From Richards Heuer’s: Nosenko: Five paths to judgement
Nosenko provided identification of, or leads to, some 238 Americans and about 200 foreign nationals in whom the KGB had displayed varying degrees of interest, and against whom they had enjoyed varying degrees of success. He provided information on about 2,000 KGB staff officers and 300 Soviet national agents or contacts of the KGB. His information on the methods and scope of Second Chief Directorate operations against foreign diplomats and journalists in Moscow and visitors to the Soviet Union filled a large gap in our knowledge and had an enormous impact on the raising of CIA's consciousness of these operations; the result was important improvements in the physical security of U.S. installations and the personal security of U.S. officials and advisors to the USSR. The Soviet Union suffered additional costs through the adverse publicity and deterrent effect of Nosenko's defection and the arrest of several agents he identified.
Full Transcription: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/25943-richards-heuer-nosenko-five-paths-to-judgement/?tab=comments#comment-405084.
Michael,
If you'd read
Spy Wars, you'd realize Nosenko didn't provide leads to anyone who: 1) wasn't already suspected, 2) still had access to confidential information, or 3) was still working for the KGB/GRU.
In other words, the few people he "betrayed" to the CIA and/or the FBI were "throwaways", and the only reason he "uncovered" them was to build up his so-called bona fides in those agencies' eyes and thereby more effectively detract from and contradict what true-defector Golitsyn was telling them.
Didn't you read the excerpt I posted the other day? (I'll post an encapsulation, here, in a few minutes,
plus the rest of the chapter for background, so you won't miss it, and you'll be able to refer to Dayle W. Smith (aka "Andrey"), and Robert Lee Johnson, and Boris Belitsky, and William Vassall, in your own words, next time, and try to convince me, in your own words, how they really
were unsuspected, active spies for the KGB when Nosenko "uncovered" them for the CIA and the FBI!) Oh yeah, and about the and the 52 microphones in the American Embassy that nobody even suspected, and the 100 or so microphones in the new wing, the wing your boy Nosenko assured CIA didn't have any because Khrushchev was hoping and praying for better relations with the U.S.
(LOL)
-- MWT
Here it is.
PART FOUR -- Confrontation
CHAPTER 17 -- Crunch Time
The expression on (Chief of the Soviet Russia Division, aka the Soviet Block Division) Dave Murphy’s face reflected that he knew I had come in to present him a problem— one he had hoped would simply go away.
I confirmed his apprehension. “We have to do something about Nosenko,'’ I said. “The debriefing is winding down. There’s not much water left in the well. Almost every day it looks more like we have a bad one on our hands. The time has come, Dave. We’ve got to decide what to do next.”
Dave took no pleasure from this. He was aware of the mounting mass of anomalies in Nosenko’s reporting and of the contradictions we were finding on the side. We had both hoped that with time we could find some innocent explanation, but none had materialized.
“Of course,” I added, “we might just walk away from this.” Only a few people were aware of our suspicions. We could resettle Nosenko some- where, get him a job, try to keep an eye on him, and remain alert for any new data we might uncover. “Maybe that’s our only course, but it would cost us our chance to clarify what’s behind all this— and that will come back to haunt us.”
“Yes,” Dave said. "Certainly his story about Lee Harvey Oswald will.”
Dave was right. As we re-questioned Nosenko about President Kennedy’s assassin, it was becoming ever more likely that his story was a message from the Kremlin to reassure the American government that the KGB had not commanded the deed. That message might well be true, but Nosenko was wildly exaggerating the KGB’s indifference to Oswald. He was saying and repeating (with claimed but unlikely authority) that neither KGB nor GRU had paid the slightest attention to this, their first Marine defector who moreover had been a radar operator at a U-2 spy plane base in Japan and was eager to help the Soviets any way he could. This tale was so hard to believe that it might cause someone to jump to the conclusion that Nosenko was covering up a contrary truth— that the KGB did form some relationship with Oswald and that the Soviet Politburo really did order JFK’s assassination.
We paused, thinking no doubt along the same lines.
“The Oswald story is one big question,” I added, “but there are others— the code clerks.” Nosenko had certified, with an authority that we now saw was spurious, that the KGB had failed to recruit any American code clerks. Golitsyn’s information had given us reason to think the KGB may have nailed two of them— and Nosenko seemed to be diverting us from precisely those two. "If the Sovs are deciphering U.S. military communications, we’d better find out about it.”
Dave nodded. “Yes, and about CIA security, too.” He remembered how Nosenko’s phony story of Kovshuk’s trip to Washington had hidden the betrayer of Popov. He remembered, too, Nosenko’s screwy account of Penkovsky’s dead drop that could be hiding a KGB penetration agent inside CIA who betrayed Penkovsky.
We lapsed into silence. Dave sighed. "No other explanation? Maybe he was just boasting? Pretending he did things he didn’t? Claiming personal involvement in operations he’d only heard about in corridor gossip? That he’s a congenital liar, a con man?”
"Hell, Dave, we’ve been through this before. You know we’ve tested every one of these propositions over and over again. I’ve had Joe and Sally argue them as persuasively as they can. They all collapse.”
"How about all the KGB spies he’s uncovered? Would the KGB sacrifice them?”
"Try to name one who was previously unknown and had access to secrets at the time Nosenko uncovered him. There aren’t any.”
Dave knew that we had looked into each of Nosenko’s ostensibly important leads and they had all come up dry. Nevertheless, I ran through them again.
• The most important suspect, "Andrey” the sergeant-mechanic of cipher machines, left service six months before Nosenko fingered him —and had never had access to cipher secrets even while active.
• The spy in the (Paris airport) Orly courier center, Sergeant Robert Lee Johnson, had been very important indeed— when active. But by the time Nosenko told us about him, Johnson had lost his access to the courier center, and his mentally unhinged wife was broadcasting her knowledge that he was a Soviet spy. The case was stone-cold dead, and the KGB knew it before Nosenko handed it to us.
• Microphones in the American Embassy? Everyone from the ambassador to the janitor knew they existed— as they do in every embassy
the Politburo might be interested in. Golitsyn had confirmed that well-known fact.
• Nosenko had heard that a U.S. army captain had been recruited but knew nothing that could single him out from the thousand or more fellow captains in Germany.
• The Belitsky double agent case had already been exposed by Golitsyn— and the KGB knew it.
• By the time Nosenko walked into CIA in Geneva and pinpointed the British naval source William Vassall, the KGB already knew Vassall to be compromised by Golitsyns defection. They even played a game to build up Nosenko in Western eyes: after Golitsyn’s defection, against all logic, they restored their contact with Vassall, which they had suspended while the British investigated an Admiralty lead from an earlier source. 1
"Okay,” Dave said, “So Nosenko didn’t expose any active or valuable spies. But all the same, a lot of people around here believe the KGB would never send out one of their own staff officers as a defector.”
"That may or may not be true,” I answered, and reminded him that Nosenko was not deputy chief of the American Embassy Section in 1960- 1961, where he ostensibly got all his more important information. "He can only tell us what he’s been briefed to pass along. That’s a far cry from ‘sending out a KGB officer as a defector.’ ” When asked about the general run of stuff any KGB officer would have to know, Nosenko had proved unbelievably ignorant— or was pretending to be. He either could not or would not give sensible answers to our questions on internal KGB procedures. "When he can’t dodge these questions,” I added, "he says stupid, impossible things.” Moreover, it was no part of the original KGB plan to put Nosenko into our hands as a “defector” who would have to undergo detailed questioning. In 1962 he insisted that he would never defect and told why. He would meet us only when he happened to travel abroad. That way the KGB could limit the frequency and duration of face-to-face meetings and prevent our getting too deeply into any subject.
Obviously something unexpected had caused the KGB to change its plan and have Nosenko defect. It was not hard to guess what that was. The assassination of the American president by a recent resident of the USSR would have panicked the Politburo. If the U.S. government became persuaded that the Kremlin had ordered the assassination it might even cause war. This panic was confirmed after the Cold War. KGB General Oleg Kalugin recalled the Kremlin’s reaction when they learned that the assassin Oswald had enjoyed their hospitality and had a Soviet wife. They turned to the KGB. In the Soviet Embassy in Washington, “We began receiving nearly frantic cables from KGB headquarters in Moscow, ordering us to do every- thing possible to dispel the notion that the Soviet Union was somehow behind the assassination. . . . The Kremlin leadership was clearly rattled by Oswald’s Soviet connection, and in cable after cable the message we were to convey was clear: ‘Inform the American public through every possible channel that we never trusted Oswald and were never in any way connected with him.’” 2
The Soviet leaders were known to turn to the KGB when they wanted to slip an “inside” message to the American government. For years they had been establishing back channels during international conferences. One tactic was to have KGB diplomats “confide” in journalists as they did during the Cuban Missile Crisis. To put American minds to rest about Lee Harvey Oswald, the Kremlin’s message— that they had nothing to do with the killing— needed to be more authoritative and convincing than diplomatic chitchat.
That would require defection, even if only temporary, of someone with convincing authority. The Warren Commission could not be satisfied with a written report from some (necessarily unnamed) CIA agent-in-place whom they could not question or from whom they could not ascertain how he had obtained the information.
Dave nodded. "I can see it. Just when they needed a channel like this they found it, ready-made: a KGB officer already established as a trusted CIA agent.”
“Yes, but he would have to ‘defect.’ ”
Dave chuckled at the thought. “Wouldn’t the KGB guys who set this up hate to see their long-range operation go up in smoke just to pass Khrushchev’s message to the Yanks. I can feel their pain. But they sure couldn’t say no.”
"Moreover,” I added, “I don’t think Nosenko intends to stay long as a defector.” I reminded Dave of the lack of interest that Nosenko had shown toward the country he had ostensibly chosen as his new home. “After he’s done his gig with the Warren Commission, he’ll probably find some excuse to get mad at us and return to the USSR .” 3
"At least we’d be rid of him,” Dave observed with a smile.
"And of any chance to get behind his stories,” I said. “That’s what it’s all about. We should confront him and at least try to get a better idea of what’s behind all this. Then maybe we can persuade the FBI to dig into the code clerk cases we think Nosenko’s stories are covering up.”
"Okay,” Dave said, “go ahead— confront him.”
Again he was joking but I still reminded him, "We’ve been tiptoeing all over the place just to keep Nosenko from getting wind of our suspicions,” I said. “Once he does, he’ll split— fly the coop. He steps out the door and sells his story to a newspaper, and there goes the ball game. Even with all we know, we’re having a hell of a time evaluating his stuff. Can you imagine a journalist even trying?”
Dave groaned. "Okay, so how can we confront him? What’s ever to stop him walking out the door?”
"The only possibility I see is to put him under guard while we put the tough questions to him. Depending on his answers we should learn enough to either clear him or decide beyond question that he is a plant.”
"And in that case?”
There was the problem. We had no realistic options.
There was no way even to expel him. The U.S. government would not turn Nosenko back to the Soviets unless he himself asked for that, in writing. The Swiss would have no reason whatsoever to allow him back into their alpine republic— he wasn’t their problem. The West Germans would not be interested. Neither would any other Western democracy. One by one, we reviewed and eliminated the possibilities. We would have to admit that CIA could not establish the bona fides of this defector whom we had
brought from Europe— and resettle him as an immigrant in the United States. "Far from Washington, I would hope.”
After a moment’s reflection Dave remarked, “But that still leaves the problem of his legal status in the country. He’s on parole to CIA and the law says we have to certify that he is who he said he is, that he had real access to the information he gave, and that we believe the reasons he gave for defecting. I couldn’t certify a single one of those points.”
"Nor that ‘we have no information that any foreign intelligence service influenced his defection.’ Hell, we’re up to our ass in just such info.”
Any discussion of resettling Nosenko outside the United States was probably pointless— because of Nosenko’s claimed knowledge of Oswald. We could not send away the only source allegedly able to throw light, even if false light, on the Soviet role in the assassination.
"We will have to tell the Warren Commission how we evaluate Nosenko’s information,” I said. "That alone would be cause to detain and confront him— to assess whether his Oswald info is invention or a KGB message.”
Dave summarized. "It boils down to this: either we hold and confront him, or we drop the whole thing and pretend to take Nosenko at face value.” Helms to see whether there’s even a possibility of the first alternative.”
To put the question and, if the answer were yes, to get the necessary authority, Helms, Murphy, and the CIA’s legal counsel went to Attorney
General Nicholas Katzenbach on 2 April 1964. Although they did not ask for any specific length of time, they presumably delivered the impression we had given them, that by holding Nosenko for two or three weeks of interrogation we should be able to throw more light on the validity and probable background of his information.
The attorney general considered the terms of Nosenko’s parole that made CIA responsible for ensuring that Nosenko’s presence would not harm U. S . interests . In the light of our current opinion that his presence was in fact specifically designed to harm those interests, the Attorney General gave the go-ahead.
Now we prepared for the confrontation that, we hoped, would throw light on this extraordinary affair.
.....
Footnotes1 . John Vassall, Vassal l. The Autobiography of a Spy (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1975), 132-34.
2. Oleg Kalugin, The First Directorate (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994), 57-58.
3. We foresaw— and forestalled— what was to happen twenty years later. After a few weeks in the West the ostensible KGB defector Vitaly Yurchenko, having betrayed “secrets,” walked out on CIA in Washington and returned to Moscow, not to be punished as a traitor but to resume his KGB employment and to be given a medal.
.....
Cheers!
-- MWT
