Aldrich Ames maintains KGB officer Vitaly Yurchenko genuinely defected to the United States in 1985, but espionage experts say even the views of Moscow's confessed spy inside the CIA won't resolve questions about the nature of Yurchenko's return to the Soviet Union.
In communications with associates since his arrest Feb. 21, Ames has confided his views on the lingering Cold War mystery of Yurchenko's three-month defection.Ames feared he would be unmasked as a traitor when Yurchenko defected to U.S. officials in Rome in 1985, these confidants say.
But Ames soon concluded that his treachery was not known to Yurchenko, despite his high rank in the KGB department assigned to spy on the United States and Canada, they add.
"Ames believes that Yurchenko was a genuine defector," one of these confidants said recently, requesting anonymity. Ames rejects the theory that Yurchenko was sent here to test his loyalty to the KGB or to protect him by casting suspicions on others, the associates say.
Ames thinks Yurchenko abruptly returned to the Soviets because he was poorly handled by his U.S. interrogators and because he was unable to renew his love affair with the wife of a Russian diplomat in Canada, these confidants say.
The debate over Yurchenko inside U.S. intelligence and among analysts outside the government was heightened by the discovery that Ames, the highest-ranking spy ever caught inside the CIA, began working for the Soviets less than four months before Yurchenko arrived here.
Even Ames' own views won't resolve that debate, experts say, although they do conform to the majority view inside U.S. intelligence.