JFK Assassination Forum
JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion & Debate => JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion And Debate => Topic started by: Tom Graves on February 02, 2026, 10:29:13 PM
-
Note: When Nosenko told the HSCA that he had read the KGB file on Oswald four times and therefore knew for a fact that it had nothing to do with former Marine U-2 radar operator Oswald during the two-and-a-half years he lived in the USSR, the Committee called him a liar.
ME: Did Nosenko betray anyone to the CIA who was either unsuspected or who still had access to classified information?
GROK: No, Yuri Nosenko did not betray (or compromise) any KGB agents, sources, or assets who were either still unsuspected by Western counterintelligence at the time of his defection in 1964 or who still had active, ongoing access to classified information.
The core controversy around Nosenko — detailed in declassified CIA documents, books like Tennent "Pete" Bagley's Spy Wars (2007), and analyses by former officers — centers precisely on this point. Nosenko's revelations largely replayed or confirmed information already provided by the earlier KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn (who defected in 1961).
Key examples include:
Confirmation of KGB honeytrap compromises of Western figures such as British Admiralty clerk John Vassall, Canadian ambassador John Watkins, and former CIA officer Edward Ellis Smith — all cases Golitsyn had already exposed.
Details on the compromise and arrest of GRU Colonel Pyotr Popov (a major CIA asset in the late 1950s), attributed by Nosenko to routine KGB surveillance rather than a high-level mole.
Other overlaps, like cases involving Boris Belitsky (a Soviet radio reporter used as a double agent) and various diplomatic honeytraps.
These were not new compromises of unsuspected, still-active KGB spies with current access to secrets. Instead, they involved:
Already-known or previously exposed Western victims of KGB recruitment.
Past Soviet operations that had ended (e.g., Popov was arrested and executed in 1960–1961).
No identification of active, unsuspected KGB penetrations (e.g., moles) in the CIA, NATO, or allied services with ongoing classified access.
Critics like Bagley (Nosenko's initial CIA handler) and James Jesus Angleton (CIA counterintelligence chief) argued that Nosenko provided no significant new, high-value betrayals of unsuspected Soviet assets. His information often appeared designed to discredit or confuse Golitsyn's warnings about deep KGB penetrations, fueling suspicions that Nosenko was a deliberate KGB "dispatched agent" (plant/false defector) to sow doubt and protect real moles.
Nosenko did share broader, useful intelligence on KGB tradecraft (e.g., embassy bugs in Moscow, surveillance methods, targeting of Americans and foreigners), personnel details on thousands of officers, and leads on 238 Americans/200 foreigners approached by the KGB (with varying recruitment success). Some accounts credit him with contributing to the identification or disruption of low-level or already-suspected compromises, but nothing points to outing still-unsuspected, actively operating KGB spies with sensitive access.
The CIA officially cleared Nosenko as a genuine defector after re-evaluations (including polygraphs) in the late 1960s, released him, compensated him, and employed him as a consultant until his death in 2008. However, skeptics (including Bagley and some later analyses) maintain the lack of major new compromises of active Soviet sources supports the view he was controlled or limited in what he revealed.
In summary, reliable sources and historical accounts consistently show Nosenko's defection caused no documented betrayals of unsuspected, still-operational KGB agents or sources with classified access—unlike defectors who exposed active penetrations (e.g., Golitsyn's leads on certain cases). This absence is central to the enduring debate over his bona fides.