[104-10211-10001.pdf — page 119]
720. # 1. Responsability for and Knowledge of ABIDIANNOSENKO said that, as Deputy Chief of the U.S. Embassy Section, he was directly responsible, as case officer, for all coverage of the Embassy Security Officer John V. ABIDIAN. This was NOSENKO's only individual target responsibility, and no KGB officer shared it with him. NOSENKO said that he opened the KGB file on ABIDIAN before ABIDIAN'S arrival in Moscow in early 1953, and that he turned this file over officially to his successor, GRYAZNOV, when transferred from the U.S. Embassy Section at the end of 1961. It was NOSENKO who wrote the KGB plan for operations against ABIDIAN in about October 1960. ABIDIAN, according to NOSENKO, was considered by the KGB to be a CIA officer and, as LANGELLE'S successor, was also considered to be the most important counterintelligence target in the Embassy. ABIDIAN was thus made a special target of surveillance from the day of his arrival in the USSR; this meant he was always under surveillance by several teams of the KGB Seventh (Surveillance) Directorate. The intensive coverage of ABIDIAN included mail censorship, telephone taps, and agent reporting; it was instituted, NOSENKO said, "in the hope that he might lead the KGB to another PCPOV." ABIDIAN was detected, NOSENKO continued, in three letter-mailings--all to agents already under KGB control. He was seen to enter a suspected dead drop site on Pushkin Street, the significance of which did not become known to the KGB until later, when it was learned that this site was to be used by PENKOVSKIY. In the hostile interrogations of early 1965, NOSENKO agreed that he was the single person in the KGB responsible for knowing everything possible about ABIDIAN.NOSENKO said he knew nothing about ABIDIAN's personal background, his education, his studies in France, his military service, his date of entry into the State Department, his State Department rank, his previous foreign assignments with the State Department, or his status as a Foreign Service Reserve, Staff, or Officer status (FSR, FSS, FSO). NOSENKO said he tried to learn these things, but the information was unavailable in the Second Chief Directorate or in KGB Central files. and although he requested information from the First Chief Directorate, nothing was received. The only information the KGB had on ABIDIAN, insofar as NOSENKO knew, was that contained in ABIDIAN'S visa request and in a report from one of the Legal Residencies in the United States; the report provided a basis for believing him to be a CIA officer.NOSENKO was unaware of the meaning of the initials FSR, FSS, and FSO. When asked whether he had checked the Department of State Biographic Register for information on ABIDIAN's background, he replied that this document was not available to the U.S. Embassy Section; he subsequently recalled that there was an old copy of the Biographic Register "from about 1956" in KOVSHUK's office, but that it contained no information on ABIDIAN.NOSENKO reported that one of the reasons ABIDIAN was considered a CIA officer was his behavior while serving as a Department of State Security Officer with KHRUSHCHEV's delegation when the latter visited the United States in