PERSPECTIVE ON SPYING : Here’s a Red Herring to Chew On : A former KGB colonel ties into a package the spectacular 1985 un-defection of Vitaly Yurchenko and the Aldrich Ames case.

On a spring morning in 1985, Gen. Vladimir A. Kryuchkov, the head of the KGB foreign intelligence directorate and future chief of the spy agency, was roused from his sleep for some sensational information: The head of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Soviet and Eastern Europe counterintelligence department, Aldrich H. Ames, had offered his services to the KGB. Ames had already identified the first batch of American agents in the Soviet Union.

I am sure Ames willingly offered his services and was not recruited. No one in the KGB would have approached such a big shot. Never in KGB history had such a high-ranking foreign official been recruited, though others had also offered their services voluntarily. I suspect Ames showed up at a Soviet official representation somewhere abroad (definitely not in America) and simply offered to cooperate.

The news of Ames’ willingness to work aroused mixed feelings in Kryuchkov. All the agents Ames betrayed held high-level positions in the KGB. Their exposure would call down accusations of corruption in the KGB from the very top of the Communist Party.

Ames was well known to the KGB through a former CIA agent, Edward Lee Howard, who had worked for the CIA from 1981 to 1983 but was sacked for alcoholism and drug use. Shortly after his dismissal, an embittered Howard left for Vienna and began to cooperate with the KGB there.

After Ames’ proposal, the KGB was faced with two tasks: to eliminate enemy agents and to hide Ames as the principal source of their discoveries. Among the agents that the KGB wanted to silence was the newly appointed KGB resident in London, Oleg Gordievsky.

To help hide Ames’ information, the KGB used so-called “long-leash” tactics--reducing the secret information that some suspect agents were given on plausible pretexts, while keeping the agents under surveillance. As a result of this treatment, Gordievsky was recalled from London on a false pretext and brought to Moscow for questioning.

The KGB was not in a hurry to arrest Gordievsky because that would have made American and British intelligence look for the cause of the leak, which could have eventually led to Ames.

However, an extraordinary thing happened: With the help of MI-6, the British intelligence service, Gordievsky boldly fled to the West. The KGB’s adversaries got a chance to analyze the situation with the help of Gordievsky, an experienced intelligence officer, and this could have jeopardized Ames.

And I think it was then, after Gordievsky’s escape, that a highly elaborate and daring operation, aimed at misinforming American intelligence, was quickly planned and implemented. America was to be convinced that it was Howard, already considered a traitor, who had disclosed agents in the Soviet Union. By that time, Howard was of little practical use to the KGB anyway. The operation was daring and unprecedented in the KGB’s history. Before then, the idea of a double defection had simply been fiction.

Here is how it worked: On Aug. 1, 1985, the deputy head of the KGB’s U.S. department, Vitaly Yurchenko, flew on a business trip to Rome. There, Yurchenko defected, offered his services to the CIA and was transported to the United States.

Yurchenko revealed incredibly valuable information. He told the CIA that Howard had been a KGB agent. He also betrayed a National Security Agency official, Ronald Pelton, who had offered his services to the KGB. He spoke about the use of special chemical “spy dust” which the KGB applied during cleaning to the suits of American diplomats in Moscow, enabling the KGB to track them wherever they went. His admissions left no doubt with the CIA that Yurchenko’s defection was genuine.

This was an unprecedented operation: Never before had the KGB gone so far as to deliberately reveal secrets to its adversary. Moreover, it had always been considered immoral in the KGB to give away such agents as Howard. But more vital interests were at stake this time, and a smoke screen with Howard at its center was put up.

On Sept. 19, Howard was interrogated in Santa Fe, N. M. But he did not give any evidence and the FBI had no legal grounds to arrest him. Two days later, Howard evaded his watchers and--with the help of the KGB--fled to Moscow.

On Nov. 2, Yurchenko redefected to the Soviet Embassy in Washington and returned to the Soviet Union. He gave a Cold War-type press conference at which he claimed he had been kidnaped by the CIA in Rome and sent to the United States under the influence of drugs.

Yurchenko played his role excellently. Soon, not without the KGB’s help, the world press started saying that the CIA had mistreated Yurchenko and that he took offense, deciding to return to Moscow.

One reason the CIA believed Yurchenko was that the agency had burned itself once before. In the 1960s, a KGB official named Yuri Nosenko defected to the CIA and disclosed the entire eavesdropping system inside the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. The Americans wouldn’t believe him, thinking he had KGB orders to infiltrate the CIA.

The CIA interrogated Nosenko, treated him roughly and kept him in jail for several months. Finally, they must have realized that Nosenko was sincere, but precious time had been lost. Ever since, the CIA had felt guilty. And their guilt helped in the case of Yurchenko.

Thus, a huge red herring was let loose into U.S. waters. The KGB could start chasing the agents betrayed by Ames while the Americans were supposedly tricked into believing that it was Howard who was responsible for the leak.

The Yurchenko defection / redefection was staged so brilliantly that most people in the KGB were surprised to see that Yurchenko not only was not put in jail or executed for having disclosed the agents, but was put back to work. He quietly finished out his career and is now enjoying his retirement.

What is more, both Yurchenko and Howard met American journalists in Moscow and kept the red herring afloat with the help of the media, misleading the CIA.

The Russian intelligence service conducted a brilliant operation, to which there are no equals in the entire history of the Cold War.