Monday, November 22, 2010

RASTVOROV, YURI

A defector from the NKVD in Japan in January 1954, Rastvorov approached a Secret Intelligence Service officer after he had taken English lessons from an elderly British lady in Tokyo and negotiated his  resettlement, but at the last moment he changed his mind and opted to go to the United States. Once in America, Rastvorov identified his contacts in Japan and gave his name to two articles published in Life magazine. He later married his Central Intelligence Agency debriefer, with whom he had two daughters, after being divorced by his wife in Moscow, a ballerina.
Under the name Martin Simons, he was an enthusiastic tennis player but an unsuccessful businessman and had to be bailed out financially by his CIAhandlers. Convinced his life was in danger, he always kept a gun handy. Rastvorov/Simons died in 2004 and his obituary, which made front-page news, was based largely on his CIA file, which was hastily declassified for the purpose by his lifelong friend, CIA counterintelligence expert Paul Redmond.