Background
After his defection to the United States, Yurchenko identified two American intelligence officers as KGB agents: Ronald Pelton and Edward Lee Howard. Pelton was later convicted, while Howard fled the United States before he could be questioned.
In November 1985, before eating a meal at Au Pied de Cochon, a restaurant in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., Yurchenko told his CIA guard, "I'm going for a walk. If I don't come back, it's not your fault." Yurchenko did not return.
Several days later, the Soviet Embassy called a press conference, at which Yurchenko announced he had been kidnapped and drugged by the Americans. It is possible that his defection was staged to fool the CIA with wrong leads, to protect Aldrich Ames, an American who worked for the CIA and was then one of the USSR's most important double agents. The KGB was reported to have secretly interrogated Yurchenko after his return, under the influence of a truth drug, to ensure he had not been recruited by the CIA as a double agent.
Read more about this topic: Vitaly Yurchenko
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