward considered his intelligence
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  genuinely valuable. Yurkenko provided information
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  that helped identify at least two American traders
• 0:45
  working for Soviet intelligence. Ronald Pelton,
• 0:48
  a former NSA employee who had sold details of
• 0:52
  a sensitive submarine cable -tapping operation,
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  and Edward Lee Howard, a former CIA officer who
• 0:59
  had himself been preparing to defect. For several
• 1:03
  months, Yurkenko's defection was treated within
• 1:06
  American intelligence circles as one of the more
• 1:09
  significant successes of the year. Dinner and
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  a disappearance. Then, in November 1985, at a
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  restaurant in Georgetown where a CIA handler
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  had taken him for dinner, Yurkinko excused himself
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  and walked out, disappearing into the Washington
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  evening. Days later, he reappeared at the Soviet
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  embassy and then held a press conference, in
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  which he stated, in front of American reporters,
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  that he had been drugged and effectively kidnapped
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  by the CIA, held against his will, and that he
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  wished to return home. He then boarded a flight
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  to Moscow under Soviet escort and was gone. Yurkenko's
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  re -defection became one of the more genuinely
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  puzzling episodes of the Cold War's later years,
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  and intelligence historians still don't agree
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  on the full explanation. One theory holds that
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  Yurkenko was a completely genuine defector whose
• 2:27
  resolve simply broke, whether from personal turmoil,
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  homesickness, or a failed romantic relationship
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  in the United States that some accounts suggest
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  weighed heavily on him. and that his claims of
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  kidnapping were fabricated after the fact to
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  protect himself and his family back in the Soviet
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  Union from the consequences of having actually
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  defected. A second theory, taken seriously by
• 2:55
  some CIA officers at the time, holds that Yurkinko
• 2:59
  may have been a genuine defector whose usefulness
• 3:02
  to Moscow as a returning double agent. Feeding
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  back detailed knowledge of how the CIA debriefs
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  and handles defectors made redefection an attractive
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  option once he delivered his most valuable information.
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  A third, more elaborate possibility, that he
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  had been a controlled Soviet plant from the very
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  beginning, sent specifically to identify or protect
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  other Soviet assets while appearing to defect,
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  was also debated internally but never conclusively
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  proven. Back in Moscow, Yurkenko gave interviews
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  reinforcing his kidnapping account and appeared
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  to resume, at least publicly, his career and
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  life without evident punishment, which some Western
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  analysts took as evidence his return had been
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  welcomed rather than merely tolerated. He largely
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  disappeared from public view in the years afterward.
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  What makes the case unusual, even among Cold
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  War defection stories, is that Yurkinko's information
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  about Pelton and Howard was real and independently
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  verified, regardless of his motives or later
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  account. The genuine value of what he gave up
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  sits uneasily alongside the strangeness of how
• 4:29
  the story ended, and intelligence officers who
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  worked the case have never reached full agreement
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  on which version of events. if any single one,
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  is the true one. This concludes Declassified
• 4:44
  File Number 060 of the Shadow Dossier. The Defector
• 4:49
  Who Defected Back. What dangerous secrets await
• 4:54
  in our next file? Subscribe on Apple Podcasts,
• 5:01
  Spotify, or SS .com. and YouTube so you never
• 5:06
  miss an official declassification. This is the
• 5:11
  Shadow Dossier. Thank you for listening.