[104-10211-10001.pdf — page 24]
# TOP SECRET626. b. NOSENKO's Conduct in MeetingsNOSENKO in brief, superficial, uncritical debriefings (of the sort which characterized the 1962 and 1964 Geneva meetings and the debriefings prior to 4 April 1964) was reasonably convincing in his manner. For example, on the basis of the hurried sessions of June 1962 in Geneva, which did not allow time for systematic or detailed questioning, the CIA case officer in commenting on NOSENKO's conduct mentioned "the ease of his manner, the sureness of his knowledge of matters which he should have known, and the amount of checkable information he provided." NOSENKO seemed to that case officer to be "under little or no restraint as to the amount and nature of what he told us" and "made a convincing and good personal impression: a vigorous, temperamental and vital man." Similarly, nothing in NOSENKO'S manner caused doubts on the part of the FBI representatives who took NOSENKO's reports in February, March, and early April 1964.It became apparent, however, when the cases NOSENKO had mentioned briefly in early meetings were taken up in detail in leisurely debriefings after the defection, that he could not add facts consistent with what he had said before. He was unable to recall related incidents or additional circumstances which did not come to mind in the first telling, despite being aided by questioning from different angles or in different contexts. The same results were obtained in exhausting his store of operational leads (with a half dozen exceptions) and his information on KGB procedures, installations, and operational methods: Having once reported on these general topics, NOSENKO could offer nothing more when debriefed again, regardless of the method of questioning tried. Repeatedly he used the same stories to illustrate his points; new stories did not emerge. In a period of nine months, NOSENKO was drained of information on his personal and professional experiences and knowledge., Never before had the CIA case officers encountered a defector who was totally debriefed.A technique NOSENKO has frequently used to explain his inability to supply details and to forestall further questioning has been to claim poor memory. "Different people have different types of memories," he has said on many occasions, or on others: "I have told what I remember." The case officers who have handled NOSENKO agree, on the other hand, that he has an excellent memory, although perhaps a peculiar one: NOSENKO did not always recall most easily those events which had occurred most recently, or those incidents which were most closely related to him. He was able, for example, to remember detailed information on the penetration of the Courier Transfer Station in Paris and to give a long, detailed, and ordered account of the compromise of PENKOVSKIY, in neither of which he claimed any personal role; he has been able to name hundreds of KGB officers, to give the dates on which many of them transferred from one component of the Second Chief Directorate to another, and to describe their responsibilities at particular times. Yet NOSENKO forgot where he himself served in the GRU; he could not consistently dis- cribe the circumstances of his divorce; he failed to provide a consistent date for his entry into the KGB and for his transfer from the American Department to the Tourist Department in 1962. Likewise, NOSENKO remembered details of KGB operations which, like the "ANDREY" case in 1953, took place in the relatively distant past, but he could not recall the travels, friends, and activities of his own target. John V. ABILAN or details of operations against many American code clerks in 1960 and 1961.