Francesco/who-killed-jfk huggingface dataset:
[104-10150-10136.pdf — page 175]
# Top Secret(AMERICAN EMBASSY SECTION - January 1960-January 1962)the State Department. The American was adamant in his refusal, although he was held in the hotel room all night long. At about six o'clock in the morning the KGB officers received a telephoned report that the Embassy Marine guard had called America House to advise that the American was needed at the Embassy because an enciphered telegram had arrived. The American was then released.The KGB "knew" that the American did not report the recruitment attempt. Using that circumstance for blackmail rather than the incriminating photographs, the KGB planned another attempt to recruit him if he ever returned abroad.When the non-Soviet agent used in the first year of developing the American target had come to the attention of GOLITSYN, GOLITSYN visited the Embassy Section to see if he could use him in First Chief Directorate operations abroad. NOSENKO was on leave at the time, but GOLITSYN talked with another Embassy Section officer. GOLITSYN was told "Don't touch him, he's ours". [The relevance of this incident is discussed below.]NOSENKO's Information-1964At the second 'meeting with CIA in Geneva in 1964, NOSENKO identified the American military code clerk as "Jim" 06 STORSBERG. The foreign agent NOSENKO recruited for the case was Johannes PREISFREUND (KGB cryptonym "PROKHOR"), a Finn. In repeating the substance of his 1962 account of the KGB recruitment attempt, NOSENKO emphasized his personal role in directing both PREISFREUND and the KGB officer SKVORTSOV/MICHAUD.GRIBANOV and KOVSHUK, not NOSENKO, actually made the recruitment attempt. NOSENKO was not present; he waited outside the room with GRYAZNOV. Neither did NOSENKO recruit PREISFREUND. The latter was recruited by KOVSHUK "who needed credit for the recruitment" although NOSENKO had initially cultivated the the Finn. Under KOVSHUK's orders, NOSENKO served as (PREISFREUND's case officer, although KOVSHUK accompanied him to operational meetings with the agent.0001438168Top SecretTS No. 197124Copy
[104-10150-10136.pdf — page 176]
# Top Secret(AMERICAN EMBASSY SECTION - January 1960-January 1962)PREISFREUND was used in no KGB operation other than in the development of STORSBERG. His usefulness declined because he was suspected, particularly by his fellow Finns. of having some relationship with the KGB.Comment: A report of the Finnish security service advised CIA in December 1960 that PREISFREUND. "is a Soviet agent who calls at the America Club in Moscow and develops Americans in an attempt to penetrate Western circles".After GOLITSYN's defection [in December 1961] NOSENKO (who had by then transferred back to the Seventh Department) and KOVSHUK concluded that PREISFREUND thereby had been identified as a KGB agent to American Intelligence, and that PREISFREUND should not be used again against American Embassy personnel. NOSENKO was told to use the Finn in Seventh Department operations, but he was unsuitable since he knew only Finnish and Russian.NOSENKO's Information-1965In the February-March 1965 interrogations NOSENKO provided some additions as well as further amendments to what he had related earlier about STORSBERG. GRYAZNOV wrote the initial operational plan, which NOSENKO read and approved. The plan called for a detailed study of STORSBERG and the creation of some basis on which to make an operational approach. The case developed slowly in 1960. From a female clerk named YAZHINSKAYA and other employees in the Finnish Embassy, PREISFREUND obtained background information on STORSBERG, who sometimes visited the sauna in the Finnish Embassy. PREISFREUND was directed to visit America House in order to strike up an acquaintance with STORSBERG and when he was successful, he managed to lure STORSBERG to his hotel room, where the KGB obtained incriminating photographs of STORSBERG and the female agent Inga VARLAMOVA. STORSBERG visited PREISFREUND's rooms many times at different hotels in Moscow, but the KGB took incriminating photographs on169Top Secret221BR0001439TS No. 197124Copy 10
[104-10150-10136.pdf — page 177]
# Top Secret(AMERICAN EMBASSY SECTION - January 1960-January 1962)only two occasions. [PREISFREUND] introduced [STORSBERG] to SKVORTSOV, and when they had become acquainted, SKVORTSOV invited [STORSBERG] to his room at the Leningrad Hotel on a number of occasions, but [STORSBERG] always refused. On one evening in the middle of 1961, however, [STORSBERG] accepted SKVORTSOV's invitation in the belief that he would meet non-Soviet girls. NOSENKO was in the hotel and he had made arrangements with the KGB Operational Technical Directorate to call at once if audio coverage of the American Embassy indicated anything which might affect the recruitment attempt.While NOSENKO waited outside the room, GRIBANOV attempted to recruit [STORSBERG] on ideological grounds; his proposal was translated by KOVSHUK. [STORSBERG], however, must have given SKVORTSOV's hotel room telephone number to someone at the American Embassy, because while GRIBANOV was talking to him someone called SKVORTSOV's room looking for the American. When this happened, either GRYAZNOV or NOSENKO knocked on the door and advised KOVSHUK that the Embassy was searching for [STORSBERG]. The recruitment attempt was thereupon terminated, unsuccessfully.NOSENKO "could not remember" if he had ever read the KGB file on [STORSBERG]. [In describing KGB practice, NOSENKO consistently equated custody of a case file with being the responsible case officer.] He had no interest in "earlier reporting", although he had read current materials concerning [STORSBERG] as they came into the Embassy Section.Comment: NOSENKO at that time in 1965 was then confronted with the substance of the 1962 meeting transcripts in which he claimed to have run the operation, to have been deeply involved in it, and to have personally spoken to [STORSBERG] during the recruitment attempt. NOSENKO interrupted the reading of the transcript, calling it "nonsense". He said he was drunk at all the 1962 meetings in Geneva and was nervous in the presence of CIA officers. HeTS No. 197124
[104-10150-10136.pdf — page 178]
# Top Secret(AMERICAN EMBASSY SECTION - January 1960-January 1962)Comment: (Continued)admitted that he had "painted himself" as being somewhat more active and important than facts justified, but said this reflected only "white lies" which did not affect the otherwise complete accuracy of his story with respect to the position he occupied at the time nor the events which then transpired.NOSENKO's Information-1966During the 1964 interrogations NOSENKO had been vague as to the timing and sequence of events in the STORSBERG opera-06 tion, and in 1965 he refused to specify dates for this or any other operation he described, stating he could no longer be sure when any particular incident occurred. Questioned 06 again about the STORSBERG case in October 1966, NOSENKO insisted that he had directed the entire operation from beginning to end, and that it was his most important case. At his interrogator's insistence, he provided the following chronology:06January 1960: STORSBERG arrived in Moscow. (NOSENKO accepted the actual date as supplied by the interrogator.)mid-1960:06Early 1960 or PREISFREUND was recruited by KOVSHUK. NOSENKO, after retracting his claim he recruited PREISFREUND said he 06 first met PREISFREUND "a week or so after his recruitment" (which occurred, according to most accounts, in early 1960). In October 1966, however, NOSENKO said that he and PREISFREUND 06 first met "in the middle of 1960, in the summer of 1960".Summer 1960: 06 PREISFREUND first provided a woman to STORSBERG.171Top Secret0001441TS No. 197124Copy 10
[104-10150-10136.pdf — page 179]
# Top Secret(AMERICAN EMBASSY SECTION - January 1960-January 1962)Early 1961: Compromising photographs of [STORSBERG] and a Soviet female were first obtained at the Hotel Peking in Moscow.About May. 1961: [PREISFREUND] was withdrawn from the operation and SKVORTSOV was introduced about three weeks before the approach to [STORSBERG].June 1961: Unsuccessful KGB approach to [STORSBERG] in the Leningrad Hotel, Moscow.(Earlier in the 1966 interrogations NOSENKO had said that the approach was made "a_month or a month and a half before [STORSBERG] left Moscow". Told that [STORSBERG] was reassigned in November 1961, NOSENKO said that the approach was in June 1961, five months before [STORSBERG]'s departure.) [STORSBERG] reported that the approach was in October 1961. See below.][STORSBERG]'s Information[STORSBERG] did not report the KGB recruitment approach until the NOSENKO lead prompted his being interviewed by the FBI on 14 September 1964. His reasons, he said, were that the KGB officers had warned him not do so and he feared that by reporting the approach he would jeopardize his chance for employment with the State Department. He said that he provided no information to the Soviets during or after the approach in October 1961. With the exception of the timing of the recruitment attempt, [STORSBERG]'s account of the operation is fairly close to that provided by NOSENKO, including the roles of [PREISFREUND] and SKVORTSOV, whom he positively identified by their photographs. He was unable to identify photographs of GRIBANOV, KOVSHUK, or NOSENKO.[STORSBERG] said that he first became acquainted with [PREISFREUND] in February or March 1960, he was first intimate with a female procured by [PREISFREUND] "six months or so"TS No. 197124Copy 151BR
[104-10150-10136.pdf — page 180]
# Top Secret(AMERICAN EMBASSY SECTION - January 1960-January 1962)[e.g., ca. June] after arriving in Moscow, and it was not until more than a year later, in September 1961, that he first met SKVORTSOV, posing as the Frenchman "Marcel MICHAUD" [STORSBERG] was uncertain how he became acquainted with SKVORTSOV, stating variously that he met him through State Department code clerk [Joseph MORONE] through friends at the [Finnish] Embassy, or that he became acquainted with SKVORTSOV while he, [STORSBERG] was serving as bartender in the America Club. During September 1961 [STORSBERG] was intimate with female friends of SKVORTSOV on two occasions in SKVORTSOV's hotel room.In the middle of October 1961, on the evening of the KGB recruitment attempt, [STORSBERG] saw SKVORTSOV, [MORONE], and an unidentified female sitting together in the America Club.Comment: [STORSBERG] could not have met [MORONE] with SKVORTSOV in October 1961 [MORONE] was transferred to Lisbon the previous August after he himself was compromised by the KGB. See p. 198. As far as CIA is aware, [MORONE] has never been questioned regarding his alleged association with, SKVORTSOV/MICHAUD or [STORSBERG].While [MORONE] was dancing with the unknown female, [STORSBERG] was invited to visit SKVORTSOV's hotel for drinks. [STORSBERG] and SKVORTSOV left the America Club, and [STORSBERG] was again intimate with a Soviet female in SKVORTSOV's hotel room. It was immediately after leaving SKVORTSOV's room on this night when [STORSBERG] was accosted by the KGB.In a signed statement which he gave a representative of the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations on 29 July 1965 [STORSBERG] gave somewhat different details. According to this account, three or four months after arriving in the Soviet Union in November 1959 (sic), he met [PREISFREUND] through friends at the [Finnish] Embassy. Thereafter [PREISFREUND] became a frequent visitor to the America Club and a friendship developed between the two. On four173Top SecretTS No. 197124Copy 10
[104-10150-10136.pdf — page 181]
# Top Secret(AMERICAN EMBASSY SECTION - January 1960-January 1962)occasions [STORSBERG] was intimate with females in [PREISFREUND]'s hotel rooms.[STORSBERG] last saw [PREISFREUND] around the end of September or the beginning of October 1961, when [PREISFREUND] stopped coming to the America Club. At about that time, he first met SKVORTSOV through [MORONE] at the America Club. [MORONE] left Moscow the previous August.] [STORSBERG] was not sure of the exact circumstances of his introduction to SKVORTSOV nor did he know the latter's relationship with [MORONE]. After meeting [STORSBERG], SKVORTSOV frequently visited the America Club and actively cultivated [STORSBERG's] friendship. This soon led to an invitation to visit SKVORTSOV's apartment, where [STORSBERG] was intimate with a Soviet female acquaintance of SKVORTSOV. It was after a second visit to the apartment, about a week after the first, that the KGB made its recruitment approach. According to this as well as [STORSBERG]'s earlier account, the approach occurred in the middle of toward the end of October 1961.In connection with an OSI security interview on 5 August 1965 [STORSBERG] denied having furnished defense information to any "Communist intelligence agency" or having ever agreed to do so, that he had been contacted by a member of a foreign intelligence agency since his return to the United States, or that he knew' of anyone at the American Embassy in Moscow who had been contacted by a member of a "Communist intelligence agency". He also denied having agreed in any way with [PREISFREUND] to buy diamonds. [STORSBERG's] denial with respect to the diamonds is in contradiction both with the specific assertions of NOSENKO and with GOLITSYN's more general allegation that the unnamed American was recruited by the KGB after being compromised by [PREISFREUND] in illicit speculation.][PREISFREUND's InformationCIA interviewed [PREISFREUND] in July 1965 in Helsinki]. [NOSENKO himself had suggested that [PREISFREUND] would confirm his story of the [STORSBERG case.] While [PREISFREUND] correctly identified photographs of KOVSHUK, NOSENKO, and [STORSBERG], he maintained initially that he had only a business relationship with KOVSHUK and NOSENKO, that he never had anything to do with the KGB, and that he did not even know what the initials "KGB" stood for.
[104-10150-10136.pdf — page 182]
# Top Secret(AMERICAN EMBASSY SECTION - January 1960-January 1962)[PREISFREUND] finally admitted, however, that he had been involved in a KGB operation against [STORSBERG] and he agreed to tell "the entire truth". His version of the case, while containing some internal contradictions, only partially coincided with that provided by NOSENKO. [PREISFREUND] claimed to be hazy.on the date of all events connected with his contacts with the KGB. The dates, however, could be reconstructed from the known dates of otherwise related events which he said occurred about the time he was recruited or first met [STORSBERG] or last visited the America House, and so forth.] He described being recruited by KOVSHUK, first dating the event as at the end of 1959 or the beginning of 1960, and later as March-April 1960. According to [PREIS-FREUND], he was "cultivated" neither by NOSENKO or by KOVSHUK. The first time he met either was when he was confronted and recruited by KOVSHUK under threat of prosecution for black-market dealings. [NOSENKO is unaware of that feature of [PREISFREUND]'s recruitment.] On NOSENKO's and KOVSHUK'S instructions, about six months after [PREISFREUND]'s recruit-ment, he became acquainted with [STORSBERG], and in the summer of 1960 on one occasion he lured [STORSBERG] into intimacy with a female KGB agent (earlier identified by NOSENKO) in his hotel room. He never saw [STORSBERG] again, nor did he participate in any other KGB operations.Referring to the night [STORSBERG] was intimate with the female KGB agent in [PREISFREUND]'s hotel room, [PREISFREUND] said he slept in the hotel corridor while [STORSBERG] and the girl shared his bed. At one point during the evening he glimpsed NOSENKO in the hallway, wearing a rubber apron. He deduced from this that NOSENKO had been involved in surreptitious photography of [STORSBERG] and the girl.Comment: NOSENKO stated that photographs were taken of [STORSBERG] and a girl in [PREISFREUND]'s hotel room. He has never said anything to suggest, however, that he ever personally was involved in photographing any of the compromises he claims to have arranged, nor has he ever claimed any competence in clandestine photography.175Top SecretC001445TS No. 197124Copy 10
[104-10150-10136.pdf — page 183]
# Top Secret(AMERICAN EMBASSY SECTION - January 1960-January 1962)Before his last meeting with CIA, [PREISFREUND] mentioned that he was planning to visit Leningrad with his family, but that he had learned from business contacts in Moscow that Soviet authorities suspected him of complicity in NOSENKO's defection. He was apprehensive and particularly concerned that the KGB might suspect that he had related his role in the [STORSBERG] case to American Intelligence.During his final meeting with CIA on 13 July 1965 [PREIS-FREUND] asked his interviewers for advice as to whether he should or should not travel to the USSR. He was told that if the situation was as he described, it could be quite dangerous for him to return. [PREISFREUND] stated then that he agreed, that he would not go to the USSR after all.Comment: [PREISFREUND] did shortly thereafter visit the Soviet Union as he planned, and according to [Finnish] official travel records returned to [Helsinki] on 24 July 1965. From his apparent immunity to KGB pressure, it is concluded that [PREISFREUND] is to some degree still under KGB control.GOLITSYN's InformationGOLITSYN, who served as a KGB First Chief Directorate counterintelligence officer in Helsinki until his defection in December 1961, reported that he had met in Helsinki on several occasions in 1960 [a Finn by the name of PREISFREUND] whom he wished to use operationally. In December 1960 [GOLITSYN's passport showed that it took place in January 1961] GOLITSYN visited the Second Chief Directorate's American Department in Moscow to request the permission of KOVSHUK to use [PREISFREUND] against Americans in [Finland]. KOVSHUK refused the request with the explanation that [PREISFREUND] "helped in one recruitment now, and it is necessary to be careful for about six months so as not to arouse American_suspicions". GOLITSYN learned from KOVSHUK that [PREISFREUND] had met the target at America Club in0001446176Top SecretTS No. 197124Copy
[104-10150-10136.pdf — page 184]
# Top Secret(AMERICAN EMBASSY SECTION - January 1960-January 1962)Moscow and had involved him in speculatory activities and lured him into intimacy with various female KGB agents. According to KOVSHUK, the recruitment was accomplished "in 1960, at the end of 1960"; *PREISFREUND* "had helped to create06 the circumstances" and had been withdrawn from the operation before the actual approach, which was made by KGB officers. The American target of *PREISFREUND*, from what KOVSHUK related06 to GOLITSYN, was either a code clerk or diplomat. (GOLITSYN later expressed his personal belief that the individual probably was unmarried and might have been a "military man".)Comment: If GOLITSYN's lead is not to *STORSBERG*, but to some other American code clerk against whom 06 *PREISFREUND* was used, NOSENKO's claim to have supervised all such code clerk operations is refuted.Attempted Recruitment of *STORSBERG*: Summary and ConclusionIn the absence of contrary evidence, it is judged that GOLITSYN's lead refers to *STORSBERG*.06 The role of *PREISFREUND* 06 is the key to this determination. While the time of the operation remains in dispute, GOLITSYN's timing is judged to be the most plausible because of the circumstances under which he acquired his information. These circumstances--GOLITSYN's visit to and discussion with KOVSHUK in Moscow, about the use of *PREISFREUND* are confirmed by NOSENKO and 06 the date, January 1961, is established by passport information. It follows that the operation against *STORSBERG* thus 06 would have taken place more than six months prior to the time NOSENKO and *STORSBERG* claimed. Such a significant inaccuracy 06 by NOSENKO, about an event which he said took place less than a year before he described it to CIA (in June 1962), undermines his claim to the role he played in the case and hence to his position as Deputy Chief of the American Embassy Section and supervisor of code clerk operations.0001447177Top SecretTS No. 197124Copy 10
[104-10150-10136.pdf — page 185]
# Top Secret(AMERICAN EMBASSY SECTION - January 1960-January 1962)## Attempted Defection of KEYSERSU.S. Army Specialist Fifth Class James KEYSERS served in Moscow from 20 December 1960 as an assistant to Embassy Medical Officer Donald C. MARTIN, an Air Force Captain.KEYSERS was the replacement of Staff Sgt. J.G. BRADLEY who had been earlier withdrawn from Moscow because he was a homosexual. Besides his duties with the Medical Officer, KEYSERS was assigned administrative functions in the office of the Air Attache. KEYSERS was trained also to perform back-up cryptographic duties under James STORSBERG in the military code room, but he was relieved of this duty in April 1961. Because of his admitted homosexual tendencies, KEYSERS was removed from Moscow by his American superiors on 16 June 1961.NOSENKO first spoke of what turned out to be the KEYSERS case in Geneva in 1962, but without naming the KGB target or identifying him as STORSBERG's replacement. The KGB and Embassy officials almost simultaneously discovered the American to be a homosexual, he said, and when the KGB found out that the target was to withdraw from the Soviet Union, a letter offering him asylum in the USSR was sent to the American. NOSENKO himself followed up the letter by personally repeating the KGB offer to the American at the airport just before his departure.On 24 January 1964 NOSENKO described the KGB attempt to recruit STORSBERG and then proceeded to repeat his 1962 description of the KGB action taken against STORSBERG'S replacement, whom he identified as ZUJUS. Several days later, NOSENKO telephoned the Geneva safehouse and requested an urgent meeting with CIA. At the meeting he announced that he had made a mistake, that STORSBERG'S replacement was not ZUJUS, but KEYSERS not ZUJUS he said was the homosexual code clerk whom he NOSENKO had personally accosted at the airport.Top Secret
[104-10150-10136.pdf — page 186]
# Top Secret(AMERICAN EMBASSY SECTION - January 1960-January 1962)NOSENKO's InformationKEYSERS was STORSBERG's replacement as military code clerk, and the KGB "sensed at once" that he was a homosexual, and the case preoccupied NOSENKO the exclusion of everything else. NOSENKO and other KGB officers, for example, chased KEYSERS all over Moscow, attempting (without success) to confront their target in compromising circumstances. The American ice ballet (Ice Capades troupe) came to Moscow, and KEYSERS became involved at America House with some of its male homosexual members. The Embassy Security Officer learned of KEYSERS' activities at about the same time. NOSENKO learned of them through a KGB agent. The KGB would have preferred to attempt to recruit KEYSERS, but it learned that he was to be withdrawn from the Soviet Union. The KGB then sent a letter to KEYSERS at his room in America House, pointing out the trouble he was in, and offering him asylum in the USSR. KEYSERS did not respond to the letter. On the day of KEYSERS departure, KGB Surveillants reported that he had left America House for the airport, accompanied by an Assistant Army Attache. NOSENKO sped to the airport and in the terminal building found occasion to approach KEYSERS alone. NOSENKO asked if KEYSERS had thought about the offer in the letter, but KEYSERS did not respond and immediately reported the approach to the officer escorting him.In the 1965 interrogations NOSENKO added only that at the time NOSENKO approached KEYSERS at the airport, the KGB had concluded that KEYSERS had not reported receipt of the letter inviting him to defect, because no information to this effect was obtained from microphones or telephone taps in the Embassy.KEYSERS' InformationPrior to his departure from Moscow KEYSERS acknowledged to his superiors his homosexual tendencies and he admitted involvement in three homosexual incidents, all at America House. He was rebuffed by a Marine guard in March 1961, and he twice engaged in homosexual acts with members of the Ice Capades troupe in May. He denied any public display of his homosexuality but said he could not be sure that someone had not entered his room at America House while he and a homosexual partner were asleep.