President Minimizes Data Gleaned From Yurchenko

President Reagan, asserting that the information Soviet KGB officer Vitaly Yurchenko provided American intelligence experts this fall was “pretty much . . . already known,” said Wednesday he does not rule out the possibility that Yurchenko’s supposed defection to the United States was a Soviet ruse.

In an interview with wire service reporters, Reagan added that sudden decisions in recent days by Yurchenko and two other apparent Soviet defectors to refuse U.S. asylum also suggest “a deliberate ploy or maneuver” by Moscow. But he declined to say whether he personally subscribes to that theory, or to suggest why such a ploy might have been staged.

The comments became public hours before Yurchenko, the CIA’s one-time prize catch, boarded a Soviet Ilyushin jetliner Wednesday evening and departed for Moscow, one day after the State Department determined that his request to go home was genuine.

In his wake, an angry Congress and the Justice Department began probing the way in which U.S. officials have handled the parade of Soviets who have sought American protection this fall but then decided to return to the Soviet Union. And Reagan repeated an earlier pledge to thin the ranks of Soviet and Eastern European diplomats in this country in an effort to hinder Communist espionage.

The President told reporters there “is no way we can prove or disprove” allegations that a string of apparent defections was staged by the Soviets, perhaps in an effort to embarrass the United States and bolster the Soviet image before the Nov. 19-20 summit in Geneva.

Besides Yurchenko, who reportedly sought to defect at the U.S. Embassy in Rome in July, there have been two similar incidents in recent weeks: A Soviet soldier briefly sought refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Ukrainian seaman Miroslav Medvid jumped ship in New Orleans to talk to American immigration officials. Both have since been returned to Soviet hands.

In addition, a Romanian sailor walked into a Jacksonville, Fla., immigration office Wednesday morning and asked for political asylum. He is being interviewed by U.S. officials.

Reagan confessed to being “perplexed” about why Yurchenko, said to be the KGB’s No. 5 man, or the others would choose to return to Communist rule after seeing life in the United States.

“I have to say, coming as they do together, these three incidents, you can’t rule out the possibility that this might have been a deliberate ploy or maneuver,” Reagan said. “But there’s no way to establish--either they honestly did feel that they wanted to defect and then changed their minds, or the possibility is there that this could have been a deliberate ploy.”

Whether a ploy or genuine, Reagan implied, the Yurchenko incident has inflicted minimal damage to American interests. In sharp contrast to the early claims of many U.S. intelligence experts that Yurchenko was a “gold mine” of information on Soviet spying, Reagan appeared to dismiss his value to the CIA.

“Well, actually, the information he provided was not anything new or sensational,” he said.

No Answer on Probe

Reagan did not respond when asked whether he had ordered an investigation into the CIA’s handling of the Yurchenko “defection,” which occurred when the former spymaster openly walked out of a Washington restaurant where he was dining with a CIA official.

State Department spokesman Charles Redman said he is unaware of any official reprimands related to the incident.

Meanwhile, probes were being mounted into the handling of other potential defectors, beginning with the long-running battle over Medvid’s efforts to escape a Soviet grain ship docked on the Mississippi River. The sailor, who speaks no English, jumped into the river twice and was returned to the Soviet ship by U.S. Border Patrol agents. Later, after being interviewed by U.S. officials in the presence of Soviet authorities, he said he did not wish to seek asylum.

Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said Wednesday that his panel will attempt to subpoena the 22-year-old Medvid, who he said had been “brutalized” by his Soviet shipmates. Although the panel normally would have no authority to look into defections, Helms cast the investigation as a study of the incident’s effects on the U.S.-Soviet grain trade.

‘Relatively Slim’

Although committee aides said details of the subpoena are being addressed by the Justice Department, a department spokesman said Wednesday evening that the prospects of summoning a Soviet citizen before a congressional committee are “relatively slim.”

Meanwhile, Justice Department officials said they have opened an internal probe into the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s conduct in the Medvid case.

It was alleged Tuesday that Medvid had slashed his wrists after first being returned to his ship, but State Department spokesman Redman said Wednesday that U.S. officials do not believe he attempted suicide. The slash, a 2 1/2-inch “superficial” cut on one wrist, was judged by doctors to have no bearing on Medvid’s physical health or his ability to make a reasoned decision about defecting to the United States, he said.

Redman said Medvid claimed to have no memory of events between the time he was first returned to the Soviet freighter and when he woke up in the ship’s sick bay, and could not explain how the cut occurred.