The year was 1985 and the CIA had a painful secret.
working for the CIA had begun ominously disappearing one after another after another.
“"It just kept adding up and I had a guy to do a study of how long KGB officers survive working for”
a month's break." One might be bad luck, but four is three too many to be a coincidence, and that was just the beginning. 1985 will later become known as the year of the spy because of the
sheer amount of blown covers, assassinations, triple agents, and espionage debocals that would unfold
over the coming months. "Operations to protect America's secrets are usually done quietly with little publicity, but lately they've been making big news. Some of you may be wondering if the large number of spy arrests in recent weeks means that we're looking harder, or whether there
“are more spies to find. But I think the answer to both questions is yes. "As the agency was”
scrambling to find answers on a hot summer day in Rome, in walked a Soviet Colonel named Vitali Yerchenko. He wanted to defect to the United States immediately. In exchange for exfiltration to the US and total secrecy, Yerchenko would tell the Americans everything he knew. And he knew a lot, because he was the highest ranked KGB officer at that time ever to defect.
“In fact, he knew about a CIA mole, a man who would have been in a position to know about all the”
covers that had just been blown. But the question was, was he telling the truth?" "Do you think tell Yerchenko was a plant?" "No, no, no, I'm on a percent sure he wasn't. On a percent. To me, the circumstantial evidence continues to weigh in the direction that this was a Soviet operation. And he was a true deal. He wasn't anybody's plan. He came on his own. I'm definitely about." "The more I reported, the more it was impossible to know which narrative
was true. He had no idea what had happened, which which story was true. He said you could argue it round or you could argue it flat." "The theory that I subscribed to is that he was a plant that
it was all orchestrated by KGB headquarters." "My name is Julie Kone. Join me as I finally discover
the truth behind the Vitali Yerchenko mystery on the redefector." [BLANK_AUDIO]
