KGB Defector Reported to Implicate Ex-CIA Workers

A high-ranking Soviet intelligence officer who defected to the West has implicated several former CIA employees as KGB agents--including some whose positions at the agency “were high enough to be serious,” a congressional source said today.

The source, who insisted on anonymity, said it appears that some of the CIA employees quit the agency out of concern they were about to be exposed and fled the United States. He said they are now in “places where they can be in contact with Russia,” but he would not elaborate.

Earlier today, the Justice Department and the CIA denied a New York Times report that the senior KGB officer, Vitaly Yurtchenko, had identified “current” CIA employees as agents of the Soviet intelligence service.

Today, the congressional source said it appeared that no “active CIA personnel . . . pose a threat” although former employees were implicated.

But, asked later if the CIA would extend its denial to cover former CIA employees, CIA spokeswoman Kathy Pherson refused to go that far. She said the earlier statement would stand as is. That denial said: “The New York Times allegation . . . that a Soviet defector ‘identified several employees of the Central Intelligence Agency as Soviet agents’ is untrue.”

The congressional source said Yurtchenko oversaw KGB intelligence operations in the United States. He added that the number of former CIA employees implicated as Soviet agents was “more than one and less than six. . . . Several.”

Yurtchenko’s charges, if substantiated, could confirm suspicions of some intelligence officers that the CIA has been compromised by one or more Americans secretly working as Soviet “moles” inside the agency.

The Los Angeles Times, reporting Yurtchenko’s defection in Thursday’s editions, said he could be the highest-ranking KGB defector to the West since the 1930s, when two generals in the Soviet intelligence service fled Moscow during the purges of Josef Stalin.

It said the 50-year-old Yurtchenko dropped from sight in August during a temporary assignment to Rome. He reportedly was familiar with KGB operations in the United States, Western Europe and Latin America.