NEW SERIES: The Redefector
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The year was 1985, and the CIA had a painful secret. Soviet assets, who had been secretly working for the CIA, had begun ominously disappearing, one after another after another.
It just kept adding up. I had a guy to do a study of how long KGB officers survived working for.
Months, practically. One might be bad luck, but four is three too many to be a coincidence.
And that was just the beginning. 1985 would later become known as the year of the spy because of the sheer amount of blown covers, assassinations, triple agents, and espionage debacles that would unfold over the coming months.
Operations to protect America's secrets are usually done quietly with little publicity. Well, lately, they've been making big news.
Some of you may be wondering if the large number of spy arrests in recent weeks means that we're looking harder or whether there are more spies to find. Well, I think the answer to both questions is yes.
As the agency was scrambling to find answers on a hot summer day in
Rome, in walked a Soviet colonel named Vitaly Yurchenko. He wanted to defect to the United States immediately.
In exchange for exfiltration to the U.S. and total secrecy, Yurchenko would tell the Americans everything he knew.
And he knew a lot, because he was the highest-ranked KGB officer at that time ever to defect. In fact, he knew about a CIA mole, a man who would have been in a position to know about all the covers that had just been blown.
But the question was, was he telling the truth? Do you think Vitaly Archenko was a plant? No, no, no. I'm 100% sure he wasn't.
100%. To me, the circumstantial evidence continues to weigh in the direction that this was a Soviet operation.
He was a true deal. He wasn't anybody's plan.
He came on his own. I'm definite about it.
The more I reported, the more it was impossible to know which narrative was true. He had no idea what
had happened, which story was true. He said you could argue it round or you could argue it flat.
The theory that I subscribe to is that he was a plant, that it was all orchestrated by KGB
headquarters. My name is Julie Cohn.
Join me as I finally discover the truth behind the Vitaly Urchenko mystery on The Re-Defector. Transcription by CastingWords
