Soviet defector goes home

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32801, 29 December 1971, Page 13

Soviet defector goes home

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

WASHINGTON, December 28. Raising speculation that he might have been a “plant” designed to confuse American experts, a Russian intelligence major who defected two months ago has returned home at his own request, it was announced yesterday.

The State Department spokesman, Mr Charles Bray, said that Anatoly Kuzmich Chebotaryev was allowed to board a Russian airliner bound for Moscow late on Sunday night after an emergency immigration hearing decided that he was returning of his own free will and not because of Soviet pressure.

If Chebotaryev was truly a defector who later had a change of heart he was likely to face a long prison term on treason charges on his return to Russia, officials said. But United States officials said that they would be taking a hard, second look at the information he provided on the dhance that he came for the express purpose of confusing the American intelligence apparatus. Chebotaryev defected to the United States on October 3 while he was attached to a Soviet trade mission in Brussels, where he was listed as an "engineer.” But American officials said he was

known to be a major in the Russian military intelligence or G.R.U. If the Russian was a “plant” to try to confuse American intelligence agents, he was expected simply to slip into oblivion on his return to Russia rather than be tried as a traitor. Chebotaryev had been in the United States since October 7 on a provisional basis. For most of the time, he had been staying in an apartment with an American intelligence expert. On December 23, he left the apartment, saying that he was going for a walk. He did not return. The next day, Yuly M. Vorontsov, acting head of the Soviet Embassy in the absence of the Ambassador, informed the State Department that the major wanted to return to Russia and his wife and children. The emergency immigration hearing was then arranged for the airport in New York before the departure of an Aeroflot flight to Moscow. The defector was closely questioned by an inspector of the Immigration and Naturalisation Service in the presence of Russian-speaking United States officials, an American doctor and security officials. They decided that Chebotaryev was leaving entirely of his own free will and without duress from Soviet officials.

In fact, United States officials noted later, be chatted jovially with Soviet diplomats as he waited to board the Soviet jetliner fot Moscow.