Vitaly Yurchenko

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Vitaly Yurchenko (b. 2 May 1936) was a KGB officer in the Soviet Union. In 1985, after twenty-five years of service in the KGB, he defected to the United States during an assignment in Rome. In the following interrogations by the CIA, he accused two American intelligence operatives of working for the KGB, Ronald Pelton and Edward Lee Howard. While Pelton was later convicted, Howard fled the US before he could be questioned.

In November of that year, before eating a meal at Au Pied de Cochon, a restaurant in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. (today a Five Guys hamburger restaurant), Yurchenko told his CIA guard, "I'm going for a walk. If I don't come back, it's not your fault." Yurchenko did not return. Several days later, the Soviet Embassy called a press conference, at which Yurchenko announced he had been kidnapped and drugged by the Americans. It is possible that he was acting as a double agent, seeking to fool the CIA with wrong leads to protect one of the USSR's then most important CIA traitors, Aldrich Ames.

[edit] External links

• Col. Vitaly Yurchenko
• Spooks, shadows, codes, and moles