Vitaly_Yurchenko
Vitaly Yurchenko
Soviet-era Russian intelligence officer (born 1936)
Vitaly Sergeyevich Yurchenko (Russian: Виталий Сергеевич Юрченко; born May 2, 1936) is a former high-ranking KGB disinformation officer in the Soviet Union. After 25 years of service in the KGB, he defected to the United States during an assignment in Rome.[1] After providing the names of two U.S. intelligence officers as KGB agents and claiming that Lee Harvey Oswald was never recruited by the KGB, Yurchenko slipped from the Americans and returned to the Soviets. It is clear that his initial defection was illegitimate, because Yurchenko was awarded the Order of the Red Star from the Soviet government for the successful "infiltration operation."[1]