U.S. Clears KGB Agent to Go Home : Yurchenko Personally Tells American Officials He Does Not Want to Defect

Soviet KGB officer Vitaly Yurchenko on Tuesday night was granted the freedom to leave the United States, after he told U.S. officials face to face that he does not wish to defect and wants to go home.

Yurchenko was brought to State Department headquarters so he could be free of possible Soviet intimidation. He was interviewed by five senior State Department officials and an American doctor to determine whether his decision to return to the Soviet Union--which he announced at a dramatic news conference at the Soviet Embassy on Monday--was free and voluntary.

Under U.S. law, potential defectors must be interviewed in “a coercion-free environment” before they can be allowed to leave the United States.

‘Of His Own Free Will’

“As a result of that meeting, the United States government has decided that Mr. Yurchenko’s decision to return to the Soviet Union was made of his own free will and that he is now free to leave the United States,” State Department spokesman Charles Redman said after the half-hour session.

Yurchenko left the State Department with his hands clenched over his head, like a boxer who has won a match. Asked if he was returning to the Soviet Union, he said, “Yes, home!”

Although the State Department said Yurchenko “defected of his own volition” last summer and provided valuable information to the CIA, Yurchenko told the news conference Monday that he was kidnaped on the streets of Rome and held against his will in the United States until he was able to escape.

According to intelligence sources, Yurchenko on Saturday walked out of Au Pied de Cochon, a Georgetown restaurant where he was dining with his CIA contacts, and headed for the Soviet Embassy compound nearby.

On Monday, Yurchenko told a different story. He said he escaped from a heavily guarded estate in western Virginia and implied that he hitchhiked to the embassy.

As Yurchenko left the State Department after the interview, he was accompanied by Viktor Isakov, minister counselor of the Soviet Embassy. Asked if Yurchenko was being sent back to the Soviet Union, Isakov replied: “It’s obvious.”

Redman said Yurchenko was assured that he could remain in the United States if he chose to do so and would not be subject to any kind of punishment.

Redman said after the interview, “It appears that it was a personal decision by Mr. Yurchenko to return to Soviet control.”

Asked whether the U.S. government had sought assurances that Yurchenko would not be harmed when he returned to Moscow, Redman said that “was clearly his business, and I’d ask you to ask Mr. Yurchenko what assurances he’d gotten from Soviet officials.”

Redman said the U.S. doctor did not conduct any medical tests, but that he “was completely satisfied in the judgment that he made. . . . There was no doubt in his mind that Mr. Yurchenko was of sound mind, that he was the master of himself, that he knew what he was thinking.”

The incident placed a major new strain on U.S.-Soviet relations just two weeks before the scheduled Geneva summit meeting of President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. However, a White House official said that Washington is determined not to let the controversy torpedo the summit.

“We won’t be provoked into anything that could cause problems leading up to the summit, whether or not that’s what the Soviets want to do,” said the official, who declined to be identified by name.

Yurchenko, described by CIA officials last summer as the head of the KGB’s North American department, appeared for a time to be the most important Soviet spy ever to change sides. His sudden announcement that he intended to return home turned to ashes what had seemed to be a monumental intelligence coup for the United States.

Congressional and Administration officials said there are two possible explanations for Yurchenko’s action: He was a genuine defector who changed his mind, or he was a double agent from the start, sent by the KGB to discover what he could about U.S. counterintelligence capabilities.

‘Totally False’

In Moscow, Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who discussed the incident briefly with Gorbachev on Tuesday, told a news conference that Yurchenko’s version of events was “totally false.” Likewise, other officials here gave no credence to Yurchenko’s story of having been kidnaped.

On Capitol Hill, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee announced that the panel will conduct a thorough investigation of the affair.

On the basis of a preliminary briefing by CIA officials late Tuesday, the chairman, Sen. David Durenberger (R-Minn.), said the agency is convinced that Yurchenko was a genuine defector who had a change of heart.

And Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the vice chairman, declared that the CIA blundered badly, leaving little doubt that he was unconvinced by the agency’s explanation.

“You’ve either got a defector who was allowed just to walk away under circumstances I still can’t understand and cause a significant embarrassment to the United States, or you have a double agent who was planted on the United States,” Leahy said. “And then you’ve got far more than a significant embarrassment--you have an out-and-out calamity. No matter what, something is wrong.

“I don’t like the idea of a person considered to be a major defector sitting down having dinner in Georgetown, which is a short walk from a Soviet installation,” he said.

The embassy compound is little more than a mile away from the restaurant.

Employees of the restaurant, whose name in French means “the pig’s foot,” said they were interviewed repeatedly by CIA officials after Yurchenko’s departure.

Small, Rather Noisy

It was not clear what ruse Yurchenko used to get away from his dining companions at the restaurant, which is small and rather noisy. The restaurant’s men’s room is in the back, far from the only door, but if Yurchenko said he was going outside for a breath of fresh air, one of his CIA contacts would have been likely to accompany him.

The CIA, in its briefing to the Senate Intelligence Committee, suggested that Yurchenko may have decided to defect at least in part to pursue a love affair with the wife of a Soviet diplomat now stationed in Canada. Later, the CIA said, she rejected him, prompting his decision to return to the Soviet Union.

The Associated Press quoted a U.S. intelligence source who said of the woman in Canada, “She liked him as a spy but not as a defector.”

But Leahy questioned that explanation, saying, “If you are a high-level KGB agent, you have greater motivation than just . . . a failed romance.”

Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska), another member of the committee, said Yurchenko may have been alarmed by the extent of information concerning his activities and associates that appeared in U.S. newspapers.

FBI and Justice Department officials did not learn that Yurchenko had fled to the Soviet Embassy until Monday, two days after the CIA knew.

This marked the second time in the last year that the FBI, which is in charge of counterintelligence in the United States, was not informed by the CIA of a development affecting that responsibility.

The first that is publicly known was when two CIA employees informed their superiors in September, 1984, that Edward L. Howard, a former CIA agent who had been forced to leave the agency, told them that he had been thinking of giving the Soviets information as an act of revenge.

Instead of relaying the information to the FBI, which could have begun investigating Howard, the CIA helped him obtain psychiatric help.

Yurchenko, according to U.S. intelligence officials, told the FBI about Howard’s activities.

Times staff writers Ronald J. Ostrow, Michael Wines, Karen Tumulty and Maura Dolan also contributed to this report.