In Moscow the defection of Nosenko was treated as a first-class calamity. He was sentenced in absentia to the "highest measure of punishment."
After Nosenko arrived in the United States, the CIA kept him in isolation, housed in a secret location, with guards, under lock and key. For two months the FBI interviewed him. The FBI had precedence over the CIA in dealing with him because of their investigation into the matters of the Warren Commission. The FBI interrogators were convinced that he was reliable and that he could not connect the Kremlin with the assassination of the president. Unknown to most members of the CIA, the FBI had been using a defector, code-named Fedora, who backed two important claims of Nosenko: his rank of lieutenant colonel and the dispatch of the recall telegram to him while he was in Geneva. The FBI then turned Nosenko back over to the CIA with a clean bill of health. Of course, it was in the interest of the FBI to have Nosenko declared as genuine, thereby attesting that Oswald was not involved with the KGB. Otherwise, the FBI could be blamed for not having been more diligent in their previous investigations of Oswald.
The CIA debriefing of Nosenko, on the other hand, did not go well. The interrogators already were convinced that Nosenko knew more than he had revealed about Oswald, the Kremlin, and the assassination. Moreover, his responses to questions appeared evasive and inconsistent. The combination of their predisposed notions and his apparent lack of cooperation confirmed their suspicions that he was planted by the Soviets to confuse the investigation into the assassination. The more they questioned him, the worse things became. Finally, he asked, "Where is George? I want to see George." George and Nosenko liked each other very much. George was invited over. They had dinner, just the two of them. Recognizing that George did not share their conviction that Nosenko was a plant, Nosenko's antagonists quickly had George removed from the case. After that, Nosenko did not see George for four years.
Nosenko's always-latent fear that the CIA would break its promises to him seemed to be realized. He turned to drink, heavy drink.4 The interrogators then conceived a new strategy. Perhaps the new defector should have a vacation. Maybe, if he were able to warm up in some southern clime, he might loosen up and be more cooperative. Accordingly, Nosenko was escorted to Hawaii and there provided with luxurious accommodations and amenities. This gambit, however, did not seem to prompt any change in his attitude.
Golitsyn meanwhile voiced more doubts about the genuineness of Nosenko, speculating that the man had come to disparage his own authenticity and that Nosenko, like Cherepanov, was a provocation. The chief of counterintelligence for the Agency, the chief of the Soviet Bloc Division, and the original case officer (now the sole case officer) were all convinced that Nosenko was a KGB plant. Peter Deriabin, the KGB officer who had defected when George was in Vienna on the Popov case, then came to debrief Nosenko. It was not a profitable experience for either former Soviet. Neither trusted the other. The interrogators and their superiors at the CIA continued to be uneasy about Nosenko's answers to many questions. This rendered him unreliable, in their view, to provide information on the association of Lee Harvey Oswald with the KGB.
In an attempt to accelerate the interrogation, on 4 April Nosenko was given the first of three lie-detector tests. It was a charade. They accused him of lying during the test. They tried to intimidate him into admitting the KGB sent him. He then was placed in an attic room in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. The only furniture in the room was a metal bed attached to the center of the floor. A single light bulb burned overhead. He was deprived of sleep, reading materials, adequate food, tobacco, toothpaste, or any other personal amenities. The interrogators forbade him any contact with people other than themselves and constantly badgered him in a hostile manner. He was accorded no fresh air in the hot attic room that summer.5
The Warren Commission was pressing to complete its report. Helms met with Chief Justice Warren and told him that the investigation into the Nosenko matter was incomplete and that he could not vouch for the former Soviet's truthfulness. In fact, the CIA did not know whether Nosenko was a legitimate defector or a KGB plant. Their resolution of the quandary was simply to continue trying to break Nosenko into confessing what they believed to be the truth about Oswald. The commission released its final report on 27 September 1964 but did not use information about or even mention Nosenko.6
Nosenko had insisted that Oswald had drawn no KGB interest, a contention sufficient to elicit great suspicion from some within the CIA. His statement that the KGB had not even bothered to debrief Oswald upon his entry into the USSR, notwithstanding that Oswald was an ex-marine previously stationed at a U-2 base in Japan and trained in electronics, defied belief for some. After all, U-2 flights had been deployed from Atsugi AFB in Japan more than once during Oswald's service at the base.? He must have been at least somewhat aware of the U-2 and its extraordinary program. Soldiers there would have had some opportunity to witness the takeoffs and landings of the incredible aircraft, they speculated. As a radar operator, he surely would have had some awareness of the radar characteristics.
More generally, Nosenko's assertion about the lack of KGB interest in Oswald was contrary to the historic nature of the KGB as understood by the CIA. The interrogators reasoned, "Why were we so 'lucky' to be in secret contact with one of only a very few members of the KGB who were familiar with Oswald's coming and going? Why did he deny any KGB involvement at all with the assassin? Surely at least some had taken place. Why was Nosenko going to such lengths to convey the impression of no KGB involvement with Oswald? The man must have been dispatched to throw the CIA off the path of Oswald."s Nosenko, however, continued to state that he hated the KGB but he could not implicate them in the assassination, for it would be untrue. He maintained that he had been asked to examine Oswald's file and assess the KGB liability in the president's death, that he was familiar with Oswald's attempt in Mexico City to reenter the USSR, and that Oswald was prevented from doing so because there was no interest in him whatsoever by the KGB.
Things then got much worse for the defector. In early 1965, an even more hostile interrogation of Nosenko was conceived by his tormentors and approved by their superiors. The chief of the Soviet Bloc Division, who had met Nosenko in Frankfurt; the director of clandestine services, Richard Helms; and the assistant attorney general, Nicholas Katzenbach, all agreed to the blueprint. Attorney General Robert Kennedy approved the plan.` Nosenko's legal status had been that of "on parole" from the Immigration Service. He thus did not have the legal protection of an American citizen. From what followed, however, it could be said that the Justice Department and the CIA denied the man his basic human rights.
The CIA received the final go-ahead from the Justice Department for an incarceration "down on the farm," the CIA training facility that included 10,000 acres of heavily wooded, completely fenced, tidal lands stretching along the York River near Williamsburg, Virginia. Much of it was wilderness. During the Second World War, the camp had been used as a POW detention center for German soldiers. In August of 1965 Nosenko was taken there and put into a newly constructed twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot, windowless, concrete cell. It was outfitted with heavy padding on the walls to prevent him from injuring himself. This vaultlike room was fabricated within a "special-purpose" building, surrounded by double fences and set deep in the woods. There was no terrestrial visibility beyond the second fence. It was his home for more than two years. He was not allowed to exercise at all for almost two years after his arrival, and then finally for no more than thirty minutes a day. He was not allowed any reading material or any "recreational device." When he manufactured the pieces of a chess set from loose cotton strings of his overalls, they were confiscated.10 He was minimally fed and lost weight. The jailers were instructed not to molest him but not to be friendly with him. They were further instructed to disorient him by varying the clocks, the lighting, and his permitted sleeping hours.
The CIA does not acknowledge administering drugs other than for medicinal purposes. To this date, howeve
r, Nosenko continues to insist that he was given hallucinogenic drugs on many occasions, "probably LSD." He believes that on one occasion he almost died from an overdose of some drug. "The guards had to come into my cell and place me in the shower. They then dispensed, alternately, the hot and cold water streams."11
Nosenko's main antagonist was the original case officer he had met in Geneva, now the deputy chief of the Soviet Bloc Division. The focus of his interrogation was still the question of Oswald's relation to the KGB, but there were manifold other avenues of query used, with varying degrees of success, in attempts to break down Nosenko and have him admit the "truth" about everything. He interpreted minor discrepancies in Nosenko's story as indications of cunning duplicity, and forced Nosenko to admit that many of his lesser claims were false. Nosenko had said that he was a major in 1962 and a lieutenant colonel in 1964. Then he admitted that he was only a captain.
Nosenko had professed that a cable came to him in Geneva recalling him to Moscow, but the National Security Agency provided cable-traffic analyses demonstrating that Nosenko could not have received such a cable from Moscow on the day he claimed. He then admitted fabricating the tale. Strangely, Fedora, the FBI-controlled defector, had verified these two things, the rank of lieutenant colonel and the dispatch of the telegram. Now, Fedora was suspected by some in the CIA as well as some in the FBI, which ran him, of being a double agent actually working for the KGB. Since Fedora had tried to authenticate Nosenko, some then concluded that Nosenko must indeed be a plant. The KGB must have sent both men.
Nosenko had said that Gribanov, the chief of his directorate, was a close friend and had accelerated his promotions and gotten him special awards from the chairman of the KGB. He now admitted that Gribanov was not such a friend, even though Gribanov had, in fact, awarded him the Chairman's Commendation in 1956 and again in 1959.
Nosenko claimed to have been in the same American Embassy Section of the KGB as Cherepanov in 1960 and to have known him. Cherepanov had been suspected by the KGB of collaborating with American intelligence while serving in Yugoslavia during the 1950s, and then was booted out of the First Chief Directorate. Subsequently, according to Nosenko, the Personnel Directorate of the KGB "felt sorry" for Cherepanov and gave him a job in the Second Chief Directorate Archives. This made no sense at all to the CIA interrogators.
Eventually, Nosenko was forced to recant some of his statements. The apparently exaggerated rank, the overstated relationships with influential superiors, and the confusion with many minor details of his involvement in cases of particular interest to the CIA-especially that of Lee Harvey Oswald-led to the conclusion by some that he must be a KGB plant.
George never accepted the argument that Nosenko was planted by the KGB. He insisted that the USSR would have been crazy to give up Vassall, the British Admiralty clerk blackmailed by the KGB and exposed by Nosenko. Such a course of action would be the death of all future agent recruitment. George also knew of Nosenko's confinement and something of his conditions, but he knew nothing of the "case" against him. Coincidentally, George was stationed down on the farm as an instructor during much of Nosenko's incarceration. He had no contact with him, however, and even if he had known more, he could not have done much about the inhuman circumstances. He was just not the kind of guy who would burst into the chief's office and say, "You are making a terrible mistake and destroying one of the finest agents and operational sources that we have ever had," although it most assuredly would have been his sentiment. George actually had a reverence for legitimate authority. On the other hand, if he sensed abuse of authority he could be quite contemptuous of that authority. Still, he rarely would tell people of his disdain for them, nor would he pointlessly argue with them.
At first, comparatively few people within the CIA or elsewhere were aware of this harsh confinement of Nosenko, the abusive treatment, and the dubious case against him. Only the Soviet Division management, the Soviet Division counterintelligence officers, some of the Agency counterintelligence staff, a limited number of personnel within the Office of Security who were actually involved in the mechanics of the incarceration, and a few top CIA administrators and their assistants knew anything of this confinement. All of these either believed Nosenko not to be credible or had no knowledge as to his bona fides. Thus, there was no one to make a case for him.
Others were bound to find out, however, and some of them were of the disposition to act in some way. In May of 1964, while serving with the Agency in Vienna, Richard Kovich heard about Nosenko's imprisonment from a high-ranking CIA official. This official volunteered that some Agency personnel now believed Nosenko to be "dirty" and had ordered a hostile interrogation. Kovich has been described as one of the premier case officers of the Cold War, unparalleled in his ability to recruit defectors and elicit information. His immediate reaction to the news about Nosenko was one of shock. He remarked to the official, "This is nonsense. They must be going nuts back there. Evidently, Golitsyn and Angleton must be in on the act. Everybody is paranoid."
Kovich also was a close friend of George and the godfather to George's only child, Eva. In 1965 he paid a social visit to George down on the farm, where George was teaching. George remarked to his friend that he wished he had been there the night before. A member of the Office of Security, one of the guards, had visited with George and had poured out his soul to him. The guard was so upset that he had to tell someone what pained him. He informed George that Nosenko was in solitary confinement and was being mistreated. The officer asked for a drink and threw up; his conscience was hurting him so. After hearing George's story, Kovich concluded that the Agency treatment of Nosenko had turned criminal and that unless circumstances were reversed the Agency would regret the action.
Knowing that Leonard McCoy had a stake in Nosenko's status, Kovich let him know of the hostile nature of the incarceration. It was McCoy's responsibility to gather intelligence requirements from customers, carry them to the handlers of defectors such as Nosenko, deliver the responses, and follow up on all aspects of the information train. Since Nosenko had first defected, McCoy continually had implored the Soviet Bloc Division chief to allow the publication of some of Nosenko's tidbits of information and to allow further legitimate debriefing of the defector. The chief repeatedly and pointedly had turned down McCoy's requests. Finally, in October of 1965, the chief told McCoy that he wanted to share with him the case against Nosenko, the proof of his malafides. Several hundred pages of raw information and dozens of finished memos were delivered to McCoy on a Friday. Leonard began making notes as he read the material, and he immediately saw analytical errors that had led to erroneous conclusions about Nosenko. On Monday morning the material was abruptly removed from McCoy by the division's new chief of counterintelligence. McCoy forthwith prepared a lengthy and comprehensive memo debunking the case against Nosenko and on the next day delivered it to the Division chief. The memo delineated the errors that he had observed in the analyses of the charges against Nosenko and refuted the conclusions that led to these charges. The chief demanded that all copies of McCoy's memo be immediately delivered to his office.
Three months later, in January of 1966, McCoy's secretary came to him and announced that she had unwittingly kept one copy of his volatile October memo. Since he had heard of no amelioration of Nosenko's status, McCoy took the document to Richard Helms, by then the deputy director of the CIA. This may have been the first substantive step in the vindication of the maligned defector. Because of the powerful controversy still surrounding this issue, however, a lot more investigation into the matter would be forthcoming before Nosenko would have any relief from his plight. McCoy, of course, was in direct conflict with his superiors, the chief of the Soviet Bloc Division and the deputy chief of the division (the original case officer).
In June of 1966 Richard Helms became the new DCI, the first to have come up through the ranks. He had not yet made up his mind about Nosenko. After all, the worst nightmare a DCI could experience would be to have
a trusted KGB double agent within the ranks of the CIA. He wanted closure on the matter, so he instructed the Soviet Bloc Division and the Agency CI staff to review the case and come to a consensus on the man's authenticity.
In August of 1966 Nosenko was administered a second polygraph but it was no more genuine than the first. It too was administered in a hostile manner, the session designed to make him confess to a set of false beliefs rather than to find out the truth. McCoy then prepared another memo to the DCI outlining some of the hazards to the Agency of mishandling Nosenko and recommending that Nosenko be released whether or not he was bona fide. Kovich also was not finished with the Nosenko affair. In the summer of 1966 he had been assigned to teach down on the farm along with George. There the two of them repeatedly commiserated about the fate of the unfortunate man. Kovich resolved to do something about the impasse. In the spring of 1967 he scheduled an interview with the DCI. Helms was unable to keep the appointment but Adm. Rufus Taylor, then the deputy DCI, met with Kovich. By this time Helms had already asked Admiral Taylor to look into the matter relating to Nosenko. Kovich made it plain that he was upset with what the Agency had done. Kovich noted that the admiral was quite attentive and asked Kovich many questions about the case. In September, Helms formally assigned the resolution of the Nosenko question to Taylor. Taylor moved the investigation from the Soviet Bloc Division and the CI staff to the Office of Security, where Bruce Solie began an independent investigation of the matter.
Solie had followed the Nosenko saga from its inception in Geneva. He had been in Geneva in 1962, secreted in a separate location but constantly providing George with questions to ask Nosenko, including questions about "Sasha," the mole.12 In October of 1967, without informing members of the Soviet Bloc Division, Solie had Nosenko moved from his windowless cell, where he had been for more than two years, to a safehouse near Washington, D.C., and began additional interviews. This time the questioning was conducted more in the manner routinely employed with defectorsthat is, designed to elicit information rather than a confession. This time Nosenko took a conventional polygraph.
CIA Spymaster_George Kisevalter Page 29