2. After protracted correspondence with the information and privacy coordinator of the CIA, taking place over a period in excess of five years, excerpts of the Cherepanov papers were found and provided to the author. An abstract of the relevant pages has been herein presented.
Chapter 19
1. See Anatoliy Golitsyn, New Lies for Old (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1984).
2. Wise, Molehunt, 21. The book's principal subject matter is the hunt within the CIA for the mole "Sasha." George made numerous contributions to the work.
3. McCoy, interview.
4. See Edward Jay Epstein, Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald (New York: Readers Digest Press, 1978), 75.
5. Nosenko, interview.
6. See Martin, 111.
7. Partly as a consequence of Nosenko's 1962 revelation, Vassall was apprehended, tried, and convicted later that year. See Rositzke, 91. See also Martin, 149.
8. See Wise, Molehunt, 68.
9. In a 28 June 1999 letter to the author, Nosenko confirmed that Belitsky had been sent to the Brussels Fair in 1958 with the intent to deceive and indeed had been planted at that time. In addition, Nosenko knew about Belitsky's passing the polygraph test of 1961. Additionally, Len McCoy advises that when he was in London for the Penkovsky operation, he was assigned the added task of evaluating Belitsky's information. It was his conclusion at the time that Belitsky was under KGB control.
10. In telephone conversations with the author, on 29 May and 11 June, as well as a letter to the author on 5 June 1999, Goldberg conveyed that he always trusted George and that he had no reason ever to doubt him. "George was the senior man among all of the case officers; he was the oldest, the most experienced, the highest ranking, the most scholarly. He was a wonderful man that all looked up to; he was our ideal." He consulted with George over the years, respecting his judgments, maturity, and honesty. He would not, however, confirm the author's version of the Belitsky episode.
11. Nosenko, interview.
12. See Wise, Molehunt, 78.
13. Nosenko also told George that Joseph Alsop, the noted American newspaper columnist, had been compromised in Moscow by homosexual activity. George later was asked by senior CIA personnel to delete that information from the tapes. It was of no general intelligence value and it might result in political harm to the Agency. It was information that people needed to know only if the FBI suspected Alsop of collaborating with the Soviets. He never was. In fact, his newspaper column was routinely highly critical of Soviet policy. See Wise, Molehunt, 77.
14. See John Barron, KGB: The Secret Work of Soviet Secret Agents (New York: Readers Digest Press, 1974), 13.
15. The KGB discovered this dead drop in late 1961 when an American diplomat was observed probing around one night (with matches in the dark) in a misguided effort to "check out" the location. After manning a lookout of the site for some six months, they gave up on its value. Ultimately, Penkovsky told his KGB captors of the site, who then baited it for his CIA handlers. Jacob, the CIA man, was apprehended in November of 1962 while attempting to retrieve a matchbox with a note inside presumed to be from Penkovsky. Other reports indicate that Nosenko did not provide the information about this dead drop at the 1964 Geneva meeting but at the 1962 meeting. George always insisted that Nosenko had told him of it in 1962 and that he had reported the information to those at the CIA who were actively working the Penkovsky case at the time. (By January of 1962 George had been removed from direct participation in the operational aspects of the Penkovsky case.) Nosenko reports that he provided the information in 1964 and that George must have been confused, otherwise, the Agency and SIS would have abandoned this location for another one. Nosenko, letter to author, 10 May 1999.
16. In September of 1963, Johnson had already been transferred to another area and no longer had access to the vault. Nosenko's information, however, did aid in Johnson's arrest and conviction. In May of 1964 Johnson was sent to the Pentagon. On 2 October, because of troubles with his wife, he went AWOL. On 25 November, he turned himself in to police at Reno, Nevada, as a deserter. When interrogated about the illegal entries into the vault, he readily confessed to being a spy. On 30 July 1965, both Johnson and Mintkenbaugh received sentences of twenty-five years in prison. On 18 May 1972, Johnson's son visited him at the Lewisburg, West Virginia, Federal Penitentiary. There he stabbed his father with a knife, killing him. See Barron, 199.
17. See The Warren Report: The Official Report on the Assassination of President John F Kennedy (Associated Press, 1964), 310.
18.Ibid., 322.
19. See H. Bradford Westerfield, Inside CIA's Private World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 395. See also Martin, 155.
20. See Barron, 335.
21. Nosenko, interview.
Chapter 20
1. Nosenko, interview.
2. See Epstein, 13.
3. See Martin, 158.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., 163.
6. See Wise, Molehunt, 145.
7. These flights probably were targeted over China. The U.S. had pledged not to fly over the USSR as a result of the May Day 1960 intercept of Gary Powers' U-2.
8. Martin, 155.
9. See Epstein, 45.
10. See Martin, 171.
11. Nosenko, telephone conversation, 2 July 1999. See also Wise, Molehunt, 146.
12. See Wise, Molehunt, 69.
13. See Martin, 171. See also Westerfield, 379, for a presumably authoritative opinion of the Nosenko case. J. Heuer, Jr.'s Nosenko: Five Paths to Judgment, is a reprint of a fall 1987 article (32, no. 3: 77- 101) from Studies in Intelligence, an internal CIA publication, originally classified as secret.
Chapter 21
1. According to military personnel at the Russian Embassy, Washington, D.C., many military facilities called Poligon exist in Russia. Poligon (or Polygon) seems to be a generic term for artillery facilities. The Russian words "pole" and "ogon" translate into English as "field" and "fire," respectively. Combined, they could be "field of fire," an artillery term, or simply firing range. George's memory of Poligon is clouded. From correspondence with Kisevalters now living in St. Petersburg, unquestionably the location of'which he speaks was a facility approximately twenty miles east of St. Petersburg. In George's childhood days, travel to Poligon required a train or carriage ride to the banks of the Ohta River, which runs around the city and empties into the Neva. A ferry ride across the Ohta at a particular wide section, where it forms a lake, then would be necessary to access Poligon.
2. In April of 1920, Jozef Klemens Pilsudski, Polish revolutionary, independence fighter, dictator, and national hero, with the help of White armies led by Baron Pyotr Nikolaievich Wrangel, led his Polish forces to a successful defense of Warsaw and the repulsion of the Red forces. In March of' 1921, the Reds signed the Treaty of Riga (Latvia), agreeing to release parts of the Ukraine and Byelorussia to Poland.
3. David Guest started a Communist cell at Cambridge in April of 1931. Philby went up to Cambridge in October of 1929, Burgess in 1930, and Maclean in 1931. Many prominent intellectuals in Great Britain were Communists in those days. Burgess and Maclean eventually fled to Moscow in 1951, Philby in 1963. See Rositzke, 120.
4. Aldrich Ames was a CIA employee who, in February of 1994, was apprehended by the FBI, thus ending a decade of spy activities for the KGB. Ames sent ten Soviet defectors to their deaths and provided the KGB with information on numerous CIA operations. He was paid $4.6 million, purportedly the most paid to any spy in the history of the world. Former CIA director R. James Woolsey once expressed the view that Ames was more a traitor than Benedict Arnold. David Wise, Nighimover (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 306.
Index
CIA Spymaster_George Kisevalter Page 36