Soviets Agree to Let U.S. Question KGB Spymaster : Doctor to Be Present at Session

The Soviet Union today agreed to a U.S. demand for an interview with KGB spymaster Vitaly Yurchenko to prove he is not being coerced into returning to his homeland after three months in the hands of American intelligence agents.

A State Department official, speaking on condition that he not be identified, said the interview was scheduled for late this afternoon at the department’s headquarters and that a doctor would be present.

The purpose of the meeting was to assure U.S. authorities that Yurchenko truly wanted to return to the Soviet Union and was not being forced to do so by Soviet officials, said Charles Redman, a State Department spokesman.

Yurchenko may have defected to the West in part to be near a girlfriend in Canada and may have returned because the affair turned sour, U.S. intelligence sources said today.

Yurchenko has a wife and a 16-year-old son in the Soviet Union. The sources, who declined to be identified by name, described the girlfriend as the wife of a Soviet diplomat posted to Canada.

Yurchenko, identified by U.S. intelligence experts as the one-time head of the KGB’s American section, came to the United States in early August and was in the custody of CIA officials until last weekend.

He turned up at the Soviet Embassy on Monday and, at an extraordinary news conference, said he had been abducted in Rome, drugged and pumped for Russian secrets at a CIA hide-out in Virginia but managed to escape. (Story, Page 6.)

‘Completely False’

The State Department said that the allegations were “completely false” and that Yurchenko defected freely, but for some reason decided to return to the Soviet Union.

Redman said it appeared that Yurchenko’s decision to go to the embassy after three months of talking to U.S. intelligence officials “was a personal decision, and we will attempt to confirm that at a meeting with him.”

Chairing the session would be an official of the department’s Bureau of European and Canadian Affairs, Redman said.

Before the meeting was set, Redman said U.S. officials had taken “security and legal” precautions to make sure that Yurchenko did not leave the country. He said Yurchenko had entered the United States under special authority granted by the attorney general and that even if the Russian held a Soviet diplomatic passport it would not be valid for travel out of the country.

Redman would not say what specific security precautions were taken. Nor would he respond to some of the specific allegations Yurchenko made on Monday.

Denied Yurchenko’s Allegations

U.S. officials, however, sought to underscore their assertions that Yurchenko’s version of the case was false.

“Had Mr. Yurchenko expressed a desire at any time to return to the U.S.S.R., we would not have hindered him from doing so,” Redman said.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said the panel will investigate the CIA’s handling of the Yurchenko case. Sen. David Durenberger (R-Minn.), chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said, “We’re going to be looking closely at this, at how the CIA handled it, at the whole thing.”

Durenberger said the panel would interview CIA director William Casey, but that no date had yet been set for Casey’s appearance.

In Moscow, the official Tass news agency today charged the United States with committing an outrageous act of “state terrorism” by “kidnaping and torturing” Yurchenko.