[104-10210-10037.pdf — page 23]
1. # I. INTRODUCTIONThis review presents the facts and observations which bear on the *bona fides* of the Soviet defector Yuriy Ivanovich NOSENKO.The highlights of NOSENKO's biography, as he has given it to CIA, are as follows: He was born 30 October 1927, the first son of Ivan Isidorovich NOSENKO, shipyard worker who in 1939 was to become Soviet Minister of Shipbuilding. After graduating in 1951 from the Institute of International Relations in Moscow, where he specialized in international law and the English language, NOSENKO entered the Chief Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the Soviet Navy, serving first as a translator assigned to the intelligence staff of the Seventh (Far Eastern) Fleet and then as a senior translator and political officer at an intelligence unit of the Fourth (Baltic) Fleet. In mid-March 1953, immediately following STALIN's death, NOSENKO left the Naval GRU to become a junior case officer in the KGB. He was assigned to the U.S. Embassy Section of the American Department, KGB Second Chief Directorate, from 1953 to mid-1955. During this period he was initially responsible for operational activity surrounding American journalists in Moscow and later for operations against U.S. Army Attaches at the Embassy. When transferred to the newly organized Tourist Department of the Second Chief Directorate in 1955, NOSENKO had as his targets visitors to the Soviet Union from the United States and the countries of the British Commonwealth. Having handled a number of successful tourist operations, NOSENKO in 1958 was promoted to Deputy Chief of the section responsible for operations against American, British, and Canadian nationals. Eighteen months later NOSENKO returned to the U.S. Embassy Section as its Deputy Chief. Between January 1960 and January 1962 he was second-in-charge of all KGB activities against the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and personally supervised operations against the Embassy Security Officer, the Second Chief Directorate's most important counterintelligence target at the time, and against American code clerks, collectively the Directorate's most important recruitment targets. At the end of December 1961 NOSENKO again was transferred to the Tourist Department, this time as Chief of the American-British-Canadian Section. Six months later he was made Deputy Chief of the Tourist Department, and in mid-1963 he became its First Deputy Chief.From the time he first contacted CIA in Geneva in 1962, NOSENKO's status has been under examination. Only now, three years following his defection in February 1964, is a definitive study of the *bona fides* question possible: the voluminous and diverse reports by NOSENKO, coupled with collateral information, required that much time for assimilation, correlation, investigation, and evaluation. NOSENKO's own testimony, interspersed with representative subsidiary cases stemming from or related to his reports, constitutes a large part of the evidence. This review also draws upon statements and actions by other Soviets, collations with materials from other sources, and opinions by specialists of various kinds. These factual elements are presented without comment or interpretation, except in the penultimate section of the review where the evidence on the *bona fides* of NOSENKO is evaluated and analyzed.