CIA’s Mole Plot Opens Layers of Deceit : Espionage: Take the bizarre case of KGB defector Yurchenko. He was debriefed by Ames. Did they know that we knew . . . then they . . . ?

It was at the same time one of the CIA’s greatest Cold War coups and most humbling embarrassments, and it has only been recently, after nearly a decade, that the agency has managed to come to terms with it.

But now, with the arrest of a suspected CIA mole for the Russians, the bizarre case of KGB defector Vitaly Yurchenko is posing a new riddle for the international intelligence community, provoking tormented speculation and re-examination of what really happened.

Analysts and counterintelligence experts are checking out the newest twist for signs that there may have been another hidden layer of deceit in this John Le Carre-style mystery.

Was Vitaly Yurchenko a defector who had second thoughts? Was he a double-agent? Or was he some more complicated mutation?

“Once you start back down this road, it becomes: ‘If they knew what we knew or thought we knew, then they. . . .’ And it does sound like Le Carre,” says one former senior U.S. intelligence official.

This former official still believes that Yurchenko was a genuine defector who changed his mind and returned to the Soviet Union. But he concedes that the discovery of accused CIA mole Aldrich H. Ames, who dealt with Yurchenko after his defection, is prompting second thoughts.

In August, 1985, Yurchenko, a KGB colonel with direct knowledge of spies working in the United States and Canada for the Soviets, defected to the U.S. Embassy in Rome. CIA Director William J. Casey hailed it as a huge intelligence windfall.

In CIA debriefing sessions, Yurchenko provided information that led to the discovery of two spies who had turned over vital intelligence secrets to the U.S.S.R.

One was former National Security Agency employee Ronald W. Pelton, who now is serving a life sentence for informing the Soviets that the United States had secretly broken into a main undersea communications cable.

The other was Edward Lee Howard, a former CIA operative who had been trained for assignment in Moscow and had knowledge of highly sensitive sources and methods. After the agency decided not to send Howard, he managed to elude FBI pursuers and, relying on his CIA training, made his way to Moscow, where he now lives.

Yurchenko, however, became unhappy with his treatment by the agency, which was pressing him for further information. He also was disappointed over the failure of a romantic liaison with the wife of a Soviet diplomat in Canada--an affair that the agency had tried to facilitate. Dining at a French restaurant in trendy Georgetown, Yurchenko left behind his CIA guard and made his way to a Soviet compound a mile away.

He later charged he had been kidnaped, tortured and drugged by the CIA and that the story of the spurned love affair was a CIA fabrication.

Exhaustive intelligence assessments of the baffling affair and any Soviet gambit it may have involved now are being tested by the arrest of Ames, a 31-year veteran of the CIA, on espionage conspiracy charges. As chief of the agency’s Soviet counterintelligence branch in the Sovet-East European division, Ames took part in debriefing Yurchenko. At the same time, however, Ames is suspected to have begun spying for the Soviets.

The discovery of Ames’ suspected role raises the possibility that he fed his alleged Soviet handlers the information that Yurchenko revealed in the debriefing sessions.

It also raises questions about whether Yurchenko, because he had been a Soviet spymaster, knew that he was being questioned by a recently enlisted KGB spy. If so, why didn’t Yurchenko finger Ames, as he did Pelton and Howard?

At the time of Yurchenko’s defection, a former counterintelligence official recalled, “there was a theory that he came here to take us off the scent” of an agency mole.

Yurchenko told CIA questioners that he knew of no CIA mole other than “Robert,” which turned out to be the code name for Howard, who had left the CIA. Thus, Yurchenko could have been trying to lead U.S. counterspies away from Ames by giving them clues to spies who had already outlived their usefulness.

A former senior intelligence agency official said that Yurchenko could have been deliberately “holding back” on revealing Ames’ suspected spying.

“This (exposing a well-placed mole in the CIA) is his currency,” the ex-official said. “Once we have it, (a defecting spy) can’t set the price any more. When you run out of assets, you’ve lost your clout,” the former official said. “I don’t find that inconsistent with (his) being a bona fide defector.”

But the ex-counterintelligence official, who declined to be identified, said that he did not then and does not now buy the theory that Yurchenko was a deliberate plant to mislead U.S. counterspies.

Rather, he favors the explanation that Yurchenko--who government sources said was never alone with Ames--did not know he was being questioned by a Soviet mole.

A former senior official with knowledge of the case said it is entirely plausible that he did not know.

“Let’s do a mirror-image analysis,” he said. “If we had an agent like Ames (working as a KGB mole), there would be no more than three or four people in the entire agency who would know his identity. I mean, that would be the crown jewel.”

A former intelligence official said it could be that Ames had not yet been “tasked”--given the KGB’s wish list for his spying--by the Soviets and that his existence was “so closely held in the KGB that only a very few people knew.”

Or it could have been that Ames’ bona fides had not yet been established to the Soviets’ satisfaction, who were concerned about his being a “dangle,” a double-agent still loyal to the United States and seeking to gather information about Soviet operations.

The FBI complaint and affidavit allege that Ames and his wife, Rosario, began their espionage conspiracy in 1985 but the documents did not specify a month. Yurchenko stayed only three months in the United States that year, re-defecting in November.

The detention hearing Tuesday for the couple shed no light on when they may have begun spying.

Times staff writer Sonni Efron in Moscow contributed to this story.