- Yuri Nosenko
Lt. Col. Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko (
October 30 1927 –August 23 2008 [ [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/26/AR2008082603493.html Washington Post obituary] ] ) was aKGB defector and a figure of significant controversy within the U.S. intelligence community, since his claims contradicted another defector,Anatoliy Golitsyn . The harsh treatment he received as part of the early US interrogation was one of the "abuses" documented in theCIA "Family Jewels" documents in 1973.citation
url=http://www.foia.cia.gov/
author=Central Intelligence Agency
title="Family Jewels", created 5/16/1973 pp.23-24, etc. (search for "Nosenko" will bring up document "'Family Jewels'", among others)
accessdate=2008-03-19] In 1978Director of Central Intelligence Stansfield Turner gave an unclassified briefing, including a summary of testimony given to Congress.citation
title = Nosenko: Notes from the Director, No. 30
date = 21 September 1978
first = Stansfield | last = Turner | authorlink = Stansfield Turner
url = http://cicentre.com/Documents/Yuri_Nosenko_1978.html] In his statement, Turner accepted Nosenko's assertion that the Soviets had no connection withLee Harvey Oswald and, referring to the Nosenko's solitary confinement: "The excessively harsh treatment of Mr. Nosenko went beyond the bounds of propriety or good judgment. At my request, Mr. Hart has discussed this case with many senior officers to make certain that its history will not again be repeated. The other main lesson to be learned is that although counterintelligence analysis necessarily involves the making of hypotheses, we must at all times treat them as what they are, and not act on them until they have been objectively tested in an impartial manner."Nosenko's case officer, both when met in
Geneva initially in 1962 and subsequently when he defected in 1964, was Tennent H. "Pete" Bagley. Bagley, subsequently chief of counterintelligence for the Soviet Russia ("SR") Division and Division Deputy Director, wrote a book that was substantially about the Nosenko case.citation
last = Bagley | first = Tennent H.
title = Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games
publisher = Yale University Press (also available on audio, read by Bagley)
year = 2007] CIA operations officerGeorge Kisevalter , well regarded for his prior handling of Major Pyotr Popov, the firstSoviet GRU officer run by the CIA, and a native Russian speaker, was detailed to assist Bagley.Biography
Nosenko was born in Nikolaev, Ukrainian SSR (now
Mykolaiv ,Ukraine ). His father,Ivan Nosenko , was a Soviet politician and from 1939 until his death in 1956, Minister of Shipbuilding of the USSR. Nosenko attended theMoscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), graduating in 1950, and entered the KGB in 1953.Nosenko contacted the CIA in Geneva, when he accompanied a diplomatic mission to that city in 1962. Nosenko offered his services for a small amount of money, claiming that he had spent KGB funds on alcohol and was therefore desperate for cash. He claimed to be deputy chief of the Seventh Department of the KGB, and provided some information that would only be known by someone connected to the KGB. He was given the money he requested and told $25,000 a year would be deposited in an account in his name in the West. Then, at a meeting set up in 1964 he unexpectedly claimed that he had been discovered by the KGB and needed to defect immediately. Nosenko claimed that the
Geneva KGB residency had received a cable recalling him toMoscow and he was fearful that he had been found out.NSA was later, but not at the time, able to determine that no such cable had been sent, and Nosenko subsequently admitted making this up to persuade the CIA to accept his defection, which the CIA did.Assertions about the Kennedy Assassination
Nosenko claimed that he could provide important negative information about the
assassination ofPresident John F. Kennedy , affirming that he had personally handled a review of the case ofLee Harvey Oswald , who had lived in theSoviet Union prior to the Kennedy assassination. Nosenko said that, while the KGB had conductedsurveillance of Oswald, it had never tried to recruit him. This issue was critical because KGB involvement with Oswald might suggest Soviet involvement in the Kennedy assassination – a prospect that could have propelled theCold War into a nuclear war. Nosenko insisted that after interviewing Oswald it was decided that he was not intelligent enough and also "too mentally unstable", a "nut", and therefore unsuitable for intelligence work. Nosenko also stated that the KGB had never questioned Oswald about information he might have gained as a U.S. Marine, including work as an aviation electronics operator atNaval Air Facility Atsugi inJapan .citation
url = http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SSnosenko.htm
title = Yuri Nosenko
journal = Spartacus Educational website
first = John | last = Simkin | authorlink = John Simkin]The situation was made more complex by another defector, controlled by the
FBI , codenamed Fedora. Fedora confirmed Nosenko's story about Oswald. Fedora, however, was eventually seen to be a double agent for the Soviets. citation
title =Disinformation
date = July 1982
first = Edward Jay | last = Epstein | authorlink = Edward Jay Epstein
url = http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/archived/whokilled.htm] Realizing that Fedora was feeding information that the Soviets wanted fed doubt about Nosenko, but did not prove Nosenko was lying, since double agents often provide some accurate information to prove their credibility.Two
lie detector test s conducted by the CIA suggested that Nosenko was lying about Oswald. Moreover, Nosenko confessed that he had lied to the CIA about his military rank.Concerns that Nosenko was a double agent
Interrogators from the Soviet Russia division suspected that that Nosenko was a KGB plant and thus Nosenko was seized by CIA officers in
Washington and from 1964 to 1967 was held insolitary confinement in a CIA safe house inClinton, Maryland . Nosenko was also subjected tosensory deprivation and was administered drugs because his CIA handlers believed he was still working in secret for the KGB. Agents also strapped wires to his head, telling him falsely that the device was anelectroencephalograph which would allow them to read his mind, while the device was really one that readbrainwave patterns. This was a form of psychological intimidation in order to help persuade him to "tell the truth". He was interrogated for 1,277 days.When the interrogations led to no substantial results the interrogators were changed and after bringing on a new team Nosenko was cleared of all suspicions and released with pay. The question of whether Nosenko was a KGB plant or not is controversial, and those who handled him initially still believe that his unsolicited walk-in was designed by the KGB to protect a Soviet mole threatened by Golitsyn's knowledge, and his defection by a Soviet desire to discredit the idea of a connection between the Soviet Union and the actions of
Lee Harvey Oswald . citation
title = A Look Over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency
first1 = Richard | last1 = Helms | first2 = William | last2 =Hood
publisher = Presidio Press
year = 2004
ISBN-10= 0812971086] Others have argued Nosenko was ultimately regarded as an authentic defector through misinformation from another KGB-agent that was thought to be a genuine defector, code-named Fedora. [Brian Freemantle, "De KGB", (Amsterdam 1985), Dutch translation of origingal title: Brian Freemantle, "The KGB", (London 1982), Ch. 7: "Fedora en de Verenigde Naties" p. 157.]Nosenko has later claimed to have been tortured and even at one point, he said, he was given
LSD , and it almost killed him. The guards revived him by dragging him into the shower and alternating the water between hot and cold. These claims have been denied by Richard Helms who was DCI during the most intense part of Nosenko's interrogation. LSD is generally considered nontoxic.Aftermath
On
March 1 ,1969 Nosenko was formally acknowledged to be a genuine defector, and released, with financial compensation from the CIA.It has been claimed that it was the CIA counter-intelligence chief,
James Jesus Angleton , who was responsible for the hostile interrogation.citation
last = Mangold | first = Tom
title = Cold Warrior - James Jesus Angleton: The CIA's Master Spy Hunter
publisher = Touchstone Books
year = Reprint edition (May 1992)] Angleton did favor Golitsyn in the disputes with Nosenko, but all those involved in the case at the time, including both of Nosenko's handlers, Tennent Bagley and George Kisevalter, agree it was the SR-division. The case has been examined in several books, and the 1986 movie "Yuri Nosenko: Double Agent" starring Tommy Lee Jones. The movie depicted the intense debate over whether Nosenko was an actual defector.Former CIA case officer Robert Baer wrote that "when Nosenko offered a version of Lee Harvey Oswald and the Kennedy assassination that didn't fit with the agency's corporate view he was sent to solitary confinement at the farm for three years."citation
title =See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism
first = Robert | last = Baer
publisher = Three Rivers Press
year = 2003
ISBN = 140004684X]He helped expose
John Vassall , a British civil servant, charged with spying in 1962.Until his death, Nosenko lived in the US under an assumed name. [Express (Washington Post), August 28, 2008, p.6 ]
References
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